I introduced the children to a simple song that I made up titled, “Watermelon in the Patch” then invited the children to make up their own songs to replace the word “watermelon” in our song.  The original song goes like this…

Watermelon, Watermelon, Watermelon

In the Patch!

After exploring our watermelon song and the picture words that illustrated our song, the children were then invited to create their own song using the same pattern as the watermelon song. They came up with a sunshine in the sky song….

And a pumpkin in the patch song…

And a lightning bug in the sky song. Each child illustrated their own song by replacing the words with pictures then we sang their songs too…

As an extension of our watermelon song and our previous watermelon exploration (which you can see here), we saved the watermelon rinds and used them to make our own watermelon paintings…

The children painted on white watermelon paper shapes…

I set out red, green, and black paint for the children to complete their watermelon paintings…

The children used the rinds in different ways. They rubbed and printed with the rinds….

To complete their paintings, the children used circle-shaped sponges to add a few black watermelon seeds…

Each of the completed watermelons looked DELICIOUS!

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I brought in a real watermelon for my students to both explore and to taste and to, of course, enjoy for snack…

We started by examining the watermelon in circletime. We knocked on the watermelon to listen to what sound it makes. Then we lifted the watermelon to determine if it was light or heavy.  I wish I had brought scales so we could have estimated the weight of the watermelon. I would have loved to hear what my student’s guesses might have been compared to the actual weight of the watermelon (writing that down for next year)…

We discovered that the watermelon was indeed quite heavy. In fact, Mrs. Stewart had to stay close by to help out because it was very hard to hold such a huge watermelon…

We also discovered that the watermelon was round and we could the feel curves with our hands….

So many words to describe a watermelon so far but then we cut it in half.  We knew that if we took a sharp knife (well that was Mrs. Stewart’s job) and cut it down the middle, it would now have two parts and each part would be one-half…

After opening up our watermelon, we discovered that this watermelon was considered a seedless watermelon. Not finding any black seeds was actually a little disappointing and confusing.  We could definitely see white seeds in our watermelon but not any black seeds were to be found…

We continued to cut one watermelon half in half again.  Now we had three parts of a watermelon.  We saved two parts for our snack and the other half of the watermelon to explore a little more closely…

When we went to write out the word watermelon and draw our own watermelons, we (Our Prek Kids) discovered the word watermelon was actually two words put together to describe one piece of fruit. Now how cool is that?  Two different words put together can make a brand new word!

As we explored the inside of the watermelon, we discovered that it had a rind, seeds, and that the fleshy red part was the fruit. We talked about how the fruit can be eaten but the rind should not be eaten.  But what about those seeds? Could we eat them? Some of the children didn’t think so and others felt it would be just fine…

We explored the remaining half of the watermelon and dug down deep to find more seeds and yes, it was a bit messy…

Our morning of watermelon exploration and discussion was almost complete but we had to do at least one more thing. We had to eat some of course!

And no – we didn’t eat this watermelon half but I didn’t think to take a photo of snack time so you will just take my word for it – we ate the other half of our watermelon for snack…

I have already shared with you our watermelon suncatchers that we made to go along with today’s exploration.  In my next post, I will share with you our watermelon paintings that we made to wrap up our watermelon day of discovery…

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Googly eyes are always a big hit in preschool so I thought I would try using them as a fun easel starter…

As I have done for each of my easel starters, I glued the googly eyes to blank sheets of easel paint paper the night before so they would be dry in time for class the next day.  Then I set out the prepared googly-eyed easel papers as well as blank sheets of easel paper and a set of easel paint colors for the children to explore the easel painting process…

Unlike my other easel starters, I did not tie the googly-eye easel starters into any other part of our day. They were just ready to go for the taking.  I loved observing the different choices each child made as to what they wanted to do with this process…

Even children who don’t normally “opt-in” on the easel painting process decided to give the googly-eyed easel painting a try…

One of my favorite things is when two or more children stand at the easel and have a discussion about their paintings. These two boys stood together while one of them painted and the other one made suggestions along the way. They were truly collaborating on a piece of art which I happen to think is super, super cool…

The googly-eye easel starter resulted in some very fun paintings. The children were quite creative and took their time painting until they felt their painting was finished…

A super simple way to add a little fun to the easel painting experience…

I just have to add a few more photos below so you can see the broad range of creative expression we had going on here…

Simply beautiful!

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I have had several folks ask me what water beads are so I decided to write this post to share what they are, how we use them, and where you can get them…

What are water beads?

