October 29, 2010

E is for Elephant: 3 easy Elephant crafts for theme teaching

Easy Kindergarten Crafts: Newspaper Elephants

This fun elephant craft allows kids to work on fine motor skills as they tear and glue.

Materials Needed:

Heavy paper or thin cardboard
Newspapers
Cups of glue and water mixture
Old paint brushes or Q-tips
Wiggly eyes, buttons, poms poms or markers to add eyes

Trace an elephant shape onto scrap heavy paper or thin cardboard. Allow kids to tear newspaper into small squares and strips. Model that the newspaper pieces should be wet with the glue mixture and added to the shape one at a time until the entire surface is covered. Add on eyes. If possible offer choices for eyes like wiggly eyes, buttons, poms poms or markers so that kids can individualized their art projects. This is a great project to build up readiness for making a paper mache sculpture. Once the elephant crafts are dry and on display, point out that even though the newspaper is black and white, that from a distance the elephants appear gray. Why?

Easy Kindergarten Crafts: Color Mixing Elephant Hide

This is really a simple science experiment as well.

Materials Needed:
Black paint
White paint
(Possibly other colors)
Brushes
Paper

Allow kids to guess which two colors are needed to make up the color gray. They’ll probably get it after viewing the elephant crafts but be sure to let them test all theories.

Let kids paint one side of a paper black and the other side white. Then they can fold the paper in half and have fun “squishing” it. When they open it back up, walah, they should have a mostly gray page.

Now’s the fun part. Explain that elephants have wrinkly skin and allow kids to ball up and their painted paper in the tightest ball they can make. When the unfold it, they’ll discover they’ve created their very own wrinkled elephant hide.

Easy Kindergarten Crafts: Paper Plate Puppets with Moveable Trunks

Young kids love movement, discovering cause and effect, being in control and repetitive action. That why a paper plate elephant puppet with a moveable trunk is a always a groovy craft idea for kindergarteners and preschoolers. Continue Reading …

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October 27, 2010

E is for Elephant Lesson Plans: Reading your way through the alphabet.

Elephants are just jumbo fun for preschool and kindergarten lesson plans. These ideas can be used for an animals theme or jungle animal thematic lesson plans as well as if you are working your way through the alphabet and you’ve landed on E.

Books for “E” is for Elephant Preschool Lesson Plans and Kindergarten Lesson Plans:

Elephant Baths, a Sierra Club Book, is a non-fiction book by Derek Hall that has two or three sentences per page that is perfect for preschoolers story time or for beginning readers to read all by themselves.

Ella the Elegant Elephant by Carmela & Steven D’amico is a real kid favorite. Ella is the new kid on the block and her hat brings on challenges and even bullies but in the end it saves the day.

Follow elephant Odon, his mother, Silver Tusks and his cousins on a long walk through the Savannah to learn more about these amazing creatures. Elephant Walk is written by Jean Craighead George and illustrated by Anna Vojtech. This is a Disney’s Animal Kingdom book.

Young listeners and readers enjoy the Maisy series of books that includes Maisy Goes to the Museum, Maisy Goes Camping and many more. Maisy, a mouse, has a friend named Eddie and you guessed it, Eddie is an elephant. Make it a game at circle time for preschoolers to clap whenever you read Eddie’s name.

“I’ve got an elephant who sleeps in my bed. In Superman pajamas that are yellow, blue and red. Though other kids have teddy bears to cuddle up at tight. I’ve got a elephant to hug me every night,” begins the fun elephant adventure in I’ve Got an Elephant by Anne Ginkel and illustrated by Janie Bynum. This one is a counting book too.

The Goose Who Went Off in a Huff by Paul Brett Johnson couldn’t possible be about an elephant could it? It’s really about a goose that wants desperately to be a Mama but hasn’t been able to adopt any other farm animals. Who new chicks couldn’t swim? Surprise, surprise the circus is leaving town on the train but what is that there in the bush crying? This is a cute and sweet story that young children really enjoy.

Of course we can’t forget our favorite elephant Horton in Horton Hears a Who and Horton Hatches an Egg.

Find free printable elephant coloring pages here to continue the fun here.

Posted by · 5 Comments · Filed Under: Elementary, Homeschooling, Lesson Plans, Letters A through I, Preschool-Kindergarten ·
October 26, 2010

Halloween/Harvest Preschool Arts and Crafts Lesson Plans: Pumpkins, Bats & Owls

Theme Bats

Bats in the Belfry: Cut black or brown construction paper in half. Fold into accordion to create wings. On a separate sheet of matching paper cut circle for head and peanut shape for body. Use white chalk or paint to create the eyes. Glue head to body, glue body to wings. Add string and hang from ceiling.

Theme Owls

CD Owls: Use an old CD for the owl’s round body. Glue a brown triangle with the point facing down into the center top of the CD. Add circles for eyes, a yellow triangle for a beak, rectangles for legs and stars for feet. I used star shaped post it notes. They are the perfect size.

Theme Pumpkins

Pumpkin Puzzle: Print out a graphic of a pumpkin on card stock paper or construction paper. White works best. Then cut the pumpkin into four pieces with jagged edges, the Crayola cutters are great for this. Give children a sheet of paper to glue the puzzle pieces down onto as they create their own pumpkin puzzle.

