Ants

Dramatic Play

Ant tunnels!

 

Blocks

Our ant farm!

Here are pics of how they progressed over the weeks:










 



Pattern blocks with bug pattern pages


Bug puzzle


Then I realized the tunnels are too active to have anything in the block area, and it was cleared for the next week.

Art

Q-tip painting


Egg carton ants. I made them, they got to color and decorate them.


Sponge brush painting


Paint rollers


Small Manipulatives

Toy bugs


Bug file folder games


Bug puzzles


Counting ants


Outside

Cornmeal and bugs in the sensory table


Searching for ants! We got so lucky on our first day searching! Once ever, we have moved rocks off our wall by the grapes and found an ant tunnel with ants and larvae everywhere. It was for preschool a few years ago. My kids have looked many times over the years and we've never seen it again. So I figured it was a long shot, but I moved a rock and was shocked to find any tunnels are larvae! The kids came running and had a great time observing the ants. It's better than even the ant farm because we watched them scramble to move their eggs and larvae and got to see what those look like up close and in real life. It made all the things we've watched and read about ants real and relatable!
 
 

Large Group
We learned an insect song to help us learn more about ants. It's to the tune of Head, Shoulders Knees and Toes:

Head thorax abdomen. Abdomen. Abdomen.
Head thorax abdomen, six legs and antennae.

Day 1, We learned about insects and sorted toy bugs by insect and not insect. We watched The Magic School Bus about ants while we ate popcorn for a snack.

Day 2, We made a KWL chart. K stands for Know, and we wrote the things we already know about ants. W stands for Want to know, so we wrote any questions or comments about things they want to learn during our ant unit. L stands for learned. We'll add our answers here at the end of the unit.


I loved their questions and curiosity and helping them answer each other's questions. We searched in books and talked about going to the library to find books about any subject you like to learn more about them. We're at the end of the year and they're so excited about learning and keep asking me if we can learn about more subjects they're interested in. I keep telling them to go home and have their parents help them find books about those subjects at the library, or search on the computers for information and videos about them. My favorite things about a play-based preschool is them discovering the fun side of learning and wanting to go on to keep learning more.

Day 3, we learned the life cycle of the ant, and answered some questions on our KWL chart.

Day 4, we took what we learned about ants and acted it out! Kids were assigned "jobs" like queen, nursery ant, scavenger ant, tunnel digging ant, etc. And they all acted out their jobs in the tunnels. The queen laid eggs, the nursery ants took care of them, the tunnel digging ants dug and made new tunnels, while the scavenger ants found food and brought in back in to the queen and storage tunnels. We switched jobs several times and they had so much fun!

Small Group

Counting Ants math stories
Before children are ready to learn addition, they can learn about combining things. We told math stories with our little ants today. We each had different mats, then we took turns telling our stories. For example, there were 2 ants at my picnic, then 3 more ants came. So then I had 5 ants at my picnic. They got to choose their stories, then we used dice to determine the number of ants the second time. Great counting practice, and speaking practice as they had to verbalize their math story!

Little Ants ramble and roam coloring page.

Ant books. We learned to track and follow along left to right as I helped them "read" a beginning reader about ants.

Sorting bugs by color, then size.

Shadows

Dramatic Play

A spotlight. Pretty easy, so no pics! I just blocked off the window, kept the light on this side of the room off, and had a spotlight shining on the wall so they could make shadows. I added different things each day they could use to make shadows with, like toy animals or blocks towers. I also added flashlights later like we had previously used in large groups, so they could control the light to make and change shadows.

Art

Water color pencils. These are so fun, and sometimes hard to find! I actually searched for a few years until I finally found some. I showed them how to use them on paper at first, then about halfway through the day, showed them how we can color and erase on our skin. After that, everyone was painting faces by the mirror and had a super fun time! They have begged and begged to use them again.


Black sponge shadow painting, with ABC sponges


Shape collages


Painting

Small Manipulatives

Shadow matching folder games


Pattern blocks

Puzzles

Magnets

Large Group

Day 1, we went outside at the beginning of the day and traced our shadows. For large group, we went back out (2 hours later) to see how they had changed, and we discovered they moved and got shorter! We went inside to read and find out why. We read What Makes a Shadow? and learned that the sun's movement (or really, earth's movement) is what changed our shadows. We used a flashlight to watch shadows move and change shape.

Day 2, we read Bear Shadow and traced animals shadows outside.






Day 3, we placed our sun dials outside first thing, and marked where the shadows were. We checked on them at large group to see if the shadows had moved. They had! We then took our clipboards around the yard and traced different shadows we found.




 


Day 4, was cloudy!! So I was glad we had done all of our outside shadow activities already. We watched a video about shadows, and then made a shadow picture. The kids colored a cut out person to look like themselves and glued it onto a paper. Then I had a sun stamp, and a person stamp. They stamped on the sun, then had to figure out where their shadow would be, then they stamped their shadow with the person stamp in black paint.

Small Group

One group worked independently on puzzles, while my group built with blocks. I called them one at a time from my group so I could trace their silhouette.

The next week, one group decorated their sun dials, while the other group decorated their cut out silhouettes, and spelled their names on them with ABC stickers.

