Thursday, October 16, 2014

A Hands On Approach to Learning...

We do a lot of things at preschool that promote learning, but are not necessarily take home projects.  Here is multi-sensory play at its best...

Sensory table with oatmeal and construction vehicles...


Here we are pounding ice to make snow!  During the month of October, we have been learning A LOT about the weather, and our four seasons!



Faux snow in the sensory table!
We learned about the water cycle and how clouds make rain.  We were introduced to words like...evaporation, humidity, precipitation, and absorption.  Here we are playing with water and different sponges to mimic the rain...

Shaving cream looks like a cloud!  What fun is was to finger-paint with shaving cream all over the tables...





Here we learned about water being measured in different ways.  We played with measuring cups, a rain gauge, teaspoons, a funnel, and eyedroppers...


I love this picture!  You can see just as I snapped the photo, N spilled the water over the funnel!  It was all part of the learning!  This is messy play!  The kids got very wet, but they learned an immeasurable amount of valuable lessons...
Here we made cloud play-dough with a concoction of cornstarch and hair conditioner!  It felt awesome and smelled even better!

Busy hands at work, and fine tuning our fine motor skills...


Here we taste tested three different colors of apples...
We described the taste of the apples with words like...sweet, tart, bland, mushy, crunchy, crispy, etc....

Wow!  We even learned apples float!
So we made apple boats...
We tested other toys to see if they floated or sank in the water...

We are sometimes a crowded group, but we take our turns pretty well...
This month we are also learning about Sweden!  We learned there is an ice hotel located in Sweden!  We looked at pictures of the hotel on the internet.  We made our own ice cubes in trays, and then tried to build a tower with them.  We quickly learned how slippery the ice was!  We sprinkled salt on the ice, and it helped the cubes stick together better!


  Here we made a salt and flour dough!  We pressed leaves into the dough and looked closely at the imprint it made.  We baked our creations in the oven so we could keep what we made as a sculpture!





Thursday, October 2, 2014

Apple Baking, and Apple Projects...

We have been learning, baking, and playing with apples A LOT recently!  Check out what we have been up to...

Here is our apple puppet craft...
 Our art project of the growth of an apple tree in sequential order...
Upstairs baking apple pie and applesauce...
 The bottom crust has been laid, the apples placed inside, and the sauce poured on top...
 The top layer of crust was placed on last and sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar...
 Apples cut up and put in a pan with a bit of water on the stove...
 After a short while we had pure applesauce without any added preservatives or sugar!
 We were excited to taste apple cider from the apple orchard, our homemade applesauce, and our homemade apple pie for snack time later!

 While we waited we conducted a mini-science experiment.  We left cut apples out on the counter for an hour to see how they change...


 We tasted the apples to see if they tasted differently from each other or not...

Yay!  Snack time! 
 Apple cider, applesauce, and apple pie!  Yum, yum, YUMMY!
 That is one good looking apple pie!!!!