Here is an activity we did during healthy foods week. It was a simple, last-minute idea that turned out to be a huge success!
I was not sure what to put in the water table, and finally decided to let the kids make pretend soup!
Our set-up looked like this:
I put out whisks, ladles, spoons, measuring cups, pitchers, salt and pepper shakers and large pots. I filled the pitchers with water. I also gave them some pasta noodles, beans, oregano, and corn starch (for coloring).
Then, I let them go at it! The kids loved making soup! I think they especially like using real utensils and ingredients.
At first I thought I may have put out too many utensils, but I turned out to be wrong! We had about nine kids around the table for most of playtime! I saw a lot of teamwork, social interaction, and conflict resolution go on around the water table that day. Not to mention the kids had a blast! Just goes to show, sometimes the last-minute ideas are the best ones of all!
Have you had any last-minute successes in the classroom? I’d love to hear about them!
We love to do “hunt around the room” activities with the kids. It’s a great way to get the children excited about writing, reading and learning. Whenever we do a hunt like this as a free choice activity, a majority of the students usually choose to do it, often multiple times! In fact, when we did this turkey word hunt, we ran out of papers (even though we printed one for each student) and had to run and print off some more.
Turkey with Sight Word.
For this particular activity, we used the simple sight words the children have been learning from our word wall. We chose to use the sight words because the children are just starting to become familiar with them and are getting excited about them! Of course, you could use anything you would like with a hunt- letters, shapes, whatever your children are learning about.
The way we did this hunt was we hid numbered turkeys with the sight words in different places around the room (this cute turkey-with-a-pencil clip art thanks to DJ Inkers) . Then we had papers numbered 1-10 attached to clipboards (we love clipboards) at the writing table. All the children had to do was grab a clipboard and a marker, find the sight words and write them on the paper!
This is a great way to encourage the students to write, especially the boys who often don’t like to sit down at the table to do a writing activity. It sparks the children’s sense of adventure as they love searching around the room. We also often see teamwork in action as friends help each other find the words!
As a further encouragement, I offered the students a sticker if they found and wrote words, and another if they could read some of them to me! This encouraged not only copying of the words, but recognition of them as well.
One boy's completed paper. When he was done, he immediately did another one!
Here’s the post I promised you (and one I’ve been very excited about writing!): Dancing Oobleck!
Right about now you may be asking yourself “What is oobleck?” Oobleck is a Non-Newtonian Fluid. Which basically means it is a substance that can be both a solid and a liquid at the same time.
In preschool terms it is that cool stuff you can make with cornstarch and water that you can form into a ball when you press on it, but drips through you fingers when you let go.
How To Make Oobleck:
The day before we did this experiment, we had made dough in the water table using flour and water, which made for great predictions when I pulled out another white powder (cornstarch) and asked the children to guess what would happen when I mixed it with water.
After the children made their predictions, I went ahead and mixed the solution. My method is usually to mix until it is the right consistency, but if you prefer to measure, it is about one part water to two parts cornstarch. Once I had it mixed up, the children realized it did not make dough. In the bowl, it displayed liquid qualities.
The words solid and liquid have become part of the children’s vocabulary from exposure to these words through other science activities. So, I asked the children if I had made a solid or a liquid. They said liquid. Then I asked them what they thought would happen if I slapped the oobleck with my hand. Expecting it to act like a liquid, they guessed it would splash all over them, and braced themselves as I went to hit it!
With pressure, it is a solid.
When there is no pressure, it is a liquid.
But my hand hit the oobleck as if it were a rock. We then had a discussion on how this acts as both a solid and a liquid. When pressure is applied, it acts as a solid, but when the pressure is released, it acts as a liquid. We also let a toy sink into the bowl of oobleck and saw how it acts like quicksand. The toy got stuck and was very hard to pull out!
Then we moved on to the best part: making the oobleck dance!
