Fight the Flu...Play Outside!

What an absolutely beautiful day it was outside today.  The new snowfall made everything clean and white again, the sky was blue and the recent ice storm gave us some great chunks of ice on our playground.  Of course it was cold!  It is winter in the east.  Of course we played outside. Children NEED to play outside everyday!

I have become quite discouraged by all of the reports I am hearing from friends and family about their young children not being able to go outside at all when there is snow on the ground or if it is cold. Somehow the idea of recess or a physical movement break is getting minimized to the point of non existence.  Indoor recess is happening more and more where children are asked to pick a "quiet" game and sit at their desks to play it.  How does this activity give them a break from sitting at their desks being quiet?  To rejuvenate these young minds and bodies and make them able to focus once again on their tasks inside, we need to give them fresh air to breathe, room to run, time to make noise and the ability to interact with our natural  world.

Tape Resist and Name Extension

We have an open easel in our classroom that fits three children at a time.  It was made specifically for our classroom by the talented husband of our twos teacher. I need to write a post on the creativity and efficiency of this easel because it is just fantastic, but for now we'll focus on one of our easel experiences.  At our easel, children choose the type of paint they would like to use as well as the brushes and paper.  Occasionally we will highlight a specific technique or type of material to expand their experiences.

A couple of weeks ago we showed them tape resist.  We added masking tape, scissors and cardstock to the easel.  We showed the children how to put tape on the paper across the sheet or in smaller pieces. Smooth the tape down with their hands and then paint on top of the tape filling the spaces.

Each child attempted this project with their own personality, some using a lot of tape and a lot of paint. Others using smaller pieces and creating specific designs with their work.  Some were very minimalist with their painting technique while others covered every spec of white paper.

                                               


The following day, we removed the tape and shared the paintings.  We talked about the colors we could see and what happened where the tape had been.

When I was hanging them up to display them, I made a sign out of tape which gave me the idea to create names.  The following week we extended this tape resist exploration to the writing center where the children "taped" their names.  This was difficult for some with curved lines and they had to figure our how to make straight pieces of tape curve.  Ripping them into little pieces worked well.  Some had to pre-write their name in pencil on the paper before taping it and others could visualize and tape straight away.  A couple with long names stretched across two pieces of paper.  With this activity, we suggested they try the water color paint to use a different medium with a similar technique.

With taping letters we were able to focus on some of the aspects of each letter using a different medium. Peeling off the tape from the dried paintings was good fine motor work as well.  

Give it a try...bet your students can't resist it :-)

Tube Exploration

We finished up several rolls of wrapping paper around my house this past holiday season.  I gave a few to my nephew to play with along with some pom poms I had at home.  He enjoyed putting them through the tube and seeing how they came out.  He liked leaning the tubes on the stairs to watch the pompoms roll out.  So I gathered the tubes and brought them back to the classroom with me.

To create this provication center I placed several kinds of balls or objects that rolled in baskets.  We had ping pong balls, golf balls, wiffle balls, pompoms and some large marbles.  The tubes were several thicknesses of wrapping paper tubes as well as paper towel and toilet paper tubes.