Invitations to Play at the Light Table.

One of the areas of school that the children gravitate the most to is the light table and gemmie area.

For the fall we had acorns, leaves and pumpkins, the children loved these so much that I just finally switched them out.  They love concocting drinks and plates of food with these, so when I saw the Valentine cupcake wrappers, I had a feeling they would enjoy them. 

This little baker is very intent on her creation!

"Cherry" cupcakes ready for a friend.

I work with children 2 and half years of age to 5, and they all love playing with this light table set up.

There is something about the lights, colors, and the tactile exploration that keeps them focused and engaged for long periods of time.  When someone at school is having a hard time, either feeling shy or missing their parents, this is the area that helps calm and center them.  They play here for a little bit, and then smiles and active participation follow.  It is Magic!

Another recent addition to the light table were these colored ice cubes

 I love to shake them up and see the bubble inside go from many and work their way into one large bubble

I purchased them at the Dollar Store, and they are a lot of fun for the light table, 

but the kids have been enjoying them in the kitchen area as well as when they play doctor.

 I love that they can be stacked like blocks.

 I thought this was very clever how he placed them inside cups and made pyramids with them.

The Buggy Bin

 

When we start the day at school I have a loose plan of how our day will go; the projects, circle time songs and stories, art projects and experiments we may get to in the day.   I say loose because even though I have an idea, the kids really lead the way at this age, and I love that.  Somethings that I have in mind we never make it to, others they are not interested in, and then many they are so in love with that we spend weeks exploring and doing projects on.   However, I do have days when I am stumped and I start the day with no back up plan, it is just what the kids lead me to do.  On these days, I find that some of the best projects and play emerge and really take off.  In teaching it is very true that when you get out of your own way, something magical can take over, and so the buggy bin emerged last Thursday and has been a favorite at school since then.

So, what is the "buggy bin?"  Well, I had a storage tub with colored decorative rocks.  The kids were having a hard time with each other, and so I needed something to engage them and took this bin out.  It helped, but was lacking something, so together with the kids we started pulling different items out and adding them to the bin.  We added rocks from our nature shelf, marbles, and then I pulled out the drawer of bugs, and they had to go in, along with tweezers and magnify glasses.

The fun began!

My daughter had a bug birthday party and we had some left over bug containers from the Dollar Store, and these were added into the box on another day.  Having it all on the light table makes everything glow and is very inviting.  For over a week, this has been a delight for the kids, and I love that they helped set it up and it was not a planned activity.  

For me, this is getting closer to the ideals of The Reggio Emilia Approach, because I had little to go on that day, I had to listen more to what the children wanted to engage themselves in.  They were the leaders and I was there to facilitate their ideas and desires.  Who knew we would be discussing entomology this week!

 Great for hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills.

 

Buggies kissing, how cute!

 

 Young entomologist at work.

Even Skunks got in on the action.

Never saw someone so happy with a swarm of bees.

In the end, some of the bugs tried to escape, but we were able to catch them all and put them back!

More Fun at the Light Table

Light Table Button Game

The light table has become a staple explorations tool at school.

We started the button game after we had played for a while with the buttons on the table (something I saw on the internet.)  I have had these buttons since middle school, I inherited them from my great grandmother.  I have never done anything with them, and I am happy to be playing with them at school.

Of course you do not want to use these around really little ones because they are oh so tempting for them to put in their mouths.

Back to the button game, as I said we were playing with the buttons on the table, and as the kids started to lose interest, I took our well loved rainbow stir straws and began to push the buttons with the straws.  This then started a game of trying to push the buttons to one side of the table only using the stir straws.  The attempt was to try and get as many as we could to either side.

It kept them interested for a long time, and it really is great hand-eye coordination.

The Wonderful World of Water Beads!

A couple months ago I saw a post by Play At Home Mom, about water beads, and since then they have been all over the internet. Those women had a brilliant idea, and I am happy to say, we too, have joined the water bead world!

They are so much FUN!

I ordered mine at www.crystalwaterbeads.com, and paid less than a dollar for each pack. I know you can also get them at Michael’s and Wal-Mart, but this online store had a lot of colors and styles. It was also fun starting them from scratch. I had not known how little they are before they are soaked in water. I had fun with my daughter watching them grow.

