sensory
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Sensory Alphabet Letters
Last year my class made sensory letters that smelled like chocolate. The kids thought they were fun to make and use for other projects. They were really easy to do and I’m going to tell you how so you can try it too! I cut cardboard rectangles and wrote a letter on each piece of cardboard. Then my kiddos traced the letters with glue (we used the glue bottles, but you could use a cup of glue and a q-tip). I took cocoa powder and mixed in it with cornstarch because cocoa powder…
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Easy Alphabet Match Activity
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Autumn Play Dough Recipe (Version 2)
On Tuesday I shared my recipe for Apple Pie Play Dough. Today I’ve got one for Pumpkin Pie Play Dough – it’s very, very, very similar. This recipe is so easy, just mix the following ingredients in a large saucepan: 2 cups of flour 2 cups of water 1/2 cup of salt 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil 1 tablespoon cream of tarter 1 tablespoon pumpkin pie spice food coloring (I used Wilton gel food coloring in copper, but you can use red and yellow liquid food coloring too) stir over medium heat until the dough forms a uniform ball (it should look dry). Place the play dough on the counter…
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Autumn Scented Play Dough (Version 1)
I love to make home-made play dough. I love the colors of store bought play dough, but 1 can just isn’t enough for the entire class, and it drives me nuts when the colors get mixed (I may be a bit OCD), my recipe makes a big batch, so everyone can use it at the same time. In the fall I always make scented play dough because I love fall scents. The recipe that I want to share with you today is for Apple Pie Play Dough (check back on Thursday for my Pumpkin Pie Play Dough Recipe!). I love this recipe because it doesn’t use a ton of salt…
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Friday Freebie
It’s Friday, which means it’s time for a freebie! This one is a great idea from Courtney Keimer. It’s a sensory alphabet book, each page has an upper and lowercase letter outline, along with a sensory material that begins with that particular letter. Students use glue and the suggested material to fill in each letter outline. I love this because it gives children a concrete example for each letter sound. Instead of drawing a picture, writing a word, or gluing in a magazine clipping, children actually get to handle the object that is associated with the letter sound, giving them a tangible example. I think that this is an awesome…
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Easy Alphabet Match Activity
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The ultimate list of tools for the sensory bin
Yesterday I shared my huge list of sensory bin ideas (see the list here). Today I’m going to give you a list of all of the awesome tools that I like to add to the sensory bin alongside these materials. Kids love to explore with their hands, but introducing additional tools can add to the learning and help children make meaningful connections, especially when they use the same tools with different materials. This helps children to learn basic scientific concepts like texture, states and properties of matter, making and testing hypotheses, and mass and weight. Again, it is important to remember that sensory play should be supervised to ensure that…
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Ultimate list of sensory materials
I have a love/hate relationship with the sensory table. I fully appreciate the awesome educational opportunities that sensory play encourages, and I love that children will spend FOREVER exploring these materials. On the other hand, there’s the mess. It doesn’t matter how deep the bucket is, somehow, whatever is on the table will end up on the floor. In the end, the mess is always worth it. Exploration and discovery always win. I like to switch out the materials in the sensory table often Sometimes I change the actual sensory materials, and sometimes a remove the tools and put in a different kind of tool to see how the children…
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Beach play – without the beach
We’ve been doing water play once a week, with different activities each week (ice, car wash, squirt toys, etc.), this week it was wet sand. I knew that all of the boys would love the opportunity to make a giant mess, but to be honest I was shocked by how much all of my students loved this experience. It took me a while to realize that they loved playing in the wet sand because it was just like being at the beach, and in these last few weeks of summer, I’d be happy to have a beach day too! In addition to the sand table that we always have available,…
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Friday Freebie – Cloud Hunt
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The best art activity ever – Primary color mixing
This activity is one of my all time favorites, it is completely open-ended, and children love it as much as I do. I start by covering an entire table in white paper. This is important because it really encourages collaboration between the children, and they can see the colors that they have created on the white background. Then I set out cups of paint – red, blue, yellow, and white (you could also use black, but then everything seems to turn black). I tell the children at the beginning that they can mix the colors all they want. They love this! Some times when I do this activity the children…
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Sweet Letter practice
Last year my class created our own sandpaper letters and my students were so proud of their alphabet! I wanted to do something similar with this group, so I used some Valentine’s day inspiration to make this alphabet a little sweet. The group I have now is working on lowercase letter recognition, so I wrote all of the lowercase letters on pieces of cardboard. When I presented the activity I showed the children how to use the glue to “trace” the letters. Then I gave them sugar shakers that held a mixture of cocoa powder and baking soda (because cocoa powder is expensive!) and they shook the mixture over the…
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Easy Alphabet Match Activity
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A new alphabet activity
I’m not sure if you have ever used these, but I am in love with alphabet pasta! It is cheap, and super versatile. With our toddlers we would use it to explore textures, introducing it raw the first day so that they could feel the rough, bumpy, tiny little letters, and then cooking it for the second day to see how they reacted to the slimy, and sometimes sticky texture – it was mesmerizing. Now that we have older children we have spent a lot of time focusing on letter recognition, and this was an obvious choice for a number of different activities. We did a letter hunt (can you…
