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St. Patrick’s Day activities for preschool
It’s almost March, which can only mean one thing; it’s time to start thinking about St. Patrick’s Day! I’m not sure when this holiday became such a big thing, but I’m not complaining because the children love it, and I love the magic that it brings to the classroom. I recently updated many of My St. Patrick’s Day materials, so I wanted to take a quick moment and share them with you to help you with your own plans for the holiday! Leprechaun Counting: Use these cute juggling leprechauns to help students practice counting and number recognition. Each leprechaun has a number on his leg, the children can count out that…
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Friday Freebie – Art Activities
Yay for Friday! Thank goodness, I am so ready for the weekend! I have the best freebie for you today, This Art Lesson Plan book from Pink and Green Mama includes 20 different art activities for little ones. The ages range from preschool to second grade, so you may have to make some adaptations to make sure that the activities are completely appropriate for you preschoolers, but they look like tons of fun. Hopefully this will help you in the lesson planning departments and spark some creativity in the classroom!
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Great big list of things to paint on
If you’re looking for a way to spark your students’ interest in painting, consider giving them something a little unusual to paint on. This is a great way to learn about new materials; children can explore absorption, experiment with using different amounts of water, and see how different brushes work on different backgrounds. Painting on a specific kind of material can also encourage children to explore the texture and detail of the material because the paint will intensify these details. Here is a great big list of things that you can paint on: Aluminum foil Waxed paper Saran wrap Press and Seal wrap Bubble wrap Canvas Velvet Leather Flannel Denim…
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Tips and tricks for keeping things neat while painting
I honestly have no problem with a little bit of a mess, and I think it’s inevitable when you’re painting with preschoolers. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t use strategies to make cleaning up easier. Here are some great tricks for prepping your painting space so that clean up is a breeze. Store your paint in disposable containers with lids like baby food containers. If you need to clean up before the kids are finished you can just snap the lids on the paints, and then once they are done you can toss the containers. This is also a great way to make sure that you aren’t wasting paint. Cover tables…
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Products for painting activities
I’m going to share some fun painting ideas this week, but before we get to those I wanted to share a few of my favorite paint-related products. These are all my personal favorite paints, supplies, and clean up helpers! This post includes Amazon affiliate links. When it comes to watercolors, Crayola is hands down the best brand. The colors are bright and the packaging is easy for little ones to use independently. Crayola 8 Count Watercolors Are my favorite because half the fun of watercolors is mixing new colors, but they also have an 16 count set. I am personally not a fan of liquid watercolor simply because they are so…
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New Math Centers!
You know when you’re really excited about something and you just can’t wait to share?! That’s me right now! I bought this adorable coffee cup clipart months ago, but it was kind of just sitting there on my computer collecting dust because I couldn’t figure out what to do with it. Then it hit me – math centers of course. I am so in love with how these turned out and I just had to share them with you! There are three centers; colors, numbers, and shapes. The color set is simple color matching, but also includes the color words so that you can encourage vocabulary word recognition. It includes…
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Friday Freebie – Dental Hygiene
Happy Friday! I hope you had a wonderful week, and hopefully you’re looking forward to a nice, relaxing weekend. I’ve been talking about health and hygiene all week, and this dental hygiene chart from Mad Science Fox is the perfect family engagement piece for your hygiene unit. Send this home so that families can track their dental health practices together. Download this freebie and add it to your files!
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Children’s books about hygiene
There is literally a children’s book for everything, but it’s a bit difficult that find books that talk about hygiene and do it well. The point of reading a book about a specific topic is to encourage discussion and make the children think about the topic, many of the hygiene books are just a little too direct for my comfort, and they don’t lead the conversation in the direction that I want it to go. With that said, I thought I should share the books that I do like so that you don’t have to read the duds! All links are affiliates. The Girl Who Wouldn’t Brush Her Hair Sugar…
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Talking about hygiene
I am a huge fan of any opportunity to have conversations with my kiddos. These conversations help me learn so much – they give me a better understanding of what the children know, and which areas I need to explain better. They also give me one on one time with my kiddos, and a chance to learn a little about their lives. I created these little tags to help get my kiddos talking about hygiene habits, and to see what’s going on in their lives. I’m going to use them for a bulletin board, after I sit down with each child I’ll write their answers on the tag, then their…
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Fighting germs in preschool
Ugh! It’s that time of year again, you’re probably wiping every surface in the classroom with Clorox in an attempt to get rid of all of those germs. It feels like a losing battle, they’re everywhere! I certainly don’t have a miracle solution, but I do have something that can help turn the children into your teammates in this particular war. I noticed a couple of years ago that at this point in the year, all of those hand washing rules I stressed so much at the beginning of the school year start to get a little relaxed, and since this is exactly the time of year when I need…
