Teach Preschool

Exploring the estimation station in pre-k

Deborah J. Stewart, M.Ed. — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 11:00:18 +0000

I took some of our math tokens that we collected from our math bags and added a few other items then placed them into baby food jars for our estimation station. I will continue to add more jars but today, we started with a nice selection of about 12 different jars of tokens to estimate…

The jars are sitting on a cupcake holder that I won last year from The Cupcake Blog. Since I rarely do any baking, the cupcake holder has been sitting in a box since I got it. I finally decided that the cupcake holder would make a fun stand for our estimation station and will probably use it for other ideas too later on. Sometimes, finding a new way to display or present materials to the children makes the process more inviting to the children. As soon as the children walked in and saw our estimation station, they began asking all about it…

We talked about the process first. I explained to the children that they were to pick a jar and make a guess of how many tokens were in the jar….

The challenge in introducing estimation to preschoolers is that often times the children do not want to take a guess for fear of guessing wrong. I have found that I often make it worse when I make a big deal about how close their guess was to the right answer. So I am learning to respond by listening to their response and conclusions throughout the process rather than making any comments of my own…

After looking over the jar and making a guess of how many tokens are in the jar, the children then open the jar and spread the tokens out on their counting board…

We talked about how organizing their tokens help with counting the total number of tokens…

Some of my students naturally organize their tokens for counting and others still do not seem to get this concept at all. They just start counting – I don’t worry about it either way right now since this is such a new process for us. Over time and with practice, my students will figure out what works well for them and how to organize the materials where they can keep track of them…

After estimating and counting their tokens, the children placed the tokens back in their jar and then picked a new jar to start the process all over again. Some of the jars only held a small number of tokens and some of the jars held a large number of tokens. Sometimes, the children would discover that there were far more tokens in the jar than they anticipated. They would often decide that there were just too many to count. Realizing that there were more tokens in the jar than they originally anticipated was an important part of the estimating experience whether they ended up counting all the tokens or not….

I will continue to add new jars of tokens to our estimation station and we will continue to explore our math tokens in other ways as well. I look forward to seeing what else we come up with!

Linking this post to No Time for Flashcards Link and Learn!

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Everyday fine motor play in preschool and a linky

Deborah J. Stewart, M.Ed. — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 11:00:58 +0000

This week’s Bam Radio show is titled, “Fine Motor Skills: What Are They, Why Are They Too Important to Overlook?” and before you go any further, take a minute to listen to what the experts have to say! You can view the show and listen here or here!

Rae Pica with Dr. Christy Isbell, Allison Sampish, Deborah J. Stewart, M.Ed.

“The development of fine motor skills are often a casualty of the rush to get young children up to academic speed. In this segment our guests explain why fine motor skills are a critical building block for higher learning and should never be overlooked” (Bam Radio)

Promoting fine motor skills

I am always exploring new ways I can promote the use of fine motor skills into my classroom….

I may set out something like picking up and sorting pom-poms with tweezers or chopsticks into colorful bags….

Whether the children use my homemade straw tweezers or they use their hands to pick up, manipulate, and move the pompoms – they are using their fine motor skills in the process…

Promoting the use of fine motor skills is an important part of preparing young children to write, catch and throw a ball, type on a computer, open a door, and the list goes on. As young children develop the muscles in their hands, they develop the strength they need to complete fine motor processes that will play a valuable part in higher level learning…

Often times, I will see teachers or parents who will insist on a child holding a pencil using the “correct pencil holding form” but the reality is, young children are still developing the muscles they need in their hands and fingers to hold a pencil correctly. Thus, young children will start off holding a pencil or crayon in a way that looks awkward or incorrect but given time and good opportunities to build fine motor strength and skills, most children will self-correct on their pencil grip when their fine motor control and strength gets to the point that they can manage the pencil with the correct grip…

There are lots of ways to promote fine motor skills and help children build fine motor strength including cutting with scissors…

Squeezing, manipulating, pinching, and rolling playdough….

Weaving, lacing, and sewing…

Peeling and sticking stickers…

Scooping, pouring, mixing and the list goes on…

There are opportunities all throughout the preschool classroom to promote fine motor development!

Homemade Tweezers

I made 2 different versions of homemade tweezers from straws. This isn’t a perfect solution to real tweezers but it does provide a new experience for preschoolers to try out. The straws I used were very nice and sturdy from Meijer…

Version 1: Cut one long straw in half. Hot glue a skinnier piece of straw inside the end of each bigger straw.

Version 2: Bend the straw in half - add tape to hold

Straws, tape

If you have a fun idea that promotes fine motor skills in young children, I invite you to add your idea to the linky below! Adding a link back from your article to this article would be greatly appreciated.

