Candy Cane Inspired Painting

Continuing with our children's fascination with marbles, we placed red paper and white paint out today and invited the children to explore rolling the marble around in the paint in order to create artwork. This activity encouraged the children to use the same hand-eye coordination and concept of moving the marble around on a flat tray similar to the marble mazes that have been created at the science center. The white tracks on the red paper reminded us of candy canes!

Festive Magnets

We spent time today creating glittery magnets using recycled bottle caps, glitter, and glue. The children painted the white glue onto the caps and dipped them in bowls of glitter. It was a wonderful, messy activity that many children enjoyed. We invited the children to think of who they might like to give the magnets to and they made as many as they liked.  Some made dozens of them!

Encouraging Planning and Reflection During Play Time

We believe in providing opportunities for children to actively plan for and reflect upon their experiences together during play time. By thinking about, articulating, and sharing what they do independently and cooperatively, children can deepen their thinking towards their learning in the classroom.

Today we had the children view our class blog together using the Smart Board in the library. We looked at the marble maze, play dough, and survey posts from yesterday. Children featured in the photos and videos discussed what they had done at the various classroom centers. We then talked about how those centers could be revisited again today.

Children who visited the science center immediately began making marble mazes again, but what we noticed were the intricacies used in the designs of the mazes. They were much more complex as children integrated the strategies we discussed (using cubes as towers, angling tubes to be used as ramps, using multiple marbles at once) while viewing the Smart Board.

Some children took their knowledge of the marble mazes and experimented with materials at the building center. It was interesting to observe!

The children also expressed an interest in creating holiday cookies and selling them at a bake sale again. Collectively we agreed that the drama center would be turned into a bakery. The playdough and various playdough tools were brought to the center, play money and writing materials were added, and children spent time baking and then selling holiday cookies and cakes. Building on prior experiences (the flower shop, laundromat) they quickly organized the center so there was a baking area, a selling area, and a writing area. Someone made an open/closed sign so that when the cookies were 'baking' the shop could be closed to customers. The depth of the children's interactions and play was wonderful to observe!  They exhibited such growth in their oral language abilities and cooperation!

Marble Mazes

We encourage our children to do a lot of exploration with various materials in our classroom. After providing an opportunity for them to explore store-bought marble mazes yesterday, the children spent some time today creating their own marble obstacles.

Many children were fascinated with the complicated mazes, spending much of their time maneouvering the marble through the maze and traps until they reached the end of the game. Some spent their whole play time with this game - by themselves or with a friend cheering them on.

Today we placed a variety of materials out for the children - paper tubes, sticky tack, trays, and marbles. The children were invited to use the sticky tack to place the tubes in various spots on the trays. The nature of the sticky tack allows it to be reused numerous times which means that if a child was unhappy with how the marble maze has been created they can try again. This proved to be a very popular center with many children. Obstacles were created and tested multiple times. Mr. Mills even stopped by!

It was interesting to see the children experimenting with the materials. The following picture shows a child wanting to create a ramp-like tunnel for the marble to travel down. She realized that there was more support for the tube if she placed it on top of the corner of the box instead of just a side.

The children got tricky and started exploring what would happen if they used multiple marbles in the maze. One child put sticky tack inside the tubes to act as a secret trap for the marbles that he had to maneouver around. Their ideas were amazing and this activity was great for promoting the building of student hand-eye coordination. In the afternoon the children built scaffolding for their ramps so the tubes could be placed high above the tray.

And of course there's always a little bit of silliness thrown into any of our activities!

What a great activity to get our children exploring and experimenting with various classroom materials. This might be an activity that you want to do together with your child at home. Thank you to Mrs. Bombadier for a great idea!

Holiday Playdough

We had cinnimon and nutmeg scented playdough out today. The children had fun pretending to bake holiday cakes and cookies.

A nearby shelf was used to "bake" the items.

Once all the cookies were baked the children had a 'bake sale' to sell the items to others in our classroom.

To make this playdough at home:

1 cup flour
1/2 cup salt
1 tablespoon cream of tartar
1 cup water
a hearty sprinkle of holiday spices (allspice, cinnimon, nutmeg, etc.)

Mix together well. Continue to add in extra flour and knead until the desired consistency is reached. We triple the recipe for a class batch.