Water beads are actually meant for use in flower arrangements to add color, water, shine, and texture to the water in a jar.  Having said this, it is important to note that water beads are not designed for child’s play as a rule.  Although water beads are non-toxic and environmentally safe, they should not be eaten by young children.  My class of children ages 3 through 5 understood this and they did a wonderful job playing with the water beads but we talked with our students about the do’s and don’ts of playing with waterbeads when we introduced them to the class…

What do water beads look like?

Water beads can come in different forms.   At the Dollar Tree, they come in a bottle and they only come in clear.  The clear water beads have been our standing favorite because when you add them to water, they disappear into the water and can only be found by touch.

If you order water beads online, they will come to you in little packets that almost look like seed packets.  You have to let the “dehydrated” water beads sit in water for up to 12 hours so they will reach their full growth potential. When water beads sit out of the water for several days, they will shrink back up into small seed-like shapes…

When you let the water beads sit in water again, they will expand into marble shapes once again.  However, after my student’s played with ours for several days, we often just threw them out in the grass (remember they are not harmful to the environment) and brought out new water beads on our next time to explore them…

What do water beads feel like?

Water beads feel like soft, squishy, smooth marbles.  If one drops to the floor, it will have a little bounce and it will definitely roll.  If you add water beads to a water table, they are relaxing and gentle and wonderful to touch. They are not slimy and they do not dissolve…

Ways can waterbeads be explored in the classroom

Of course the number one way we enjoyed playing with water beads was by adding them to our water table along with different types of strainers and cups. As I mentioned earlier, because the clear water beads seem to disappear in water, my class would spend long periods of time using their hands to search for the beads and gather them up. The children loved to search for them, scoop them, pour them, feel them, and gather them in cups….

We also explored the water beads on our DIY light box. Because my DIY light box has a plastic lid for the top, it was fine if the top of the light box got wet. The light shines beautifully through the water beads and the children enjoyed the combination of how the water beads felt and looked on the light box…

We also added water beads to our shave cream play.  The added feel of water beads creates a marvelous sensory experience…

All Content Areas

Water beads promote learning and development in all content areas of the classroom.  From fine motor exploration to science, color, sensory, and creative art – the ideas of how water beads can be used is endless.  I feel like we only tapped into just the beginning of what the possibilities are in my classroom this year and look forward to making new discoveries with my students next year…

Where can you get water beads?

Water beads are available in many stores like the Dollar Tree, Michael’s, and Walmart. They are considered a seasonal item so if your Dollar Tree doesn’t have them when you stop by, just check back again at a time when planting and gardening is more in season.  Stores like Micheal’s carry them in different colors.

You can also purchase them online. I purchased my colored water bead packets (shown above) from the Crystal Water Bead  but if you just Google the key word “water beads” I am sure you will find many other places where water beads are available.

Water Beads for the classroom

There are also a different type of water bead available from DuneCraft that is made for kid play and available at education stores and on Amazon :  DuneCraft Science Fun Kits – Silly Squares and Slippery Spheres.  The  Silly Squares shown below are cube shaped rather than marble shaped but have all the same qualities as water beads.  The cube shapes start off very small and grow in the water and they seem like they last forever…

What should you expect?

I have found that some water beads are more squishy than others.  It seems that the water beads I bought online were easier for the children to squish and break apart than the ones I bought from the Dollar Tree. You do need to expect that your preschoolers may very well want to squish and break the water beads up.  What we learned to do to help with this is have a squishing day.  I asked the children to play with the water beads and not squish them up until squishing day. Before I was ready to throw a batch of water beads out, I would invite the children who really wanted to squish them up to have at it.

Have you tried water beads in a unique way? Share your ideas in the comments below…

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Links to Grow

Observing shrinking and growing beads from The Chocolate Muffin Tree

Water beads in the Dark from Preschool Projects

Water beads from Preschool Play

Water bead exploration from Tinkerlab

Hidden diamonds water bead play from Play Create Explore

Water beads from Happy Hooligans

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Copyright 2011 © Deborah J. Stewart

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Please do not sell, post, curate, publish, or distribute all or any part of this article without author's permission! However you are invited to share a link to this post on Pinterest, Facebook, and other social networking sites.

With summer on its way, we have been talking about things you can do on a sunny day during circle time and then we played a game to add a little different spin on drawing a picture of a sunny day…

The children started by making their own sunny day cubes…

Then the children tossed their cubes and drew what ever landed on top of the cube on their paper…

The children made up their own rules as they went along. For example, you were allowed to draw more than one cloud if you want or you can color the house any color you want. I always love listening to the children make up their own rules for play…

As the children went along, they added more elements to their sunny day pictures like apples to a tree or smoke from the chimney.  The children took their time exploring the drawing process with this little game…

For those of you who would like a copy of the drawing cube, you can go to Preschool Spot and download a copy there for free…

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Copyright 2011 © Deborah J. Stewart

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Please do not sell, post, curate, publish, or distribute all or any part of this article without author's permission! However you are invited to share a link to this post on Pinterest, Facebook, and other social networking sites.