Links to Grow on…

Pencil Grasp Development by OT Mom

Kindergarten Hand Exercises by OT MOM

Handwriting: Pre-K Pages

Fine Motor Development by School Sparks

30 Kids Activities and Materials for Promoting Fine Motor Skills from Hands on: as we grow

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Guidecraft sort and match review and giveaway

Deborah J. Stewart, M.Ed. — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 11:00:31 +0000

Our team of Guidecraft Educators work together to share our reviews and host a give-away each month and today, we are sharing and giving away these amazing Sort and Match sets which include the Animal Train Sort and Match and the Flower Match Garden Patch!

The sort and match sets are kind of like magnetic puzzles. The children in my class have enjoyed exploring all the different pieces in each set. They like to see how the pieces fit together to create a scene on the magnetic display board which comes with each set. Each set comes with a ton of bright and colorful pieces that work together to create flowers or an animal train…

Included with each set are also a set of cards that the children can use to look at and create the different scenes on the magnetic board. Up until now, my students have mostly used the pieces to create their own scenes without the cards but I have a few children who like to place the pieces directly on the cards rather than on the magnetic board…

The children love it that we have two matching sets so they can sit by a friend and play together…

The quality of each set is outstanding and the box each set comes in works great for easily storing all the pieces and cards. The box filled with all the pieces sits nicely on my bookshelf – not too big and bulky which is always a good thing…

Would you like to win both of these sets for your home or classroom?

Sort and Match Set Give-Away

To enter to win both of the Guidecraft sort and match sets for your home or classroom

head on over to Mommy Moments today!

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Pretty purple paper towel heart art…

Deborah J. Stewart, M.Ed. — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 12:30:43 +0000

When I was asked to donate a few ideas for the “heart book project”, I went to my preschool to try and find some inspiration on what I could share. I looked around the room and decided to see what I could do with a roll of paper towels I had sitting on my shelf. In the end, I came up with this pretty paper towel heart activity…

To make this, I cut out heart shapes from a roll of paper towels then placed them on a large sheet of white paper and painted over them…

The paper towel hearts have a “doily-like” design on them that shows through once you press the paper towel hearts on your paper. But first, you paint over the entire heart shape(s) on a piece of heavy white paper…

Next, place another sheet of white paper over the painted hearts and firmly rub the paper all over then peel off your top layer of paper and set aside. Next place your canvas on top of the the painted paper with the hearts, then flip it completely over and firmly rub the paper again…

Finally, peel the paper off the canvas (hearts and all) and you have now transferred your painting to the canvas. By painting on paper first, you can almost see the final results before transferring the paint onto the canvas…

After you paint the hearts and transfer the painting to the canvas, you will end up with a set of colorful paper towel hearts too. If set aside to dry, the paper towel hearts become stiff and dry and can be used in other activities or artwork…

So the above instructions is how I made my own paper towel heart art on canvas but when I shared the idea with my students, their heart art turned out a little bit different…

I should have taped the paper towels to the paper because the children had a hard time keeping the paper towels in one spot on the paper while they painted…

Also, my students realized that red, white, and blue all mixed together will make purple so they spent most of their time making purple paint and painting all purple hearts…

And the children didn’t quite understand that the goal was to create a painting using the entire paper. They just thought they were to paint the paper towel hearts so we ended up with lots and lots of purple painted paper towel hearts and the purple blobs on black or white paper…

About half way through this process, I didn’t even worry about trying to make a pretty heart canvas with the children. I just let the children have fun painting purple on their paper towel hearts. Perhaps if I do this again, we will walk through the process a little more carefully, and I will hide the blue paint…

Bit in any case, the children enjoyed the color mixing and their collection of purple hearts. I hung my own pretty paper towel heart canvas on my wall in my office as a reminder that not every process will turn out quite as planned but it is the process that matters the most to the children…

This project is part of the heart project. Be sure to check it out and get your own copy of the heart book today…

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Making a 3D paper heart collage in preschool

Deborah J. Stewart, M.Ed. — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 23:00:41 +0000

Valentine’s day is right around the corner and our Pre-K class got a jump start on it by exploring hearts. We began by reading the simple children’s book titled, “The Day it Rained Hearts” by Felicia Bond.

After reading the book, the children then got busy making these fun 3D paper heart collages…

To make these hearts, the children started by folding a strip of paper in half to make the point of the heart first…

Then the children opened the folded strip of paper and rolled each end of the paper towards the folded line in the middle…

Once the ends of the strips were curled inward, the children loosened up the curls a bit and then glued the sides of the hearts down on a black sheet of construction paper….

Some of the children explored the 3D process a bit by gluing strips of paper in a variety of ways on their black sheet of construction paper…

The curling of the paper strips took some practice for the children but once they tried a few, they got the hang of it…

This isn’t the kind of project you just throw out there and expect the children to understand what to do. I had to walk the children through the steps the first time but once they saw the process, they were then able to complete the process in their own way…

The bright colored hearts on the black construction paper looked lovely in our classroom. Once the children got the hang of things, they really enjoyed the process and took their time creating some beautiful 3D heart collages..

Have you read about the heart project yet? In case you haven’t be sure to check out this wonderful ebook and an opportunity to make a difference on behalf of the American Heart Association….

Click this box to learn more about the heart project!

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