problem solving
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Making Leprechaun Traps
Designing and building leprechaun traps has become one of our favorite traditions. I think the planning and creating is just as much fun as the anticipation of seeing if they’ll actually catch anything! This is one of those projects that really evokes my favorite memories of the kinds of activities that I loved as a child – the opportunity to use any and all materials to create something that I can see in my mind. That’s definitely a major reason that this stays on my plans year after year. Here are some of the supplies that I make sure to have available when it’s time to build our leprechaun traps:…
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Week of the Young Child – Work Together Wednesday
Happy Week of the Young Child! I thought I’d celebrate by sharing some fun ideas to help you follow along with NAEYC’s themed days. For more info about the Week of the Young Child celebration you can visit NAEYC’s website, but I’m going to jump right into the fun! Work together Wednesday – I love it! What a great theme day! There are about a million things that you could do to celebrate work together Wednesday, but the activity that I thought of immediately encourages more than just working together. This activity takes some serious problem solving skills, along with a little bit of simple engineering. The best part is that…
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Making Leprechaun Traps
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Fort Building!
I mentioned earlier this week that the weather around here has been crummy – that’s kind of how spring goes in Ohio. It’s either still cold or raining – either way, we don’t get as much time outside as I would like. This makes everyone a little cranky, and some afternoons are just difficult. When those days happen I throw the plans out the window and we build forts. The children love, love, love this, and I know that they are still using problem solving and social skills, so it’s a great team building activity. Since these afternoons are somewhat spontaneous, there are a few things that I try to…
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Kids can build with anything!
My favorite thing about working with young children is that their imaginations never cease to amaze me. I love to introduce random materials and challenge them to be as creative as possible. This is one of those activities that has saved me a million times – when they fly through all of my planned lessons, special events have to be rescheduled, or, like on Friday afternoon, when nap time was cut in half by an accidental fire drill. There was no way that they were all going to go back to sleep, so I needed to find a way to fill an hour, and I needed to do it fast,…
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Fort-building 101
This week our dramatic play area has been turned into a fort-building paradise. The children were building forts with our tablecloths anyway, so we decided to specify an area for this. We included a large number of different sized pieces of fabric, some large blocks and tall sticks, and random pieces of furniture that they could cover. I love building forts, I remember doing this wen I was little, and I think that every child needs to have this opportunity. I also love to watch the children in my class build forts because I can see their gears turning as they use their problem solving skills to figure oh what…