In my previous post, I shared with you how we explored the book “I See A Song” by Eric Carle.  This book is filled with lots of shapes and design that overlap each other and emerge into different scenes along the way…

We used this book as a springboard to not only explore music, as I shared in this post, but to explore overlapping shapes on our easel…

The children called out different shapes and as they did, I drew them on our dry-erase board then the children stopped by and colored in different sections of our shapes…

Then the children went off to draw their own shapes with crayons and papers…

To create our shapes and oil artwork, the children started by drawing their own shapes with crayons on paper…

Once they created their shapes, the children took their paper to another table that was set up with cups of vegetable oil and sponge brushes…

The children used the oil to cover their drawings and the entire paper. The oil made the drawings shiny and very pretty to look at…

Once the drawings were completely covered with oil, we set them in between sheets of paper towels to soak up some of the excess oil…

Then the drawings were set out on a table to air dry over the weekend.  It is hard to tell in these photos, but the oil makes the paper feel almost like wax and the oil also makes the paper almost transparent…

A simple activity with a pretty cool effect for the children to explore…

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The children and I took a picture walk through the book titled, “I See a Song” by Eric Carle. We actually went through the book several different times and on several different days.  Each time we walked through the book, the children discovered new details and new meaning from the illustrations on each page…

The first time we went through the book, the children focused more on predicting what the pictures were going to be or what kind of story the book was trying to tell.  It took a little effort for the children to make sense of this book but they did a very good job at beginning to recognize the emerging illustrations as we went along…

Later, as we walked through the book again, I brought the children around to thinking about what type of music they can imagine is playing as they looked at each page.  Was the music fast, slow, quiet, loud, happy, sad, and so on?…

And as we went through the book a final time (a few days later), we played some classical music and just listened and looked at each page as the music played…

After the final “reading” of this book, we followed the reading up by listening to classical music and drawing own designs.  I played a short section of music as the children drew and then switched to a new song that offered a different classical sound to listen to…

As you can see from the drawings that the focus was on how the music made us feel as we drew rather than on drawing any specific thing…

This was an interesting process that we spent a little time exploring over a few different days.  In my next post, I will share an interesting way that we explored the design making process which was inspired by the designs we saw in this book…

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This is a simple game that my students love to play. For those of you who may not be familiar with this game, I wanted to share it with you today…

1. Have your students line up (side by side) at one end of your space facing the teacher.

2. The teacher stands opposite of the children and faces the children.

3. When the teacher shouts “Green Light!” The children walk quickly or run (depending on your space) towards the teacher.

4. When the teacher shouts “Red Light!” The children stop where they are.

5. The teacher continues to shout “red light or green light” until the children get to her and then all the children go back to the starting line and the game starts again.

Optional

• In our classroom, the children also take turns being the ones to shout “red light and green light”.
• We also made simple little red and green stop signs to hold up so the children can also see a visual but this is really not necessary. Our kids enjoy holding up the signs as we play the game.

Do you have an old favorite game we can play?

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Please do not sell, post, curate, publish, or distribute all or any part of this article without author's permission! However you are invited to share a link to this post on Pinterest, Facebook, and other social networking sites.

Recently, the most asked question that has come my way is “what do you do with a child who won’t behave in the classroom?” Well, to tell you the truth, this question isn’t always that simple to answer because it can depend on so many factors including the age of the child, the needs of the child, the classroom environment, the classroom schedule,  the teaching approach in the classroom and more.  But there is one strategy that should be in every teaching approach and that is the process of helping young children develop self-control.

Bam Radio Discussion

I recently participated in the Bam Radio Discussion titled “Five Ways to Get Young Children to Sit Down and Shut Up, Well Sort of” along with Rae Pica, Ellen Galinsky, and Sandra Aamodt.  In this radio show, the experts give some important insight on how to help young children develop self-control…

Yes, self-control can be taught

First of all, it is important to note that self-control can be taught in the early childhood classroom. The key is understanding what kinds of activities help promote the development of self-control and what doesn’t necessarily promote self-control.

Why teach self-control

At the beginning of this conversation, Ellen Galinski shares this research finding…

“There’s a study by Meghan McClellan that uses self-control as a very important predictor of school readiness and school success and showing that during the four year old or five year old years, if children make improvement in their self-control, then they also improve in the kinds of measures of math and literacy that they’re being assessed on.”

