Fall Leaves Art

I wanted to somehow use colorful fall leaves for the art. First, the idea was to draw a tree and glue leaves to it but my daughter ended up painting with her feet and hands and then gluing various leaves on top of it. 

 

Exotic Birds Sensory Bin

Since we studied birds at home with my daughter I decided to continue with this theme at the daycare. I found an exotic birds' set, put some feathers in the bin so that children could guess which feather is from which bird. Everyone did well with this task but remembering names of the birds was a lot more difficult. The only ones they could name were a flamingo, an owl and the parrots.

We discussed birds colors, structure, size of wings and necks and so on.

After the sensory bin everyone went to paint a birdhouse which I made out of cardboard box and painted with white acrylic paint. It ended up looking very much like the one I did with my daughter a few moths ago. Every child painted his/her own side of the birdhouse or a part of the roof. Then they added stickers, feathers and plastic gems.

 

Bird's Nest Sensory Bin

We haven't studies birds for a while so here is a bird's nest in a sensory bin. Our bird is a peacock from our Christmas ornaments because I did not find anything else. Bird's eggs are from Play Doh. The bin is filled with colored rice and plit peas. 

 

Arctic Sensory Bin

Next we explored Arctics and Antarctica with my daycare class. We learned which animals and birds live in cold climate and watched an ice melting experiment. Children compared different textures of the sensory table's contents: soft cotton balls, smooth and squishy water beads, melting ice and shaving cream.

 

Forest Sensory Bin

I continue making sensory bins for my daughter's daycare. Here is one of them. This sensory table is huge. It was hard to fill it with content to make it look like a forest but the good part is that an entire class of preschoolers can play with it at the same time.

Insects Sensory Bin

My daughter stated daycare and I come to her class once a week to paint with kids and do sensory activities. During our first class we studied insects. Age of kids in this class is from 18 months to 2.5 years.

This sensory bin is very much like the one that I did for my daughter at home. Just the size of the bin is bigger and every child got a set of tools: tweezers, scoopers and cups.

I had a feeling that many kids saw a sensory bin for the first time in their lives and they just couldn't stop playing with it. I showed them insects one by one, named them, talked about where they live, what they eat, whether they fly or crawl.

 

Cardboard Town Market

I have expanded my cardboard town with a small town market. Even our princess went shopping there.

I made little fruit and vegetables out of Play-Doh. This time I used cardboard of different thickness. Tables, roofs and scales are made of thick cardboard; boxes and price tags are made of a pasta box.

Playing with the market was a lot of fun. Some of the fruit and vegetables got ruined pretty quickly but potatoes, watermelons, pumpkins and peppers still look good.