Each week we spend a few minutes of our morning exploring the sound of a new letter and this week we explored the sound of the letter K. We use different methods to explore the sounds of our letters. Some are creative, some are through play, and others are just through simple conversations we have in circle time. This week we explored the sound of the letter K and then extended our exploration of the letter K by making our own kaleidoscope designs…
Kaleidoscopes are such an interesting “toy” or tool to explore since they employ the use of mirrors and color and shape. We didn’t get to explore them nearly as much as I hoped but we did get a taste of what a kaleidoscope was and even tried to create our own versions of a kaleidoscopes and kaleidoscope designs. Mrs. Courtney brought a real kaleidoscope in for the children to look through and examine and she introduced the book “I See A Song” by Eric Carle as a way to draw attention to the overlapping of colors, shapes, and design…
Instead of actually reading the book, Mrs. Courtney took the children on a picture walk in hopes to draw the children’s attention to the color, shapes, and designs that they saw inside each picture. Â The children did an amazing job identifying what they thought they could see in each picture…
Every picture was filled with color and designs overlapping to possibly create something hidden within.  Kids are so capable at their ability to understand abstract art – it’s a good idea to never underestimate how much young children really can understand.  As Mrs. Courtney turned each page, the children immediately began to call out what they could see and they talked more about the  designs they saw hidden within each picture…
And then Mrs. Courtney invited the children to design their own kaleidoscope of colors using felt pieces in their baggies and a small felt board…
The children went to work creating their own designs with their random pieces of felt shapes and colors. Each child went down a different path which is always exciting to observe…
Some of the children created designs that were easy to identify and others were more abstract like the lion shown below. This is a “lion that roars really loud!”…
And this is a person’s face…
And this is the ocean – can you see the water, sun, sailboat, and clouds?…
And some designs had hidden within it lots of different objects. The children would eagerly point out the many objects that were hidden within their designs….
The fun thing about working with the felt and felt boards was that the children could easily move the pieces around until they found the right fit for their ideas…
After creating our felt Kaleidoscope of designs, the children were invited to explore these fine motor kaleidoscopes. Â These are simply tubes with wax paper taped around the end. Â The children dropped the objects inside the tubes and then went to see what kind of designs the objects make when put together inside their tubes…
The children were invited to look through the tubes at the light table too. Â Mrs. Courtney talked with the children about what might happen if they added too many items versus just a few. With too many items, the tubes would be dark and hard to see though but if they chose two or three items then changed the items out, the light might shine through more easily and the children would get more of a kaleidoscope effect. Â As you can see below, the children were anxious to see how Mrs. Courtney’s kaleidoscope turned out once she added a few objects into her tube…
The children went to work creating their own kaleidoscopes then looking through them…
For the kaleidoscope objects, we tried to find mostly see-through type items like beads and gems but we also added buttons, beads, and feathers….
Many of the children wanted to make a kaleidoscope they could take home so we are going to collect more materials and come up with another way for them to make a kaleidoscope that they can keep next week.
In my next post, I will share with you the “kaleidoscope” pictures we made and hopefully soon, I can come back and share our take- home kaleidoscopes with you too…
If you are wondering about the tubes we used for this process – see this post.
Available on Amazon