How To Make Oobleck Dance:
Oobleck “comes to life” making little mounds and worm-like forms that move up and wiggle around when it is set on a speaker cone with a tone of a certain frequency. I had seen this on YouTube before and had been wanting to make it happen for a good, long time. So I was very excited when I finally decided to try it with the preschoolers. It took a lot of prep time and figuring out before I could do it with the kids. I had so much fun being the scientist at home, tweaking and experimenting until I figured out how to make it work!
I happened to have an old stereo lying around, which worked perfect for this experiment. I popped the plastic cover off the front of the speaker to reveal the speaker cone on the inside. On this speaker, the cover would pop right back on, so it would be possible to do this experiment without ruining the stereo. It can, however, be quite messy, so I would recommend using a stereo you can devote only to oobleck dancing if you can. The experiment can also be done using a subwoofer, but we had better luck with the speaker.
The hardest part was figuring out what frequency I needed to make the oobleck dance and how to get the tone from my computer to play through the speaker (I even tried rigging a set of headphone speakers to connect the speaker directly to my laptop. It didn’t work.) After a bit of researching, I found out the oobleck moves the best with lower frequencies, around 20 hertz or so. I also found a tone I could download, burn to a disk, and play through the stereo.
I later found out the tone I burned to a disk was actually a wave; it moved up and down in frequency. As you can see in the video, the oobleck dances better at certain points in the sound than it does in others. I think the oobleck will dance better with a steady, static tone at the right frequency. That is what I will do next time I do this with the children. You can find free tone downloads here.
I set the speaker on its side and covered the speaker cone with plastic wrap. Then we were set to go! I told the students one of the best things about oobleck is that it loves to dance; but it has a funny taste in music! I poured some of the oobleck onto the plastic-wrap-covered speaker cone, turned on the tone, turned the volume up, and watched the oobleck take on a life of its own! This gave us a great opportunity to talk about sound waves and vibrations.
We noticed the oobleck moved best when the plastic wrap was tight, so I held it extra tight with my hands. It was so much fun listening to the kid’s reactions as the oobleck formed little finger-like shapes and moved around on its own! We also added some liquid watercolor to the oobleck and watched as the dancing oobleck mixed the colors together. Unfortunately, I did not get a picture of this.
Squeezing oobleck to make it solid.
After the lesson, I put the oobleck in the water table to let the kids play with and explore. I also put a few small toys in with it, so they could see how easily toys can get stuck inside. Many of the children really enjoyed getting their hands in the messy oobleck (while some preferred to use spoons to play with it), and I heard a lot of great science vocabulary coming out of their mouths as they played!
Letting oobleck drip through fingers as a liquid.
A few kids even asked for a re-play of the dancing oobleck during playtime. That is when we shot the video. By this point, the oobleck had dried out a bit, so the reaction here is not as good, but still really neat!
I was going to write about “Dancing Oobleck” today, but alas, time and illness are not permitting me to write such an in-depth blog entry right now. I guess this will just give you something to look forward to next week!
Instead, I will tell you about a little thing we tried at the workbench. I got the idea from another blog here at WordPress, The Giggle Patch. We simply gave the children a few bars of soap, some screwdrivers and some screws at the workbench. The children enjoyed getting to use real tools, and the soap is something nice and soft that they can easily screw the screws into.
This was a good activity for fine motor development and will help transition into more complex workbench activities later on in the school year. Also, it smells good. 🙂
This whole melting-crayons thing is all over the internet right now. On Facebook, on Pinterest, I have seen it just about everywhere. I have also seen all different variations on this project: adults melting crayons on huge canvases as art to schools in Phoenix leaving the crayon projects outside in the hot sun to melt.
At any rate, it just seemed to cool not to try. I, of course, took my own variation on it. First of all, I wanted to be sure each child had the opportunity to experience this science-art hands-on. Which meant they would not just watch the crayons melt, but they would make it happen. Second, I wanted the children to choose their crayons to put more free-choice into the project. Third, while I wanted each child to be able to make their own creation and be able to take it home, it was not exactly in my budget to run out and buy each child their own brand-new box of Crayola crayons and a canvas (Between two classes, that would be about 30 students and since I like to make art myself at home, I know canvases can get expensive). However, we did have a large bag of used crayons on hand at the preschool, and there is always plenty of construction paper.
