Bring in the Water Table

It's still Winter time up here and quite cold outside. For our Letter U day, the plan was to do a water drop letter review for an Umbrella picture. I thought it would be fun if we brought our water table inside. I spread out some towels on the floor and filled the water table with warm water (which the kids loved) and got a bunch of measuring cups for the kids to play with. In years past when I didn't own a water table, I just put toy sized buckets of water on tables and it worked just as good. 

The kids did great and the towels soaked up anything that spilled on the floor. 

The kids brought cars over to play with. It was a great addition for pretend play. 

I had classical music playing while they played in the water. We all had a great time. The mess was very minimal. 

Spaghetti Shape Sensory

We recently did Assessments (This is something I sit down with the kids and assess what they know and what they don't so I can lesson plan.) and found that several of the kids needed more work on their shapes. Since it was Letter S day, I boiled some Spaghetti noodles while the kids had their free play time. I traced shapes and slipped the papers into sheet protectors so we could do this activity again in the future. 

I didn't do so good at keeping the noodles easy to handle. They were quite sticky and my impatient kids got a little annoyed with their stickiness. 

I called out shapes and the kids had to find them and then "trace" the letters with the spaghetti.

*Not pictured, were more shapes on the back

Once finished, you can throw the extra noodles in a tub for the kids to explore with containers. My kids ended up eating their piles as they worked. 

Sensory Fun

When we first started sensory, we only had a bowl to use. We've since used something much bigger, but it shows that you can do this even with limited resources and the kids still love it. 

The kids are gathered around the Pinto beans here. They have measuring cups and bottles to dump, pour, and measure. 

In this exercise each child is given a jar and several beans to see if they can drop it from their nose and make it into the jar. Not only do they get to hear the pink, pink, pink sound as they drop but they get to work on their aim.

This is our Cheerio bowl. 

There are measuring cups and containers but also string for the kids to lace. All children enjoy the cheerio bowl. 

Shaving Cream Fun

This is my 2-3 year old class. I just brought out our table and put the shaving cream on it. This was our first real messy, sensory thing so some of the kids didn't quite know what to do about it being on their hands. As a PS, one year I didn't have shaving cream so I made whip cream. Oh the heaviness of it! It took forever to clean and made us all slimy. I learned my lesson for sure. 

For my older group we brought out individual pans and the kids got to choose colors and they mixed them with plastic spoons. I put a piece of paper on top and then let them play till they were done. They turned out really cool. The shaving cream eventually dissolved off. This was a good lesson in mixing colors as well.