4 Seasons

This post will be a little different, because it's easier to share what we did each day and how it pertained to that season, than it would be to post the different centers, like I usually do. Each day, we studied 1 of the 4 seasons. Here's what we did!

Fall

Dramatic Play: Pumpkin patch, apple tree, leaf raking


Blocks: 4 Seasons floor puzzle


Art: Fall-colored papers and fall foam stickers


Small Manipulatives: fall pattern cards


Writing: Scented twistables crayons

Large Group: we read about the 4 seasons and sang Round and Round the Seasons Go, and Leaves are Falling

Samll Group: My group played a game calling "Raking Rhymes" and practiced rhyming words, from here. The other group independently made contact paper leaf pictures.

Winter

Dramatic Play: Hot chocolate stand and snowball throwing


Blocks: ABC trains


Art: shaving cream and bears


Small Manipulatives: Snowman counting buttons, snowman building on the magnet board



Outside: It's March and snowed today, perfect for our theme! So we played in the snow and colored it with colored water squirters.

Large Group: we read A Snowy Day, then made snow pictures. We painted white with glitter on a blue paper, then added some Elmer's glue and Epsom salt on top to make it sparkly.

Small Group:
My group played snowflake racing. I had foam snowflakes spread on the ground with numbers 1-10 on them. I'd say a number, and they'd run to it.
The independent group was working on counting, and had to line up snowman cards in order 1-10, then count that many "snowballs" (cottonballs) by each one.

Spring

Dramatic Play: planting flowers in the sensory table


Blocks: ABC Easter eggs. Each eggs had the capital and lowercase letters, and had an item beginning with that letter inside.


Art: Spring sponge painting


Small Manipulatives: Spring ABC cards and flat marbles from here, Easter bunny and flowers on magnet board



Writing: Easter stickers


Large Group: we read the ABCs of Spring, then went outside searching for signs of Spring.

Small Group: we split into 3 activities, and rotated. One made popcorn blossoms for our tree, another made bird nests for our tree, and the third played a counting game by counting "eggs" into nests with numbers, from here.

Summer

Dramatic Play: a summer beach, with ocean animals and sand with shells. I think 90% of the kids played here the WHOLE time.






Blocks: ABC blocks

Art: marble painting. We've done it in trays this year, where they roll the marbles. Today, we put the papers in old oatmeal containers for them to roll and shake the marbles around. Messy and fun!


Small Manipulatives: horse clothespin matching


Large Group: we read An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Shell, then made lacing suns. They used a yellow paper plate with holes punched around it, and a yellow piece of yarn tied to it. They could lace around the sides, or across the middle for a cool design, or both.

As they finished their suns, they made a 4 Seasons book. They had to practice cutting a circle, then place the season picture on the right page. Then they got to draw their favorite season.

Weather

Dramatic Play

We played Meteorologist. The kids could move the different weather pictures around the map, and also change the daily weather. They loved lumping all the pictures together to make the biggest storm they could.
The "camera" was the biggest hit, and they'd wait in line for turns to "record." There were often kids waiting at the camera, begging others to come do the weather so they could film them. They had a great time.


 
Blocks

Car rug and cars

Duplo Legos

Art

Clouds-blue paper, cotton balls, glue


Mop painting with cut up mop pieces. It was a fun new sensory experience.


Coffee filter rainbows with color water and squirters


Spin Art
 
Small Manipulatives

Word and line tracing with dry erase markers


Books on tape, Little Cloud, by Eric Carle


Weather patterns


Lacing beads

Weather bears, sorting clothes


Many of these printables are from totschooling.

Snack

Painted rainbow toast

The kids each made their own. We use brightly colored milk in primary colors, and they lightly brush it onto their bread with pastry brushes. They want to soak it, so I do it one on one with them in play time to help them do just a little so they don't get soggy bread. They loved watching the colors mix to make secondary colors too!

Outside

It's back to winter! We played with color squirt bottles outside on most days with snow.

Large Group

We're learning Dr. Jean's weather song. We've already been singing it daily along with our weather, so we've got the spelling of Sunny down just right, so it's been good to learn the ones we rarely sing, like Rainy and Snowy.

Day 1, we read a book called Weather, then made patterns with weather cards.

Day 2, we read Magic School Bus Weathers the Storm then made rain. We put shaving cream on top of water in mason jars, then used droppers to drop colored water on it. When the "clouds" got heavy enough from the water, it began to "rain" into their jars. They LOVED this!! They poured in water until they had goopy messes, and had a lot of fun.


Day 3, after reading, we talked about what to wear in different weather. I had a variety of snow and rain boots, coats, rain jackets, swim suits, sun hats, sunglasses, umbrellas, short, tank tops, etc. Each child got a turn to dress up and the others got to guess which weather they were dressing up for. I was pleasantly surprised at how entertained they were by such a simple activity.

Day 4, we read about tornadoes, then made a tornado in a bottle. We added sequins and glitter to be able to see it lift and spin things around too.

Small Group

My group: rolled my weather dice and graphed our results
Independent group: wrote in their journals

My group: R is for rainbow page
Independent group: weather and clothing matching bears