Sand Tray and Water Play

The two activities I think I'll share today are our sand tray and water play activities.  This week, being the first week, we are doing very familiar materials.  That comes from my time with large groups with quite a few new children each year, I guess.  Probably wouldn't need to do that with my kiddos this year but it does allow for comfort to come from familiarity as they begin their school year schedule again. 

Yesterday, our fine motor activity was pouring sand into various containers.  Today we had our sand tray and I added "lines sheet" for them to refer to as they were exploring.  We've introduced Mat Man (Handwriting Without Tears) this week and so we've been talking about lines-sticks/curves, horizontal/diagonal/vertical. 

I mentioned Mat Man...this is not the greatest picture.  We are really short on space so we're going to have to do some rearranging of something...either furniture or ourselves with mat man because he's a good size.  Today the children told me the parts that we needed to create and we sang the song that goes with it.  Then I pulled out our discovery box which I had prepared with shapes and letters and we put our hand inside, choosing one and trying to guess what it was without looking.  Then we created it with the sticks and curves of mat man (which explains why he's missing some parts in this picture.)  One thing I like about the song that goes with mat man as that it goes beyond just naming body parts.  It also gives a simple function and we can also vary it if we want.  The body verse (the blue mat-we'll be using it starting next week to build letters) ends with "to hold what is inside".  So, we've talked about about what's inside our body.  Interesting!  Our Let's Move activity comes soon after this and boy oh boy it got our heart beating pretty fast today.  So neat to see them connecting that observation with Mat Man already.  I think Mat Man is going to be a hit and a great conversation piece along with what it's typical function is. 

For sensory we are working with water this week.  Yesterday, being the first day, we had just plain water with familiar tools for exploration.  They NEVER tire of water play...and so much learning can take place also!  We have the kitchen set out this week and so I pulled a few of the utensils/plates and such and we did some dish washing.   The way I set it up was to encourage order and working from left to right.  The older one really got into the dish washing process. The younger ones were more interested in playing...which is okay also. 

Ha!  Should have taken the picture from the other direction.  Oh well, you all can picture the children sitting so that the yellow tray is at their left.  :-P

Hope your morning went well!