The value of self-control

As a teacher, it can be easy to think that the only reason for promoting self-control is so that the children in your classroom will behave. But this can be a poor reason to use as the only reason for teaching young children self-control.  Why you ask? If a child doesn’t exhibit progress in good behavior, teachers can easily give up and decide that the better approach (or easier approach) is to be strict or to take away privileges or to somehow focus on punishment rather than on growth and development.

For this reason, it is important to truly understand that the child who develops self-control will ultimately be more successful in school and home all throughout his life.  So my point here is to make sure you understand that self-control isn’t about making kids behave, it is about giving children the tools they need to guide their own behavior and as they accomplish this goal, they will be building the tools they need to be positive participants in the classroom experience.

What doesn’t promote self-control?

First of all, let’s take a look at what doesn’t promote the development of self-control.  Our experts highlight one main point on what doesn’t work…

• Strict discipline: Strict discipline may be needed for certain occasions but strict discipline does not teach self-control. Strict discipline is about doing something because someone else told you to. Strict discipline may keep kids quiet and doing what you insist they should do but it doesn’t teach them to regulate their own behavior and to do something because they want to do it.

What does promote self-control?

The experts in this Bam Radio Show share several different strategies for helping young children develop self-control. The exciting thing about each of these strategies is that they are very doable and more than likely, already in place in your classroom.  The key is, recognizing that each of these strategies should be in action in your classroom and do indeed promote self-control…

• Playing Games Games like ‘Red Light – Green Light’ and ‘Simon Says’ are simple and fun activities that come with rules of play. In order to play the games, children must learn the rules and then seek to follow the rules.  As children play active and fun games such as these, they are developing a sense of fairness, right, wrong, and processing how to successfully follow the rules so they can successfully play the game.

• Complex Dramatic Play: In the process of dramatic play – children plan their activities, negotiate with other children, and make up rules for play.  Dramatic play encourages children to work together, communicate with each other, and follow those “unwritten rules” of social conduct that they need in the process of developing self-control.

• Building on children’s interests:  In order for young children to develop self-control, there needs to be a “want-to” aspect in the process. Building on children’s interests makes them want to participate and want to succeed so take time to find out what the children enjoy and bring those elements into your classroom.

One final thought

One thought that really stood out to me in this conversation was this statement…

There is more

These are just a few highlights from this enlightening discussion on teaching children self-control. Click on over to Bam Radio  to learn more about what you can do to help children develop self-control.

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Copyright 2011 © Deborah J. Stewart

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Please do not sell, post, curate, publish, or distribute all or any part of this article without author's permission! However you are invited to share a link to this post on Pinterest, Facebook, and other social networking sites.

The number one request my students have had over the past few weeks was to make volcanoes. I would have let them make them sooner but it seemed with Mother’s Day and all the other things we were wrapping up, I just couldn’t fit them in.  Finally, I took an entire part of one day and made sure that we dedicated it to our volcanic adventure…

My husband is in the process of doing a little landscaping in our outdoor area and so right now there are large piles of dirt everywhere. This was a perfect setting for our volcanic adventure! To create our volcanoes, each child started by filling a plastic water bottle with a mixture of 1/2 water and 1/2 vinegar. Did you know that you do not have to use pure vinegar to create a bubbly reaction? Watered down vinegar will do the trick quite nicely too…

Then each child chose one food color to add to their water and vinegar mixture. We added the food color so the children could more easily see their volcanoes when they erupted plus it is just more fun to have colorful bubbles…

Once the bottles were all ready to go, the children went outdoors and picked a spot on the peak of our big volcanic mountains (dirt piles)…

The children dug a hole in the mountain with their hands and then buried their bottles up to the neck or as deep as they could get them to go.  The dirt was very soft which made this process work out very well…

After the bottles were buried, then the children went back down the mountain to get a teaspoon of volcanic ash (baking soda) to add to their bottles…

And then they stood back and watched the eruptions begin…

Each time the bubbles would slow down, the children ran back down the mountain to get more baking soda on their spoons and back up again to make the volcano erupt once more…

And once the baking soda no longer did the trick, the children ran to empty out their bottles and start all over again…

This process brought together outdoor play and large motor skills (climbing in the dirt); science  (exploration, flow of gravity and the mixing of different properties); problem solving (asking questions and seeking answers to how to keep the bubbles going);  math (measuring out the ingredients)…

But above all else, this process was something the children found meaningful because it was their idea!

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Copyright 2011 © Deborah J. Stewart

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Please do not sell, post, curate, publish, or distribute all or any part of this article without author's permission! However you are invited to share a link to this post on Pinterest, Facebook, and other social networking sites.