Exploring things that are not alike in preschool

We discovered that no two nests, birds, tracks, snowflakes and more are alike as we read this wonderful new book (at least new to me) titled, “No Two Alike by Kieth Baker….

The words and illustrations are simple but beautiful in this book.  The children easily understood the concepts that were presented and this book easily led to other fun ideas in our classroom….

One of the activities we explored after reading this book was how no two snowflakes are alike…

We explored two different shaped snowflakes and talked about about how they are not alike. Then to get us up and moving for a bit, we set the snowflakes out on the floor and followed a snowflake path throughout the classroom…

For our art experience, we made beautiful not-alike snowflake prints….

The children enjoyed this very fun but slightly messy snowflake printing process. To begin this process, each child set two different snowflakes (these snowflakes are made out of styrofoam) on a sheet of white painting paper…

Then the children sprayed their snowflakes and the entire piece of white paper with a spray bottle filled with slightly watered down blue paint.  I had several spray bottles of paint prepared and the blue in each container was slightly different but only because I didn’t measure the amount of paint versus water I added to each container…

I sometimes had to help get the children started on their spraying so they could get the hang of how to point and shoot and squeeze the trigger all at the same time in the right direction.  But once they got started, they were quite capable of doing this all on their own…

The children soaked the paper (and at times the table too) pretty good so after they finished covering the entire paper with the paint, they removed the snowflakes from the paper…

And then used folded dry paper towels to soak up all the excess paint that had puddled on the paper…

The children did not rub the paint, they simply pressed down on the paper towels to soak up the excess water/paint…

Once the majority of the excess paint was all soaked up, then the children removed the paper towel to reveal their “not-alike” snowflakes….

If there was still excess paint dripping on the paper, then I would take the paper towel and blot up the remaining excess liquid so our snowflake prints remained preserved…

Some of our students asked to do this process several times and almost every set of snowflakes were slightly different in color…

Here are a few of our completed snowflake prints (you can see the paper towel prints in some of these prints too)…

Deborah J Stewart

Deborah J Stewart

Every time I think I know everything I need to know about teaching young children, God says, "Hold on a minute!" and gives me a new challenge.

Let me tell ya...

With each new challenge that you overcome, you will find yourself better equipped and more passionate about teaching young children.

God didn't call wimps to lead, teach, or care for His children. Nope, he has high expectations, so get ready. You will have to give your very best but after teaching for over 30 years, I can tell you that it is a wonderful and rewarding journey.

Whenever your calling feels hard, just remember, 'He who began a good work in you (and in the children you serve) will be faithful to complete it.'

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