Glitter Glasses

New Years Glasses

Skill:  Small motor

This would be fun to make for a New years eve party and use in the dress up area.  You can pretend you are putting on a New Years eve party and have a lot of sparkle, horns, and hats located in the dress up area.

"Glitter glasses and Feathers (and Sequins)" 

 

First you put glue the glasses with the glue stick.  Then you put the glitter on the glasses. Finally, you put the (clear) nail polish on and let them dry and it is fabulous!

I hope you have a very nice time doing it, it was so fun. You might have to use the hot glue gun for the feathers and sequins. These glasses were so much fun and so fabulous! 

And speaking of fabulous glasses, check out this awesomeness! Linz at That's So Cuegly turned her daughter's crazy orange glasses into these posh little leopard print frames using nail polish! Love it! Click the photo to go to her tutorial. (I WANT SOME FOR ME!!)

Christmas

Santa Triangle

Skill: Shape recognition, geometry, and small motor 

 What a fun idea! You can do this craft and conquer three different skills:  shape recognition, math (geometry), and with gluing and cutting, small motor skills.

To make Santa, you will first need to cut a large triangle from red paper.  You will need a pink circle for his head.  (You can either cut eyes and nose from paper or draw them later.)  Finally, cut black boots, belt, and a buckle.

Start off by gluing his head and boots into place.  Then comes the fun part.  Pull apart cotton balls and stick the white, fluffy pieces on to form the fur trim of his hat, his beard and fur trim on his boots.  Stick on his paper belt and buckle, add eyes and nose and Santa is ready to decorate a door!

Christmas

Snow Globe

Skill: Science... using your senses taste (before glitter), smell, touch, and see. 

Learning to use the things around the house to make a fun craft/science experiment.  What happen when you mix corn syrup and glitter.  Learn about the texture of the syrup and how it feels, taste (before glitter), what it looks like.

Snow Globe Craft

Making a snow globe with your child is a great winter craft! This is a simple snow craft that our preschooler absolutely loved making and playing with afterwards. All you need is some corn syrup, a bottle and glitter – and we promise it’s not as messy as you think it is! Try this great preschool winter craft with your kids today. 

What you'll need: Materials Small clear bottle or jar (baby food jars or spice jars work well – they must have a lid) Corn syrup Glitter Popsicle stick or child-safe butter knife Water *Optional: hot glue gun/hot glue – adults only How to make your Snow Globe Craft Place the jar on a paper plate or some newspaper. Fill the jar 1/3 of the way full with corn syrup. The corn syrup helps the glitter stay in suspension longer. You will use water to fill the rest of the jar. At this point, only add about half of the water you need and then mix the corn syrup and water together until the corn syrup dissolves most of the way. If you fill the jar the whole way full and then have a preschooler stir it, we guarantee a mess! Once the corn syrup is dissolved, top the jar off with water. Sprinkle in some glitter. Use as many colors as you’d like, and as much as you’d like. Put the lid on the jar and shake to watch the snow swirl. ** Here is the optional part. If you’d like, you can hot glue the lid onto the jar. Our daughter is good about not opening things and we don’t expect this craft to last forever, so we did not do this step. If you do glue the lid on, make sure to use hot glue and not something that will wash away in water (like Elmer’s glue) or the water in your globe may turn cloudy as it eats the glue.

Christmas

Footprint and Handprint sleigh

Skill: Sensory using your students foot, hand, and fingers

Use green, red, and brown tempra paint. Use a large piece of paper to be able to fit their foot and handprints onto paper.

Footprints and Handprints sleigh

I found this on Pinterest and thought this would be perfect for Christmas parties or for a craft project with kids during Christmas break. It's made with tempra paint, their handprints, and footprint – How Precious! Footprint and handprint Santa

Turkey activity and craft

Ellison machine

Turkey

Skill: letter matching

  Reinforce letter matching with this fun Thanksgiving activity. Attach a simple turkey body cutout to a wall. Then label pairs of construction paper feathers with matching letters and place the feathers on the floor. Invite a volunteer to choose a feather and then look for its match. When he finds the matching feather, prompt students to jump up and strut around the room while gobbling like turkeys. Then help the child attach both feathers to the turkey. Repeat the process for each remaining pair of feathers. For a different skill option, program pairs of feathers with matching uppercase and lowercase letters. Tell us what you think about this idea! 

CRAFT:

Skill: Science, small motor, and geometry

 All you need is some leaves, one large circle and a small circle for the turkey and glue.  You will need some paper to be able to glue your turkey together.

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Gumdrop Turkey

Gumdrop Turkey

Skill: Small motor and colors

You can do this for your Thanksgiving party. You can ask open-ended questions about colors, talk about turkeys and where they live. Do they (the student) like to eat turkey?

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Gumdrop turkey

Thanksgiving craft

Thanksgiving placemats

Skill: Language and writing, small motor skills, colors, and geometry.

Before our Thanksgiving break my little ones will be having their very own Thanksgiving feast right here in the classroom! We will be serving turkey, mashed potatoes, carrots, corn bread, and I am sure a few will be requesting cereal as a favorite :) I can't wait to celebrate with my little ones soon, so we have been very busy preparing by making turkey headband hats and hand print turkey placemats!

