Since we live in Florida, most children here haven't experienced snow unless they have traveled to colder places. We try to provide lots of "winter" experiences and one of the favorites is our indoor snowball fight.
We start by crumpling white tissue paper. (I tried using toilet paper the first year I did this and the mess was horrible!) This is great for building up the small muscles! The children often complain that their hands are getting tired when they do this, but I tell them that the more paper they crumple, the more fun they will have.
We bring the "snowballs" into the multipurpose room next to our classroom and then the fun begins!
When it is time to clean
up, I bring out white garbage bags and they fill them to make
snowballs. Then we create our "Florida Snowman"! Here are a few that
we have made through the years. The best part is that they don't melt!
Audrey Wood is one of my favorite authors of children's books and I think that Silly Sally is one of the best. It is a perfect story for retelling and to do an innovation.
Several years ago, I saw a cute class book on Pinterest from Kindergarten Nana and another one from the prekinders blog. I decided to create something similar for my prekindergarten students. I loved how it turned out so much that I now do it every year! I typed up "Silly _______ went to town, walking backwards upside down" on the computer (double column for easier handling), then I cut and pasted clip art of the town in the background.
I have my kiddos use liquid watercolors for this project because the colors are so vibrant, but regular watercolor paint would work.
During letter Yy week earlier in the month, I took photos of the children with their arms out like the letter Y. I cut these out, glued them on their artwork, mounted it on cardstock and laminated it. Then I put it together to make a book. It is well worth the effort! This class book is always popular and the kids fight over their chance to read it. At the end of the year, I give each child their page to take home.
Here is a link to the Silly Sally class book from Kindergarten Nana. I love how she changes the verb in the text for each child!
https://dbsenk.wordpress.com/2011/06/08/silly-sally/
Here is another version http://www.prekinders.com/class-books/
(By the way, that blog is amazing! Lots of great ideas!!)
I am a firm believer in the importance of Process Art activities for preschoolers. Process Art focuses on creativity and exploration rather than on the final product. Yes, we do occasionally do crafts where the children are provided a model to follow because I feel it is important for them to learn to follow directions. I also know that they will be expected to do these types of activities in most Kindergarten classrooms and I want to expose them to it. Plus, some crafts are just too cute! Primarily, though, the emphasis in my room is on art projects that provide opportunities for the children to create, explore and engage their minds. Even though the emphasis isn't on the end product, the final results are usually beautiful. They are definitely unique!
My preschool does follow a "Letter of the Week" curriculum and I often provide something for the children to paint with that coordinates with the letter. For Yy, we paint with yarn. This is messy and fun. I've learned through the years that it helps to attach a clothespin to the end of the piece of yarn to minimize mess, but some children actually enjoy the sensory experience of touching the yarn coated with the paint.
Yarn is something that many children haven't touched before. I show them how yarn looks on a skein and we put some in a sensory table for the children to cut up into little pieces and pull apart the strands. It always surprised me how much they enjoy doing this! Sometimes the simplest things are the most engaging! This also gives them a point of reference when we read books about mittens and other winter gear. Since we live in Florida, even wearing sweaters is rare!
Here is a great link with an article from naeyc about the importance of process art in the preschool classroom.
http://www.naeyc.org/tyc/article/process-art-experiences
Here is a link to my Process Art Board on Pinterest with many great ideas for open ended art activities
https://www.pinterest.com/cindibernasconi/process-art/
This is a quick and easy project that I did last year with my prekindergarten students. It was great for building fine motor skills! I die cut the numerals for "2016" and the children glued them on in order on a piece of construction paper. I had them lay the numbers out first and then flip them and glue them (this was actually a hard concept for some of them!) Once that was done, they were able to glue sparkle confetti around the edge (I use a box top to keep the mess to a minimum!)
We sang this song:
Happy New Year,
Happy, Happy, New Year.
Happy New Year
2016!
(to "Alouette")
They love shouting the last line!
We used this song as our "poem" of the week as well. Since our letter of the week was Yy, they circled the letter on their individual copies before adding it to their poetry notebooks.
