Preschool Powol Packets

The human body, including the heart and lungs, is a fabulous topic for young children!  When the weather is nice, we often spend our School Time outside.  We did this Sidewalk Chalk Heart & Lungs a few weeks ago, and the kids loved it! Simple Supplies: * Sidewalk chalk * Happy, warm-weather loving kids Easy How-To:  1- Leaving a couple inches around your children (nobody likes chalk-covered clothes!), trace them with their choice in color of sidewalk chalk.  Name the different body parts like head, right arm, right hand, etc. as you go. 2- Have the children put their hand on their chest to feel their heartbeat.  If you have a stethoscope, let them listen too.  Talk about how the heart pumps blood to your whole body while pumping your hand as a visual.  Draw the heart onto each child's chalk body.  Let them choose the color again! 3- Instruct the children to put their hands on their chest again and take a deep breath.  Their lungs are like balloons inside t

Colored pasta is fun for so many activities (like beading, sensory boxes, artwork, shadow boxes, and more), and it is very easy to make!  Here's an easy step by step: 1- Divide a pound of pasta into four gallon- sized zip lock baggies . 2- Let your child choose a color of food coloring and add 4-8 drops of into the bag. 3- Let your child squirt three pumps of hand sanitizer into the bag.  (Alternatively, you could use rubbing alcohol.) 4- Zip the bags up and let your child squish the ingredients together. 5- Spread the pasta out to let it dry.  We did the entire process outside to add a natural element to the experience.  Our wonderful Houston sun dried the pasta in about an hour and a half! I'll share a couple activities we did with the pasta in the next week or so.  Until then, have fun coloring your pasta!! I may share at any of these parties !

The Five Senses is such a fun topic for preschoolers!  It naturally encourages experimentation, exploration, and self-realization.  This particular lesson, adapted from Lisa's at Planet Weidknecht , also reviews fraction vocabulary and colors!  Here's what we did: 1- What are your senses?  As we talked about ways we learn about the world, we drew a representation of each sense on a mini-poster.  We traced everyone's hands for touch! 2- Sight!  What is this?  A lemon!  Use your eyes to tell me what color it is.  Yellow! 3- Touch!  What does it feel like on the outside?  What about the inside?  As I cut the lemons, we reviewed halves and quarters. 4- Taste!  Everyone licked their lemons...and we all laughed about the "Oooh's" and puckers!  We also talked about the word "sour." 5- Smell!   Can you smell sour? 6- Hearing!   Can you hear your lemon drip drop into your cup? 7- What should we do with our lemon juice?  Make lemonade!! 

  18 years ago residents of continental United States could watch a solar eclipse from home...this weekend, you can do it again!  But be ready...your next opportunity won't be until 2023! On Sunday, May 20th an annular eclipse can be viewed in the United States from a diagonal path starting in northern California/southern Oregon and traveling down to Lubbock, Texas.  If you live in this path, you can watch the new moon move in front of the sun and completely block it, except for a bright ring around the outside of the sun (sometimes called a Diamond Ring or Ring of Fire).  Most of the rest of the country can see a partial eclipse from their locations.  Click here for an interactive map showing what time the eclipse occurs in your area--click on your location on the map for details like the start, stop, and maximum eclipse times. Unfortunately, the times are all in Universal Time; but, you can check here to translate UT to your time .  Parts of Asia can also see the eclipse

This Monster Toss is a fun and easy way to to re-use some of those boxes that keep coming and coming and coming and ... The kids loved designing it and (after I cut the mouth and drew a few guide-lines) coloring it in with markers.  They were very pleased with their scary monster! You need a box with one blank side.  Design the monster with your child.  Will it be scary? beautiful? happy? grumpy?  Cut out the mouth--make sure it is at least twice as big as the ball you intend to use. Let your child color in the rest of the monster. Here's a few topics you can talk about during the design process: emotions colors design patterns  teeth and mouth hygiene hair brushing  We've used a variety of balls and beanbags to throw in to the monster--he is one hungry critter!  You can place him (or her!) on the floor or on another box.  Your child can stand on the floor or a stool.  You can face the monster up or sideways.  However you choose, your child will get some gr

Don your spy gear for this one, and bring your kids into the kitchen!  Hiding snacks inside Homemade Kolaches is exciting for everyone! Ingredients: 1- Bread Dough.  (You can make this really easy by using packaged crescent roll dough!) 2- Secret Snacks!  This can include cheese sticks, fruits, veggies, eggs, meat (mmm...bacon bits!), or anything else your little friends want to hide in their rolls. Directions: 1- Roll a tennis-ball sized piece of bread dough out into a rectangle about three inches wide and seven inches long.  Cut it in half, forming two triangles.  (Or, just unroll the crescent dough.) 2- Place the secret snacks on the top third of the triangle and roll it up!  Cook it according to the normal directions for cooking or bread dough (or your crescents). 3- Once it has cooled, enjoy the fun snack!  Let your children "find" their hidden snacks while they eat! Another alternative is to make them yourself and let your Detective Children figure

Mother's Day is just a week away, and I have six awesome ideas for you to help your preschooler make!  Dads, pay attention!  These can easily be adapted for a grandma or teacher, too!   First of all, is this necklace made from clay beads.  My daughter made this for me when she was three, and it has been very popular ever since!  Just follow the directions for oven-baked clay from your craft store!  And buy the colored clay if you don't want to paint it too! Now, on to Sharing Saturday!  The following are five ideas from around the internet for Mother's Day!  If you're featured, feel free to grab the button on the sidebar! <div align="center"><a href="http://PreschoolPowolPackets.blogspot.com" title="Preschool Powol Packets" target="_blank"><img src="http://i1082.photobucket.com/albums/j368/cmg38/SharingSaturdaybutton.jpg" alt="Preschool Powol Packets" style="border:none;" /&

I am so excited to share a free preschool printable with you today:   Pattern Trains!     My boys and girls had tons of fun matching patterns with candy (we used M&M's) and even building their own patterns with these colorful trains.   The printable includes a page with two repeating colors (pictured above), a page with three repeating colors, and a page with blank trains so you and your child can build your own patterns! Younger children can match colored candy to the colors on the trains and older children can predict the next color in the sequence and fill in the missing circles with candy.  You can also count the cars, count by multiples, or fill in the blank trains with letters.  The possibilities are endless!  Patterns help develop early observation, critical thinking, math, and even pre-reading skills!  Building them on trains is more fun for everyone! Feel free to share this with your friends and blogging buddies, but please link back