Blog for French Valley K-Prep Preschool, LLC: Ii is for Icy Places

This week we did a silly theme called: "Icy Places". It's silly, because it has been in the 100's and miserable. It's fun to think of icy places, to look at a map and use the acquired knowledge we have of icy places. Our books and activities add to that knowledge.

Here: I'm reading stories by the fire places that have to do with our theme.

The fire is on, but you can't see it. The next picture shows it.

I put a lot of ice cubes in the water table, during outside play time. Some of the children predicted that the ice would melt and that the water would get colder.

Elizabeth is eating the ice.

They also pretended to ice fish. These fishing poles are magnetic and they are using them to pick up magnetic numbers (fish).

For art, we made snowmen/women/pet/alien collages. Funny story behind this: one of those Kirby salesmen came to my door and said he'd clean my carpet in a room. I agreed and he was there forever! My daughter kept bothering his stuff, so I moved his filters up to a higher spot. When hubby said, "No", the guy quickly packed up and left. He left a huge pile of circle filters behind. I used them for our color wheel art project and then for this one - the snowman collage.

figuring out how to squeeze the glue at, where to put it, turn it over, and stick it. As adults, it's so easy to just take over when they aren't as coordinated as us, but it's important for them to figure it out on their own. They might learn that they used too much glue or too little if it won't stick. They might learn that they have to squeeze from top instead of the bottom of the bottle. My favorite image in my head is the scene from "Finding Nemo", where Crush explains to Marlin that Squirt needs to go solo for a little bit. When squirt accomplished a task, he was full of pride. That's what I strive for here.

Here is a picture of the collage material separated on different trays. They could choose: chennele stems, pistachio shells, poof balls, googly eyes, buttons, letter beads, flower beads, bendy straws, and yarn.