The water beads came in small little bags, and even here, they are shown bigger than they really are, they are about the size of a large seed bead.

Elianna placed them in a bowl with 5 cups of purified water, and two things happened immediately, they started to grow and Elianna was enticed to play with them

We tried to wait the 5 hours it takes for them to grow, but we couldn't help ourselves.

We placed a bucket of them on the light table with color transparencies under them. It was so neat to look at them because the outside was clear so it was a weird illusion trying to pick them up because the color inside was smaller than the actual bead.

Using our colored stir sticks, we tried to pick them up

Here are the beads after they were removed from the water.

Now they are ready for some school playtime.

It was fun filling this clear tube

But even more fun when the beads were released...did I mention they bounce!

Water Crystals

Along with the water beads, we grew water crystals which aren't as bouncy or tactile as the water beads, but they are marvelously squishy in the hands and great for hiding things.

They are very pretty with a light glowing under them

Just as enticing as water beads, the kids got right into the bin.

I hid small flat glow in the dark animal and stars in the bin for them to find as they played.

Here are our two stations set up. One group worked with water beads, the other the water crystals and then they switched. They were so into this, they played for almost 40 minutes, and would have played longer had it not been that our bread came out of the oven and snack became a priority for them.

One thing I wanted to add about having both the beads and crystals is that water beads can be squished, which is fun, but we asked the kids to only squish one and to save the squishing for the crystals. I think it made it so that we still have whole water beads for future play.

 

 

 

Valentine's Day

I think the best way to celebrate Valentine's Day is to celebrate it with children.

They exude love daily, and most of the time without judgement, it is just there and it bubbles out of them.

Today we ate heart shaped pancakes, made Valentine's, sang songs, read stories, explored on the light table, made a second batch of crayons, danced, built forts, had a circus, played cars, built bird houses out of blocks, and rested...phew....it was an exciting and fun filled day.

Here are some pictures of our projects from the day.  Some of these are from the days before Valentine's as well.

 Apple and Spelt Pancakes in  heart shapes.  For some reason I can't get

this picture to rotate, perhaps it would make us too hungry to see them

right side up!

An invitation to play with heart shaped gems on the light table.

Crayon Making

I saw this project posted on Pinterest and had to try it with the kids!

This is one of the crayons that did not melt all the way, but I love how it came out.

We started this project off by gathering our broken crayons as well as using some cheap crayons I purchased at the store.

I have never met a child who does not love to peel the paper off of crayons and break them,

An adult for that matter as well,  for if you saw my assistant and myself sitting with the kids, you would wonder who was more into this process.

With that said, have the children choose the colors they would like, and then peel the paper and break the crayons.  They should fill a small Dixie sized cup.

Using these rubber muffin tins, fill each slot with crayons.  I labeled the trays so we could keep track of each child's rainbow crayon.

Bake the crayons at 230 degrees for 15 minutes

Here are some of the finished projects.  Next time I would take out the dark crayons such as black and really dark blue because they over powered the other colors.

Yarn Hearts

This is a nice simple project, but it requires a couple days to dry.  I found this one in Family Fun.

You will need a heart cookie cutter, wax paper (I taped it down on card board), yarn cut into 10-12 inch strips, liquid starch and a pan to pour it in.

Have the children dip the yarn in the liquid starch and then squeeze some of it off between their fingers.  Then simply press the yarn into the cookie cutter shape.  Press down a couple times after all the yarn is in the cookie cutter so that the starch spreads over all the pieces.  Let dry a couple days, and then add a string to hang.

Valentine's Hearts

We love using eyedroppers at school, in particular when we color with washable markers and the let it bleed the colors into each other, today was no exception.

The results are beautiful

A heart after it has been colored with washable markers

It really is a fun and beautiful process watching the colors bleed together

After the heart dried, the children glued their pictures onto their hearts and then taking the glue bottle,

they drew a design with glue and sprinkled glitter all over the glue.  Again, this is a school favorite, because there seems to be magic in glitter.

I would say it was a very lovely Valentine's Day