Variation: Print a coloring sheet of a pumpkin or other Halloween figure. Encourage the children to color the sheet, then cut, then puzzle. Try http://www.free-coloring-pages.com/halloween.html

Pumpkin Patch: All you need for this are paper plates, orange paint and some scraps of paper and other scrap pieces of yard, glitter or anything else in your arts and crafts treasure chest. You can also just start with orange paper plates if you are short on time.

To create: Paint paper plates orange and dry (or use orange paper plates). Give children scraps of paper, googly eyes, yard, glitter, die cut of stems and leaves. Encourage them to create their own pumpkin faces and then place them on your bulletin board or send home to mom and dad.

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October 25, 2010

Tips for finding a balance between activities and down time for your child

Are our efforts to provide our children with the opportunities that we didn’t or couldn’t have creating a society of children that demand constant entertainment? What can we do about this “Where are we going today?” syndrome?

No matter where you live, you want to give your child as many educational and entertaining opportunities as possible.  How often has a parent caught his or her self saying, “I want them to have everything that I didn’t have”? And in my case I want them to have the opportunity to do so many of the things I wished I could have done with my older children, but was unable to do to circumstances beyond my control. But is that really what’s best for our children?

Find out our families tips for finding a balance at How to Balance Down Time and Activities for Your Child

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October 25, 2010

Fall crafts: Make a Scented Leaf Wreath

The colors, shapes and feel of fall leaves are just irresistible. Enjoy a fall leaf scavenger hunt and turn the colorful fall leaves into a fun fall decoration. You can use a paper plate with the middle cut out to create a frame. Simply dry leaves and glue on in an overlapping fashion.

To give your wreaths a pleasant smell, let kids make a few glue smears and let them sprinkle their favorite aromatic spices like cinnamon or nutmeg to add a homey scent.

After you’ve decorated your own home, consider making extras for family and especially for nursing home residents or shut in neighbors that may not be able to enjoy a fall walk in the woods.

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October 24, 2010

Make Creepy (or cute) Spiders with Play Dough & Straws

“Scream high, scream low, we all scream for Play Dough!”

Play Dough is a fun part of early childhood and can easily be used to teach concepts like colors, shapes and counting and can be incorporated into just about any teaching theme.

Spiders are a fun Halloween theme. Use these ideas to create creepy or maybe even really cute spiders with play dough and straws.

Play Dough Tips:

Always serve up play dough on a tray to provide a physical boundary for where the play dough should stay.

Don’t put out all colors at once. Start with just two and add in new colors of play dough as kid’s creations get more complicated. Play dough time is a perfect time to reinforce color recognition.

Incorporating Straws:

Add whole straws as well as cut sections in a variety of lengths. Kids will no doubt come up with their own imaginative creations with these open-ended materials but here’s an example to get your family or class started.

The Spider

A ball body made out of play dough will need eight legs and provides a motivating counting experience for youngsters.

Recite and act out the nursery rhyme “”Little Miss Muffet” with the finished products. The Miss Spider series of books by David Kirk are also a great companion.

Posted by · 3 Comments · Filed Under: Articles, Elementary, Holidays, Preschool-Kindergarten ·
October 24, 2010

Creative Book Report Ideas

It’s back to school time and soon you may hear those two little words that can cause quite a bit of anxiety for students- book report.  This experienced teacher shares Creative Book Report Ideas for Beginners to help you teach them to break down the book AND the process into manageable parts.  This Creative Book Report Idea has a train theme so “all aboard!” to the Story Express.

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October 23, 2010

Teaching Kids to Tell Time

Young children aren’t born with a sense of time. If they were, I am quite sure that parents would quickly distort it with the many times we say “just a minute” when actually we need more than one minute.

Telling time is an important but often challenging skill. Why? Continue Reading …
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October 23, 2010

Teen Tested Ghoulishly Good Halloween Party Games & Movies

My tweenage daughter and her friends decided that they were too “old” to go out trick or treating and they wanted to have a Halloween party at our house. This being the very first party she threw after moving to a new city and making new friends it was very important that the party had 3 key ingredients: fun activities, scary movies, and deliciously gross food.

Halloween Party Games

Two of their favorite Halloween party activities were a Silly String Fight with green silly string. They also had a Ghoulish Face Paint Contest. For your contest have the guest divide into teams of two. Each team takes turns using Halloween make up to create the most ghoulish, scary or funny face that they could come up with. Votes are taken on paper, tossed into a hat, Survivor style and counted.

Another big hit was the Scared of the Dark Feelers. Continue Reading …

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October 23, 2010

Good Night Sleep Tight: 10 Short Stories for Children’s Bedtime

Need to get your little one settled down for the night? Look in a book to solve your problem. These 10 classic bedtime stories never fail to please both parents and children and help get your little ones off to bed.

Snuggling up with children to get them off to bed and reading a book is often one of the favorite memories that parents and children have. I don’t know a child that doesn’t desire just those few moments of quiet time to snuggle and read a good book with their parent right before going to bed. What are the ten Classic Short Stories for Bedtime? Continue Reading …

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