This activity worked really well for the week the children were learning about the letter C. We talked a lot about crayons and colors. Also, since we are a Catholic Christian School, we did a lesson that day about something else that is made of wax and begins with C – candles. They learned about and saw first hand what candles are used for in church. But I digress. Back to the crayons.
We’ve been talking a lot about liquids and solids with the children, and we’ve been exploring these properties in different ways. This time, I pulled out a crayon and we talked about it. Is it a liquid or a solid? What is the crayon made out of? What happens to wax when it gets hot? After discussing, I pulled out a hair dryer and we tested the kid’s theory of what would happen when I heated up the crayon. Sure enough, the wax started to drip.
We told the children we would be doing art and science at the same time. I absolutely love when art and science meet. Those are my favorite kind of activities (and often the children’s favorite, too). At free play time, we set up two hair dryers, one for each side of our easel (we discovered very quickly that we needed to plug them into different outlets if we wanted the both to be running at the same time!). That way two children could work at once. We let the kids choose about four or five crayons and tape them to the top of the paper. We did not mess around with hot glue or anything like that. As long as the crayons still had paper on them, the tape worked just fine. We put the crayons at the top to get the full effect of the dripping. Next time, though, I think I might let the children tape the crayons any way they want to and explore what happens!
It took a good bit a patience for the children to wait for the crayons to get hot enough to melt, but once they did, the kids got so excited! “Wow, look, there goes red crayon!” “Now blue is dripping!” And because anything of this nature becomes a race to children: “I think green is going to win”
The students were really good scientists for this project, making all kinds of observations about what was happening with the crayons. They noticed one hairdryer made the crayon wax drip down the paper, while the other splattered the wax more (it had a stronger blower). Some used both thick and thin crayons and noticed they melted at different speeds. They noticed different colors melted faster than others. They even noticed certain crayons (the cheap ones) although colored, melted clear.
I found it to be a very fun, educational and successful project. To go along with this project, in addition to the candles in church lesson, we read “The Crayon Box That Talked” by Shane Derolf and talked friendship and teamwork. The children also had a lot of fun color mixing with paint at the art table.
Have any of you tried this crayon project with your children? How did it work out in your classroom (or home)? Post your comments and let me know your tips and suggestions!
Here are some simple but fun things we have been doing in the classroom for Halloween. Some of these activities are so simple, you could implement them in the next few days. For others, however, it might be too late for them this year. But please feel free to tuck these ideas away for next year!
Dramatic Play
The week before Halloween, we like to prepare the children for the holiday with some role-playing opportunities. For some of the youngest students, this is their first real experience with Halloween (or at least the first they can remember). These are some of the things we do to help the kids become comfortable with the customs of Halloween (as well as just have a good time)!
In addition to our regular dress-up clothes, we provide a variety of Halloween costumes the children can try on. Tip: Pick them up on sale after Halloween or at garage sales over the summer!
We also provide some trick-or-treat bags and some pretend candy (laminated candy wrappers). When the children role-play it helps them get the hang of the process (ie. say "trick or treat," say "thank you," etc) so it's not so foreign to them when they do it for real. Plus, the kids really enjoyed doing this!
Workbench
Many of the students (especially the boys) really benefit from having fresh and interesting things to do at the workbench. This is what we did at the workbench to celebrate Fall.
Toy hammers and plastic nails (or golf tees) make for a great seasonal activity at the workbench!
Water Table
Our water table is seldom ever filled with only water. Here are some of the things we did for Halloween.
This is one of my all-time favorite activities! We call this "Mr. Pumpkin Head"! Just poke three holes down the middle of a pie pumpkin (one each for eyes, nose, mouth) and two on each side for ears and arms (although you can see here, we only did arms). For the tiny gourd pumpkins, you just need two down the middle. Then add Mr. Potato Head pieces (or mini Potato Head pieces for the small gourds) and let the children create! So much fun!
