An Easy Preschool Toddler Octopus Craft

Hello, hello, hello :)

After a looooong time of absence :/ due to many things that happens in life, I have decided to continue blogging and helping teachers, stay at home moms, grandparents, babysitters and all of you out there who would like to benefit from what I share here in my blog.

What I'll post here is mostly things that I do with my kids in my preschool classroom.

I hope you enjoy my blog and if you have any question please don't hesitate to ask, I love to help as much as I can :)

Well... today I am going to start with an easy octopus craft that I posted on my Instagram today, but with the difference that I'll walk you through the steps on how to make the craft and benefits for the child while working on that craft.

 

To make this octopus you only need an octopus outline that you can print from the net 

any color paint you like, I used purple

a piece of bubble wrap and

a paintbrush

 

 

I let the child apply paint on the bubble wrap

even if you are working with toddlers (like me)

you can show them how to spread the paint with the paintbrush

then teach them how to hold the bubble wrap

between their fingers and flip it upside down

to put it on top of the octopus

show them to apply a little pressure

so they can make a print of the bubble wrap

and remove.

It is very important to go through this steps patiently with the child

since you are helping them be independant

use their fine motor skills

and increase their vocabulary.

After it dries, I cut it out, and paste it on a construction paper

usually, I use the color of their choice

so the work is completely theirs.

Here is how the final project looks :)

 

 

I hope you enjoyed it.

Please let me know if you have any questions

or if you would like to add anything to it :)

I love to have ideas and input from everybody :)

Have fun,

Clemencia

 

B for Boxes

Here is an idea for the letter B, the kids can decorate boxes.

Decorated boxes make a delightful gift, or it can be their own treasure box.

Here are the materials you need:

Small box with a lid, like those that you find at the craft stores
Paint
glue
decorations like glitter, buttons, macaroni, shells, ribbon, beans, etc.

They can start by painting the boxes.
Let them dry, then they can work on gluing the decorations to the lid/top of the box.  Just make sure it's completely dry before they take it home :)

Hope you like it :)

I'll be posting more ideas for the letter B this week.

If you are working on another letter or book or any other activity, theme, etc. please let me know if I can be of any help :)

Thanks for visiting my blog :)

Apple Theme and an Important Question at the End of the Post

At the Preschool I am working at, we are working on:
Letter A
Color Red
Number 1

The first and easiest thing to do your lesson plan on is
A for Apple, which is red also :)

But we, as preschool teachers have to come up with ideas for every day activities based on these themes, being frugal at the same time.

Here are some ideas on the themes (hopefully you can find something new here)

We can start by searching for an apple template, then we can do a few different things with it

We can paint it with a brush

Finger paint it with the whole hand or just using the fingers

Glue crumbled tissue paper on it

Glue tiny scraps of construction paper on it like a collage

Paint it using daubers

Paint it using a pom pom either holding it with the fingers or with preschool tweezers

You can print it, laminate it and use it as a playdoh mat

You name it! There are tons of things we can do with a printable outline, but in this case we are concentrating on just One Red Apple since that's the theme :)

Now if you want to do an Apple Tree you can do a few different things:

Glue pom poms as apples on the tree

Put fingerprints (apples) all over the tree

Glue crumbled red tissue paper as apples

Paint the apples with daubers all over the tree

Paint the apples on the tree with a pom pom.

They can always either paint or color the tree first either using crayons or markers.

Now I have to tell you... 

I enjoyed very much writing this post, but actually publishing it, made me doubt a lot. There are so many resources out there, not just other blogs from teachers, moms, homeschoolers, but also Pinterest, etc. is really crazy, it kind of brought me down and reminded me why I stayed away from posting in this blog for such a long time :( but...

I love blogging and I love sharing what I know, what I read, what I think it helps.  So please help me make this dream a reality, where I can share what I like and not be boring or repetitive.

How can I make this blog a better place for you?
What would you like to see more of?
I really want to help people out there, but I need help figuring out what do you need :)

Thanks for visiting me :)

By the way, you might be asking... what do I get out of it?

