Outdoors
Want to preserve the beauty of spring and summer flowers, practice your child’s fine motor skills, and have some fun craft possibilities?
With all the extra time spent at home, might as well spend it improving your garden soil, decreasing your waste, and giving your kids some fun new pets right?
The children’s interest in roly-polies began when a few friends noticed them on our cement path.
These past weeks in the Nature Lab we’ve been busy working in the garden and caring for the animals. We are developing routines where the children will become competent in many of the tasks that are regularly required to keep our garden and animals happy and healthy.
We learned about different birds and what their names are by reading “Feathers for lunch” by Lois Ehlert.We talked about what a bird may use to build a nest and where some birds choose to build their homes.
The children are having too much fun with Hex bug robots. To begin the lesson, we took the little Hex bug apart. We examined the tiny battery and the motor. The older children at CMP will be making a real robot with a battery pack and a larger motor soon.
Here at Carmel Mountain Preschool, we support and encourage children’s interest of the natural world by engaging them in real, hands-on investigations and learning activities both indoors and outdoors.
This week we started a fun unit using found objects and paint. We began to sort and classify the rubber bands and had fun attaching our feet and hands together. I shared with them my idea: “I have an idea” and demonstrated a fun ‘process art’ activity’ that you will see in the pictures to follow.
Each playground at CMP has a special tinkering area for the children to create, design and explore in. Some of the new materials include rocks, stones and crystals of various sizes shapes and weights.
It is called Box City. Save the boxes! Tape them up, put some weighted items in some of them and start a collection. The possibilities and fun are endless. A roll of masking tape, some markers and paint will enhance their creations. Take a look at the pictures from Tinker Hollow and let your children’s own imaginations and inquiries lead you.
This fun watercolor project is all about the exploration of color and magic and of mixing! This exercise gives each child a chance to work on their brush handle it skills, color identification and inspiration for working with different mediums.
Animal movement is always a favorite with preschoolers. Getting to act out their favorite animal moves is fun for all.
In this lesson kids get to explore how many different ways we can use the same materials and introduce the concept of clay printing by relating it to something students might already know/have used: stamps!
We can use a stick and leaves to create our very own paintbrushes! By sparking a child’s creativity it allows them to engage and view the world around them through different lenses.
We encourage healthy food choices, which is why we get the kids involved in making their food and to let them see where healthy foods come from.
I often get questions from parents in passing about what they should plant in their gardens with their children. I love these questions but figured that my quick responses at pick-up and drop-off could be expanded upon. So here goes!
