Some popular works on our shelves in the primary room right now...

Air, Land, Water work...a classic Water color painting with a masking tape resist: first make a design with masking tape on water color paper, paint over tape onto paper, let painting dry, and remove tape to reveal design.

Marble painting: place three drops of each color of paint onto paper in tray, spoon marble into tray, tilt tray to roll marble through the paint, marble will leave a trail of paint to create an abstract design, remove painting and hang to dry, clean tray and marble, return to shelf.

Using a scale to weigh miniature vegetables has been very popular; A simple transfer work for our youngest students while our older fives and sixes are working on estimation, weight, addition, and more.

An extension for the hundred board (my Mom's idea, thanks Mom!). I cut 10 small 1/2" slits on each side of a piece of cardboard (recycled), the child wraps yard around the cardboard to create a 10x10 grid, and fills in each square with a number to create their own hundred board.

Tying small pieces of yarn on a mesh grid to create a small rug...

Sewing a button onto a thin netting fabric (tulle)--great for seeing through to the other side and watching the needle as it moves through.

Sewing buttons onto felt hearts and then stitching two hearts together to make a small pillow.

Clouds In Our Classroom

It's so much fun to lay on the grass in our play yard at school and watch the clouds float by.
This was the inspiration for a whole unit on clouds.

Types of clouds identification and classifying.

Cloud push pin work.

Cloud books from our local library...

Some more cloud work in our practical life area. The sewing a cloud pillow was off the shelf being used when I snapped this photo.

Painting clouds with a clothespin and cotton ball. Excellent fine motor practice.

Painting clouds with a "dot painter". Great for Toddlers and younger threes, although the older children enjoy the work as well.

Spelling, sorting, and mapping...just a few new activities that are popular right now

I found a big bag of letter beads on sale at the craft store and I am trying to find creative uses for them. Here's a simple language work where children build words by sliding the letter beads onto a piece of pipe cleaner. It's sort of a variation on the movable alphabet, matching, and a fine motor beading activity. We have some first year students moving up from our toddler room this summer. Here is a simple sorting activity with dinosaur counters. They can be sorted by color or type of dinosaur.

This sorting activity is a little more challenging. Children place the objects on the chart sorting by color and type of vehicle. We have it out in our math area but it could just as easily find a home in the practical life area or language area.

Here's a simple map drawn on card stock, some command cards (recycled plastic pill containers), and some counter vehicles. Lot's of fun and incorporates so many different skills.

Land Forms

Our children are fascinated by geography. They really enjoy learning the terminology of land forms...lake, island, gulf, peninsula, strait, isthmus, cape, bay.

I used oven baked clay to shape the land forms in small bread pans.

A vinyl mat for work, laminated cards for labels, a pitcher for water, eye dropper of blue food coloring to color water, a sponge and rag for clean up.

Continents Globe

In the geography area of our classroom we have a map of the continents of the world, six individual continent maps, and a map of the United States.

TIP: To make an affordable Globe of the Continents purchase an out of date globe at a thrift store ( I picked mine up for a dollar) and paint over the exisiting maps. I choose to paint our globe with a high quality oil based artist paint for color and durability, but you could use whatever paints you have on hand. If you use a water based acrylic I recommend applying a clear polyurethene finish coat for durability. Remeber to make sure the colors you choose to paint your globe match the colors on your continent map.

A Land and Water Globe (sandpaper globe) can be made in a similar way. First paint the oceans blue and the continents brown. Let paint dry thouroughly. Next apply glue to the brown continent areas and dust areas with brown sand (sand will only stick where you have applied glue so make sure you apply thouroughly). Let dry and top coat with a clear polyurethene for durability.

We are currently studying the continent of North America. Some of our older children (4 and 5 year olds) decided to make thier own map of North America. Using materials we already had available in our environment they created this beautiful and dimensional map. They used clay to build the mountain ranges, sandpaper for the deserts, cotton balls for the artic region, hay for the grassland, rolled tissue paper for the temperate forests, and celephane for the oceans. They finished by adding labels and animals.

Here is a simple science sorting activity for children to explore the concepts of living and non-living.

Here is a science and geography activity where children can classify animals by the primary environment where they exist-air, land, or water. One jelly jar contains soil for land, one contains blue colored water, and the last is empty containing only air. We have had some interesting conversations about animals that may live in two of the environments such a a frog that can live in the water and on land. I always let the child choose the classification for animals that can be placed in more than one category.