Our 3 year-olds love to snip, and really benefit from the practice. So, we filled the table with orange and black scrap paper.
Then the children cut or tore the paper.
Writing Table
The writing table is at the center of our classroom, and for good reason! It is one of the most important areas of our room. We like to fill it with interesting free-choice activities that will get the children excited about writing! These are a few things we have done for the Halloween season. For the idea below, we give our thanks to Dr.Jean!
We made these books out of left-over (un-used) napkins and scrap paper. Add some seasonal writing utensils and the kids just can't help wanting to come over and draw pictures or write words in them! We provided meaningful Halloween-themed word cards for those children who enjoy copying words.
Boys dressed as superheros, writing in pumpkin books! Awesome.
One girl's inventive spelling and illustrations in her napkin book! Love it!
At the writing table, we put out all kinds of pumpkin and leaf shapes and writing/coloring utensils for the children to explore. Anything that gets the younger kids to make marks on a paper and improve their fine motor skills is a good thing!
Today we tried a really fun experiment with glue. It is “G Week” in our classroom, so this fit right in rather nicely. Plus, with Halloween coming up, I thought it would be fun to play with goo (it was)! Of course, this activity could be done any time of the year.
We made the “Glue-Goo” solution (I’ll explain how below), which is really fun to play with by itself. Then, for even more excitement, we placed it inside a colander hung from the ceiling and watched what happened.
I first heard about this great idea from the “Ooey Gooey Lady” (yes, she is as fun as she sounds!). Then I saw really great pictures of the fun in action at a blog called Play-Based Classroom. It looked like so much fun, I just had to try it out in my classroom!
I changed the experiment a little by changing the mixture. The ladies mentioned above used something called “Flubber”- a mixture that includes glue and borax. Instead of flubber, we made a very similar solution using glue and liquid laundry starch. This is commonly called home-made silly putty. We, of course, in honor of “G Week” called it Glue-Goo. I would like to try it again another day with the “Flubber” recipe.
We started by mixing the solution with the children. I like doing this part with the kids so they can see and experience the transformation. I picked up the gallon of glue and started pouring some into the water table and watched as the kids’ faces’ looked a bit shocked and excited at this. Then I took out the liquid starch and started pouring some of that in, fielding questions as to what it is and what it is used for. At this point you might be wondering if I measured or how much of each component I used. To answer, no I did not measure, I’m more of an “add a little of this and little more of that till it’s just right” kind of girl. That being said, it’s about 2 parts glue to 1 part starch. We also added some paint right out of the bottle.
It will start out really sticky, which some kids really enjoyed (while others really didn’t)! One girl asked me to not put any more starch in, so it could stay sticky. Another girl just said “ew!” and asked me how she could get it off her hands. When the substance has become well mixed, it will be somewhat smooth and slimy, and only a little sticky (like silly putty).
Catching the drips!
Once we had it all mixed up, I put some of it in the colander and left some of it in the water table for the kids to play with.
It took a bit of time, but it slowly started to drip teardrop-shaped balls and as those tear drop fell down, they pulled long spider-webby, hair-like strings down with them. This gave us the opportunity to talk about another G word: gravity!
You can see here that we have two different batches, the bright orange and the lighter orange. The brighter orange was thicker and did not string out from the colander.
We left this up all day, even through snack time so we could watch the effects. The children were so interested in watching the strings coming down that they didn’t even touch it very much after play time was over.
Look at those strings!
All and all, a fun day with sensory experiences, chemistry, physics and phonics!
You already know how much kids love bubbles (and let’s face it, you probably love them, too). What could make bubbles even more fun? These great experiments and activities we did brought bubbles to the next level and intrigued students, parents, and teachers alike!
We did these activities the week the students were learning about the letter B. It made a real nice tie-in between the letter sound and all the fun things we were doing in the classroom. We started by reading the book “Bubble Bubble” by Mercer Mayer. The little boy in the book makes magic bubbles in the shapes of all kinds of animals. Then we asked the children if they thought we could make magic bubbles and told them we had some experiments to find out.
