M might look like a mess

M might look like a mess... but then, we're talking about young children and learning, so there's a probably a lot of getting messy!  Not to worry, I have ideas for varying degrees of mess and mud, and you can always modify or skip things that don't appeal to you.

Let's start with mixing and measuring to make muffins - which combines math, life skills, motor skills and everyone's favorite - eating! My preschool kiddos and their parents love my pumpkin gingerbread muffins, and you'll love that they're moist, tasty and full to the brim with healthy pumpkin!  You can find the recipe here, along with a couple of other recipes that my students always asked for.

If your child wants to continue exploring the muffin theme, consider making a sensory bin.  For mine I put dried beans in a tub, added some empty spice and vanilla containers (they still smell marvellous!) and some plastic cookware and food, and the children had a fine old time!

Another fun cooking activity for letter M is to make "mud" for a treat.  Simply mix up chocolate pudding, crush chocolate cookies, then serve the pudding topped with the crushed cookies.  Mmmmm-mmmmm!

I like to have the children make this as a special treat on International Mud Day - yes, there really is such a thing - in June.  It's warm enough then (in the Northern Hemisphere anyway) to get in the mud and get thoroughly messy.  (We literally hose off outside afterwards.)

 

A much less messy way to enjoy Mm is with painted hand prints.  These are the ones we use, most of which I found via Pinterest, and have pinned to my Handprint and Footprint pinterest board.  The monkey was inspired by a post from Craftymorning.com, the mermaid from education.com, the mouse idea is from puttisworld.com and the mask from funhandprintart.blogspot.com .

 

If you haven't started talking to your children about money yet, this is a great time to introduce it!  (You know your child best, if they are likely to put coins in their mouth, don't offer them yet.)  I start by having children sort the coins - in the USA that means pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters.  This is a simple fine motor task that introduces children to the names of the coins and if you talk more about it, to their values. 

Here are a couple of other things you might want to add to your letter M studies:

- Take a trip to a museum (I've taken children as young as 3 to the science museum and as young as 4 to art museums.  Make sure you practice appropriate behavior ahead of time, and make your first visits short and sweet, build on them over time as your child develops the self control each situation requires.)

- Paint on mustaches.  We did this for pirate week, letter M, and circus themes, and these are some funny pictures you'll look back on years from now!

- Learn about mandalas, collect natural materials, and create symmetrical patterns - fun for math, exploring nature, and fine motor skills too.

What other activities for the letter M do you like to do?  Let me know in the comments! 

Until next week,

Paula

Mmmm-mmmm Muffins! A Cooking Story

If you've visited this blog before, or if your child has been to my preschool, you probably already know that I think it is important to cook with children.  Cooking is so much more than a necessary chore!  Talking about ingredients and recipes, developing vocabulary, practicing measurement skills and counting, participating in the making of food and developing an appreciation for the effort and products of cooking... this is a terrific activity to involve your kiddos in!

This week we're focusing on the letter Mm, so we have to make muffins!  As usual, we started with a literacy connection, by reading If You Give A Moose A Muffin, by Laura Numeroff.  We also read a class book from a previous year, a variation on The Muffin Man nursery rhyme that the children illustrated.  We found pages created by some of our older siblings, from when they were little!  The children love having that family connection in our classroom, and sometimes kiss the pages their siblings made.

Then of course, we washed hands and started cooking!  I called the children 4 at a time, and each child put in an ingredient, and helped to stir.

 When it was time to add spices, we smelled each one first... mmmm... they said the spices smelled like pumpkin.  I think perhaps what they mean is, the spices smell like my pumpkin muffins, which they've enjoyed many times before!  If you'd like to make our yummy muffins, I have the recipe posted on my preschool website, at paulaspreschoolandkindergarten.webs.com.

 The kiddos don't always understand smelling. When I suggest smelling something, they usually blow out instead.  (Why is it that when we want them to blow their noses, they tend to sniff, but blow in the spice jar to "smell"?!).  To solve that problem, I had them "blow pretend bubbles onto their tummy", then slipped the spice under their nose as they breathed in afterwards.

 Look at all the different colors in our bowl!  Orange pumpkin, light brown flax and ginger, dark nutmeg, and lighter cloves and cinnamon. 

 It is important that I remind the children to stir slowly each time we cook, because they all want to go fast, which sloshes out of our very full bowl!  Each time, I tell them this story:

When I was a little girl, my mother could mix very fast, and I would watch her, and think that I would never be able to do it like that!  She told me that when I grew up, I would be able to, that I just needed lots of practice, like she had when she was little.   Still, her hands could do a really good job, and mine didn't work like that.  Now that I am grown, and have practiced so many times, I'm the mommy helping the children to cook, and telling them that one day their hands will be big, and fast, and clever.  One day, a long time from now, they will be the mommies and daddies, and it will be their job to teach their children how to cook.

 My mother just happens to be visiting us.  When we were all done, I caught her having a look at the muffin mix, and doing one more little stir.

What family traditions and skills and stories are meaningful to you?  What memories do you want your children to pass on?

In this holiday season, I hope you'll make time to cook up some memories with your children!  Enjoy!