Pumpkin Craft
The other day ED wanted to sit down and do another sewing craft. Here’s the little jack-o-lantern she made. She did much of it on her own this time.
Category: Arts and Crafts
Preschool Routine, Tuesdays
ED’s Tuesday Routine: So you heard yesterday that I’m planning to use biome/habitat themes with ED this fall. This is what I have planned in a general way for Tuesdays: Arts and Crafts (based on the theme) Montessori Math Beads; Math Activities Science Sorts (Long post and link to my 30-pages of notes, etc.!) Arts and Crafts The girls painted boxes to make a diorama. Now all this needs is...
How to make the cutest snakes and lizards out of pony beads
The kids’ cousins went to camp this year and taught DD and LD how to make these pony-bead snakes and lizards. I thought they were so cute I thought I would share the general procedure here. You need thin ribbon and pony beads. First take very thin ribbon and cut a strip about two feet long. Place a knot in the middle of the ribbon and slide a bead onto...
Art – How to Draw… (and how to surprise your Mom!)
I have been doing lots and lots of planning and preparation for this next year. One thing I fell short on this past year was utilizing the amazingly wonderful art resources at Art Projects for Kids and Deep Space Sparkle. I went through Kathy Barbro’s website, Art Projects for Kids and printed out a lot of her lessons on how to draw…a lighthouse a bunnya cator another cathens and chicksa...
Arts and Crafts This Week
You can never go wrong with paper plates, paint and glitter, right?!! The kids chose these paper bag puppet designs from DLTK’s Paper Bag Puppet ideas page. They had fun making them and tossing them over the banister upstairs to watch them “fly” to see whose traveled farthest! LD chose to do the Phoenix because of the book series he’s reading called Beast Quest. He’s so into these books he...
Ancient Mayan Indian Unit: Wood Animalitos – Oaxacan (Mexican) Folk Art
We continued to read The Corn Grows Ripe (about a Mayan boy and his family) this week and talked about life Mexico. We read about these imaginative creatures called Alebrijes at this art lesson plan website. In Mexico these are carved from one piece. Since we had lots of woodscraps (I bought lots of wood craft kits of cars, bird houses etc. for 50cents back in December), this seemed like...
Ancient Mayan Indian Unit: Rugs
We looked at the brilliant colors of Mayan rugs visiting these sites: here, here, and at the Mayan Culture websites. We talked about the patterns they saw. Then the kids spent a lot of time while listening to our novel coloring their own Mayan rugs. They worked really quite hard over several days: They used oil pastels for this project.
Ancient Mayan Indian Unit: God’s Eye — Yarn Craft
The Huichol Indians of Mexico and Aymara Indians of Bolivia make “eye of God” yarn crafts. Originally they were placed on alters, but now they are often sold in markets. I thought this was a perfect craft for the kids to go along with our talks about the ancient Mayan Indians. I used to make these in Girl Scouts, but came across this website which has details on how to...
Making a Fairy
Today we used wool to make fairies. We were going to use a fairy kit, but somehow wound up with skeins of fairy wool instead, so we had to make due with a bead and some ingenuity! But the girls love the end product and that’s all that matters. Here we tied the arms in a knot. We also tied a bit of wool around the end of the arms...
Fall Fun (Indoor Activities-counting,letters, crafts, etc.)
We’ve been enjoying fall both inside and out! This post has actually gotten quite long, so I’ll post more of our outdoor adventures in a bit. Here are some of the fall-themed activities we’ve been up to inside. Here are some more activities I’ve had ready to pull out for ED when I’m working with the older kids. I just want to add that suddenly ED gets it! She’s easily...
Morning Collection (our version of “circle time”)
Quite a number of years ago, I taught history at a Quaker boarding school. At the beginning and end of the day, the students and staff gathered together for collection–10 minutes of silence together. At the end of that time, students or staff could share something with the community — music, a poem, etc. Now as you can imagine, 10 minutes of silence wouldn’t really hold for the kids, but...
Japan: Geography, Music and Culture Unit (PreK; Grade 2)
The theme of our music class these next two or three weeks is Japan. Each week we sang the continent song together. This week, we pulled out a new kind of map, a Montessori flag map. We learned where Japan was located and placed the flags we knew on the map. Then everybody piled outside to do a scavenger hunt for Japanese flags. (from Japanese Flag printables) We then looked...
Australia — Music and Culture
In our music class we are covering music from different places around the world. Easiest for me was starting with some music from Australia! I talked more about this in another post below. One of the outside activities everyone did this past week was to make their own dot painting. The picture on the left is a dot painting that we bought in central Australia about 10 years ago. It...
Bird’s Egg Craft
This activity would probably be perfect around Easter! This summer as I wandered around Hobby Lobby I saw all the cute colored brads. Not just the plain round ones as were available in our town last year, but flowers, hearts and things like that. I picked up a couple boxes of brads, a push-pin looking thing I also saw at H-L or Michaels and a bunch of styrofoam eggs. All...
