R is for...

R is for Rainbow!

Well, we didn't get to everything this week due to illness but...that's the way it goes.  Glad it landed in our "R" week since R is a familiar letter. 

Rainbow Bottles

All age groups love this type of activity.  One year my bro-in-law had a large trash bag full of transparent bottles and I took them into my school-age program and they loved them!  Those bottles didn't have lids so we stuck clay on the top and turned them into creatures.  Such fun!  Today we simply created rainbow bottles.  It was a RoseArt kit.  But you don't have to buy a kit.  Use recycled containers and if you don't want to purchase colored sand, you can always color salt.  Great fine motor! 

Rainbow R

This ended up being a two day project.  The initial gluing on of strips allowed for us to talk about the actual colors of the rainbow and introduce/reinforce ROY G. BIV.  This was just a fun tidbit...not something I expect them to remember and as you can see, she chose not to put the color strips in order and that's okay also.  Actually, I see a pattern and I'm betting she probably would have completed that pattern if there were more of those colors.  :-)  We let it dry completely and then traced the letter R on the back for her to cut out.  A little harder than we expected, having to go through the second layer of paper but she did it!

Alphabet Rainbow

www.sparklebox.co.uk

Came across that cute alphabet rainbow at Sparklebox and decided to use it with a sensory tub activity.  Hid colorful magnetic letters in a tub of sand.  She found them and as she did trace that upper case letter.  She then put it on the magnetic dry-erase board where she thought the letter would go, using her alphabet rainbow as a guide.  I did not plan to use lower case letters as Sparklebox's font isn't what I teach so...she's welcome to trace those at home (and I encouraged her to look for those letters at home) but I didn't include that in our activity.  I chose to use this as an informal evaluation of how she was forming the letters.  I was glad to see that the letters that we have "taught" were formed just as I taught them.  The others weren't, but that's fine.  We'll get there! 

Rainbow Numeral Formation:

Not exactly what I had initially thought to do, but it worked out just fine.  I added other colors in there besides just ROY G BIV as I wanted to review those also.  She placed the numeral cards in order 0-9 and then used mancala beads to make that number on the felt.

Exploring with Rocks

Not really a "rainbow" activity but something I wanted to do this week.  I did add rainbow colored magnets to be used with weighing rocks and a rainbow tablet with a rainbow set of markers for documentation if they wished.  Anyway, these rocks we picked up at Lake Huron.  My eldest chose most of them.  I encouraged them to pick them out of the lake instead of off the shore because then we could see how colorful or what cool design was on the rock when we used water during our exploration.  Found some neat ones!

While on the rock topic...Story Rocks

An idea I've seen many places but the most recently was at TeachPreschool.

I actually created these myself placing the modgepodge on like my kiddos would just to see what would happen.  I plan for them to create their own in the near future.  For this set I used all /r/ beginning sound words.  Great stories came from it! Simply glob some modgepodge onto the rock, place the picture on top and modgepodge over top of that again.  Simple.  FYI:  these were polished rocks from a dollar store.

Sewing R

Plastic canvas is perfect for beginner sewers.  I use yarn needles and tie the thread at the eye.  This does not work with yarn (makes it too thick to pull through) but is perfect for embroidery thread.  Then we have less of an issue of the needle coming off the end.  I made three bundles of thread to start with... ROY     G       BIV.  Looked neat.  Then she'll be welcome to use any colors she wants when those are done.  This is an activity we keep out for awhile and work on it as interest lasts.

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!