Experiment 1: Shaped Bubbles?
The first experiment was simple. We had made some bubble wands out of pipe cleaners in different shapes: square and triangle are some simple ones to make. I asked the children to make a prediction (yes, I used this word. I believe the more we use vocabulary with children, the more they will understand it and use it themselves). They guessed what would happen if I made a bubble using a square-shaped bubble wand. I got all kinds of responses. In fact, after reading the story, one child thought maybe a dragon-shaped bubble would come out!
Unfortunately, we cannot make a dragon bubble.
Of course, after trying it out, we found that no matter what shape our wand, the bubbles will always come out round. This is because of surface tension; the wall of the bubble will automatically make the shape with the least surface area it can. I told the kids the air inside the bubble pushes out evenly on all sides, which makes the bubble a circle (or technically a sphere, but we won’t get into that).
Experiment 2: Popping Bubbles (and Putting Things Inside Bubbles)
The next experiment got a little more fun. Now I asked the children what makes a bubble pop? They decided that things that are sharp are what will pop bubbles. We tested this with a pencil. Sure enough, the pencil popped the bubble. But wait, what if we try something that is not sharp? Next, we tried a toy that had smooth edges. It popped the bubble, too. We decided that it must not be sharpness that pops a bubble. I told the kids that bubbles most often pop not because they touch something sharp, but because they touch something dry. Bubbles are wet and they need to stay wet, but when they touch something dry, that dry thing absorbs (we’ve been using this word with the children a lot at school and many of them understand what it means now) a bit of the bubble’s water and makes a hole in the bubble.
So then the fun began; I showed the kids what would happen if I tried to pop the bubble with the same pencil I used before, but this time I dipped it in bubble solution and got it nice and wet first. The pencil went right through the bubble! We tried this with the toy, too, and then our fingers! We had bubble solution in our sand and water table, and let the kids try this themselves during playtime. They had so much fun! One girl was so excited to show me the bean she put inside her bubble!
Experiment 3: Bouncing Bubbles and “Boo” Bubbles
Okay, this one was really more of a science activity than an “experiment,” but it was really fun for everybody! We owe our thanks here to SteveSpanglerScience.com for showing us these really neat things we can do with bubbles. To be honest, we have really become a bunch of Steve Spangler groupies around here.
*Please remember to use caution when doing this activity!*
We made our own contraption with a pickle jar and some tubing (actually my boss’ husband made it). We gave each of the children a sock, which worked the same as the glove in the video. We blew these little smoke-filled bubbles all over and let the kids catch them and bounce them in their hands! An interesting fact: since the CO2 is so heavy, these bubbles go down instead of floating up like most bubbles do!
Look at the bubbles bouncing!
A few things to remember:
1. Never touch dry ice!
2. Do not fill the water past the hose or seal off the jar in a way in which no air can come out.
When we were doing the experiment, something somehow got clogged and we felt the pressure building up in the jar! We had to take the lid off and let the air out so there wouldn’t be an explosion!
Since hands-on, self-guided exploration is so important to young children, we made sure there were opportunities for bubble exploration in (and outside of) the classroom, including the art table and easel, the sand and water table, and outside on the playground.
Bubbles is one of my favorite things to do with the kids (especially with the dry ice bubbles). In addition to the kids’ own excitement about the activities, they fed off my enthusiasm. Children can always tell these kind of things. The more you are interested in something, the more likely it is that the kids will be interested in it, too. This was one of the great examples of how fun and learning can (and should) go hand-in-hand.
Then, I let them go at it! The kids loved making soup! I think they especially like using real utensils and ingredients.
put out too many utensils, but I turned out to be wrong! We had about nine kids around the table for most of playtime! I saw a lot of teamwork, social interaction, and conflict resolution go on around the water table that day. Not to mention the kids had a blast! Just goes to show, sometimes the last-minute ideas are the best ones of all!
Preschool PlayTime 