Beach Craft

We created these beach scene's during our summer ocean unit.  The children really enjoyed making them and playing with them afterwards.  

The ocean was made from one part shaving cream to one part white glue, then I added liquid watercolor. 

The sand was glued on with white school glue.

I used cardboard for the base.

Here are step-by-step instructions:

The children first painted half the cardboard with glue using a paintbrush.

They took handfuls of sand and covered the area that had glue on it. Then shook off the extra sand. 

I let them decorate their beach with shells 

And rocks. 

They used a large spoon and cover the second half with the shaving cream/glue mixture and spread it around.

I let them pick out one crab and one sea animal for their project.  We talked about where each animal would prefer to live and why.  We talked about crabs being able to go on land and sea and they choose where their crab wanted to be.

We glued down the animals. 

Children picked out their umbrellas and towels and decided where one the beach they'd like to sit on their beach and glued those down.

Waa lah!  Insto-beach!!!

Sea Shell Collage Sailboats

These sail boats are made from a collage of natural items I mostly found around the school. We did them while we were doing an Ocean unit during the summer. The sails are made from abalone shells and have a beautiful irredesent shimmer to them. Okay, that part isn't exactly a local resource here in Tucson, but the mesquite pods and sticks are!

Felt Flower Pots

These amazing flowers and pots match together by color to promote one to one correspondence.  One to one correspondence is a critical skill that children need to master in order to be able to move on to more formal math.  It sounds like an easy skill to be able to match a number with the amount of parts, but for young children it can be quite challenging.  In early childhood education it is something that we are constantly working on throughout the school year.  The best way to encourage children to learn is through inviting materials and through play.

I even want to play with these gorgeous flowers and their pots!

So very pretty!

These flower pots were made by a colleague and are located in Ms. Shayna's Wild Things classroom at St. Mark's Preschool and Kindergarten.  St. Mark's is located midtown in Tucson, AZ.

Finger Painting Prints

This week the children have been getting to know the classroom and we have had simple open ended art projects where the children are encouraged to explore and be creative.

One such project has been mixing finger paint color and then making print of their drawings.  These are a few example of the process and product.  The children loved seeing how the prints come out.  And while many just practiced with scribble art, others began venturing into more representational art.

Stick People

These stick people turned out super cute and the kids really enjoyed making them.  It would be even better to extend upon this activity and bring in literacy by having children create stories about them!

Oh, the possibilities...

Japanese Children's Day

May 5th, which is the fifth day of the fifth month, is Children's Day in Japan.  This special holiday is for respecting children's personalities and celebrating their happiness.  Isn't that beautiful?!  I wish we had such a holiday here!

This year and last year too, we were lucky enough to have Japanese mothers in our class that were willing to come in and talk about this special day and do a project with the children.

The project this year was folding a warriors hat with newspaper.  Although it required a lot of help, the children really loved the outcome!  Here are pictured directions:

Even baby Bobcat (our classroom is called The Bobcats this year) has his own Japanese warrior hat!  

Lucky Bobcat!

Ben's Bells

Ben's Bells is an amazing local nonprofit here is Tucson.  

"The mission of Ben's Bells is to inspire, educate, and motivate people to realize the impact of intentional kindness, and to empower individuals to act according to that awareness, thereby strengthening ourselves, our relationships and our communities."  

It's truly a heartwarming group, that has worked with schools to promote kindness at such an influential time in a child's life.  

They promote many inspirational projects within schools, but some are called "Kindness Trees".  Here are our mini Kindness Trees we made for Father's Day.  You can't see it, but behind each Kindness Coin (the little flowers that say "be kind") is a dictated quote about what there father does that is kind.  

Please check out Ben's Bells website to learn more about them and how you can inspire your school to become a Kind School.

https://bensbells.org