 I've seen so many variations of the turkey headband in the past two years here at my preschool, and of course online, that I just incorporated my favorite aspects of the turkey headbands into one pretty cute little turkey, if you ask me ;) Since my children are so little I was able to use a 12x18 piece of brown construction paper cut lengthways.   

We also have been hard at work making placemats for the party. I have loved this turkey craft since I first saw it right after Thanksgiving last year on Pinterest, and couldn't wait to do something with it. I started out by painting each children's right hand red, yellow, and green, then their left hand brown and orange. The hands formed a half of circle around the paper. As you can see, it can be tricky to get the hands perfectly centered, but that is what makes each one unique.  Once the paint dried I cut around the outside of the paper to give it a border using decorative scissors.

 

While the hand prints were drying I had the children make little turkeys that we would then glue in the middle of the handprints.

 Here is an example of one of the finished placemats. I LOVE how they turned out. Some handprints were done on white construction paper (one of my classes) and some were done on beige paper (my other class). I personally think the beige paper gives it more of a fall-themed feel, which I like very much. I personalized each by adding their names, year and HAPPY THANKSGIVING on the bottom.

 This is the one I did last year that I put together last minute. I wasn't happy with the finished result, but I was short for time and wanted them to go home with something the day of their party.

 This is a placemat my son made last year and I am sure my daughter will be making this year (same teacher for both of my kids), so I can wait to set the table for them this year with their adorable placemats! I LOVE how his teacher personalized it by adding his name in the front underneath the poem and pictures of all the things he was thankful for on the back.

ABC Book

Camera, Laminating, and Binding

ABC Book:

Skill: letter recognition, writing, and oral development                                           

      

The objective of this activity is to create an alphabet book or slideshow with photos from your digital camera. It's a fun activity for early readers and is most appropriate for kids from ages 3-7, although older children may enjoy a more competitive version.

Here's How:

1. Choose a letter of the alphabet and help your child find objects that begin with that letter.
2. Take at least one picture for each letter. For a more in-depth project, take pictures of several objects for each letter.
3. Download the pictures from the camera to your computer.
4. Either print the pictures or load them into photo editing software.
5. Create a collage (either on paper or in the photo editing software) with pictures that begin with the letter in question. Don’t forget to include a capital and small version of the letter.
6. Bind the pages together in a book, or create a digital slideshow. Makingbooks.com has some great instructions for binding books with kids.

Tips:

1. Avoid turning this into a chore. Spread the activity over several days or weeks. Try doing one letter each day or week.
2. For older kids, turn it into a scavenger hunt. Give them an allotted amount of time to take a picture of one thing that begins with each letter of the alphabet. Or, give them an allotted time to take as many pictures of different things that begin with the same letter of the alphabet.
3. Explore your house and backyard with the kids. If they are old enough to identify items that begin with a certain letter, let them lead the way. If they are younger, help them find objects and explain the sounds as you go along. For example, “Here’s an apple. Apple starts with the letter "A." Can you hear the ‘a’ sound?”

What You Need

• Digital Camera
• Photo Editing Software (at least able to crop and resize)                
• Printer (optional)
• Scissors (optional)
• Scrapbook, poster board, or stiff paper (optional)
• Gluestick or other adhesive for paper (optional)
• Binder machine
• Laminator machine

                                                                               

When you laminate and bind your book, you will be able to keep your book longer.  You can also give this as a gift to a parent or grandparent.

Butterfly Life Cycle

Power Point

Butterfly Life Cycle:

Skill: Science, reading, and language development.

This is a lesson on the life cycle of a butterfly for a kindergarten class. This includes a craft project to go along with the lesson.  This is a lesson that can be used throughout the week.

Butterfly PowerPoint click here

Coffee filter butterfly:  All you need is 1 coffee filter, 1 clothes pin, 1 pipe cleaner, and markers to color. Have your student color the coffee filter and clothes pin first. Pinch the middle of the coffee filter together and put the clothes pin in the middle. Add the piper cleaner to the end of the clothes pin.

Paper butterfly: You need a large piece of paper to paint all kinds of colors on. Let it dry and then cut six oval shapes out for the wings, a small oval for a head, and a med. size oval for the body. Glue everything together and add eyes, a mouth and anything else your little student might want on their butterfly.

Butterfly hand prints: All you need is bright colorful paint, little hands, construction paper for the body, and some eyes.

Hand print Caterpillar: You need bright colorful paint, paper, and little hands.

Books to read:

 Eric Carl The Very Hungry Caterpillar  video 

           

 The Lamb and the Butterfly

Glow Slime

Video

Glow Slime:

Skill: Science, sensory, following directions, and measurements

What a fun science experiment and art project all in one. You can have fun doing this during a Halloween party at school or just a fun activity to do at home.

I have included a video you can see how to make the glow slime.



Glow Slime YouTube video

Supplies you will need can for your project.

You can find the Borax at a Wal-Mart where they have laundry soap. The white glue can be found in the school supplies or you can go to Hobby Lobby craft store.