Self Satisfaction, a feeling of accomplishment of doing something productive with my life :)

Practicing Cursive Letters

I just made this for my daughter,
she needs to practice her cursive letters

Here you go :)
just click on the alphabet sheet to print

Please let me know if it doesn't work

I'll uploaded another way

A is for Animal Action

Today, very early in the morning

we played animal action

with a few of my students

this pawprints are from a game Garanimals

I think is called :)

The kids jumped on the paw print

and acted the animal that is on the card next to it

just to help them out figure out

which animal is the paw print from

since they are only 2 y. old

Thanks for reading :)

Letter O

Since the last letter of the alphabet was shared by me

was letter Nn

here are some fun stuff for our

little ones with letter Oo

Here when they color all the Oo's

they'll discover an Octopus,

this kind of worksheet helps them

get used to the shape of the letter

with repetition :)

This next one is a fun slider

that works on their phonics

and teaches them what words start with Oo

Olives = olivas

Onions = cebolla

Oven = horno

Octopus = pulpo

Oo for Owl

buho (click to hear pronunciation)

this is a fun puppet to glue

onto a paper bag :)

I try to always make my daughter
practice her letter writing



And here is another worksheet
for practice which direction to start
forming the letter Oo
and a little coloring page



Enjoy!

"Letters Letters Letters" Pre-K - Hooked on Phonics

I though this was cute for little ones, on Youtube

N for Nature Collage

We took a nature walk with Jessica

and collected a few thing for our nature collage

where we used this nice letter Nn worksheet :)

We also worked on this N playdoh mat

where it gives her the opportunity to

practice her writing in a manipulative way

And here is my daughter's work

on the dot to dot page

Enjoy!

My "n" book

This week we have been reading

My "n" book

we took advantage of the variety

of words that start with the letter n

and did some worksheets

like this one to practice writing the

uppercase and lowercase Nn

Here in one for cut and paste activity

A letter N coloring page

This worksheet is a very fun one

color by number

to discover the letter N ad more

N for nest

good for practice writing

My daughter loves this

dot to dot Nn

and a little manipulatives here

N for nurse puzzle

Enjoy!

N for Nursery Rhymes

How adorable are these!

Nursery Rhymes alphabet cards

You can do tons of things with these adorable cards

You can print two set of them and

play a memory game

or print them out on cardstock

and simply display them on the walls

lined up all around the room

or you can do what I am planning to do...

print them out and let Jessica

glue them on a poster board

to display it on her room :)

Enjoy!

N for Nature Detective

I've been looking for a while

what to do with my daughter

nature related, and I finally found it

A Nature Hunt

I found this site Nature Detectives

where you can download

nature cards like the leaf one here,

print them out and go on a nature hunt

how cool is that!

I just love it!

and I hope some of you get to enjoy it too!

Enjoy!

Letter N

We continue with our letters

N for numbers

so we decided to make our

number collage book

were we use our coloring books

that we found at the dollar store

after coloring the numbers

we glue on the next page the number of items

like number 3 and the next page has

3 peas, 3 birds, etc.

it helps preschoolers develop

a number sense while learning to count

let's see how far we go :)

Mm is for....

M is for mouse

you can download one or all of this

worksheets or coloring pages here

You can use this as a playdoh mat

all you do is print and laminate

this is a dot to dot worksheet

with the upper and lower case m

My daughter loves this ones
they help her so much with her handwriting




here is a more manipulative aproach
tracing and cut an paste

M is for mouse again

a number dot to dot

M is for moon
a letter dot to dot

Here is another playdoh mat

M is for music

Ehjoy!

Letter M

Hello, for the letter M this week

we did Marbolized Mm

the idea was taken from

Unplug your kids

who does an awesome job with giving you

details and the science of the marbolizing in her blog :)

We started by using this M worksheet

Or here is another option :)




We used one cup for each color and put in each cup

1 tbsp of cooking oil
1 tsp of food coloring
mixed really good with a fork

Then have a cookie sheet ready

with a little water, enough to cover the bottom only

I have a really old one for all my crafty things

so I covered it with aluminum foil

to see how the colors swirl

You can use a dropper or just a little spoon

like we did here

and carefully place a little bit of color

one at the time

at the beginning they will look like drops only

but here is the fun for the little ones

show your child how to draw

swirls, curls, doodles

in the water with a fork

mixing the paint into the water

for different patterns

here is one of the patterns that we did

mostly pink since that's my daughter's favorite color

You can see the finished project
at the beginning of this post

using the letter Mm worksheet

Enjoy!