Monday, July 16, 2012

Painting with ice cubes

What a fun activity for a hot day! We used it as an art project for "The Letter I" but this is still something the kids like to come back to and I have to reload my ice cube trays with more paint very often.

You will need:

ice cube tray
washable paint
water
card stock paper


You have to prepare the trays night before. Pick colors and dilute them with water. Pour them into the tray and place into a freezer for overnight.


Take them out immediately before kids are ready to use them because they melt fairly quickly in this weather.  Squeeze the paint out of the tray and have kids paint away.


Because it is hot right now, kids appreciate the cold ice in their hands and don't complain!


Mix colors, smudge them, share them - have fun!


 These are the results! Unplanned effect? The table surface pattern showed up on our pictures! It looked really cool!


Saturday, July 14, 2012

Jelly Bean math

Including some sweet props into our daily learning always motivates the kids. Letter J is for jelly beans and so they found their way into our math today. 
We were focusing on learning how to count till five and we included some color sorting in this activity as well.
You can download free copy here.


It is also very good for the kids to pick up small objects such as jelly beans in order to exercise their fine motor skills!


Another free download you can get here is a "J is for Jelly Bean" counting puzzle. Simply print it out, cut up the paper on the marked lines, and if you wish you can laminate it. Printing it on card stock paper also works great.

Mix the strips up and have the kids put them in order creating a picture. The kids should say the numbers out loud.