Nine things you need to know about N

Number 1: Nutcrackers

Since I'm writing this post in late November, it's a great time to think about holiday decorations and activities, and nutcrackers come to mind!  The nutcracker art project I'm showing here was all about cutting and pasting and shapes.  As you can see we've used a variety of rectangles and some circles to create our nutcrackers, and then decorated them with markers.  One of the lovely things about doing this project in my preschool was that the children could do it 2 or 3 years in a row, with different results that showed off their improved scissor and drawing skills.

Number 2: Names!

Learning their name is a big deal for a child - being able to identify it, read it, and write the letters is something that takes a long time, but since their name is THE most important word in the whole world, it never gets old!  For our snowmen names we cut out circles (one for each letter plus one for the head) and glued them down, wrote one letter on each circle, and decorated the snowman.  We did a similar project with green triangles that stacked to make a Christmas tree - but you could also practice writing it with different pens, pencils and markers, stamp it, find the letters on a cereal box, etc, the possibilities are endless!

Number 3 and 4: Nests and Narwhals

Yes, I really did teach the kiddos about narwhals.  It's easy to find a short video on YouTube about them, and then to talk about how awesome they are!  The hand prints were inspired by these from Red Ted Art - she has SO many awesome ideas, you should definitely check out her blog!

The first nest was inspired by this one from Crystal and Co. but I later modified it by printing the side of a hand from the tip of the pinkie finger to the wrist, and I think it looks more nest like this way.

Number 5: Nuts

Clearly this isn't a good activity if you have a child with nut allergies.  For those of you who can use nuts in the classroom, I found a bag of mixed nuts in the shell one December, used it for sensory play for a while, then later was still able to shell and eat the nuts.  This was one of my first sensory bins to put together, and because the nut shells felt very wood-y, I included other wood like craft supplies: clothes pins, corks and popsicle sticks.  They started out all sorted in small boxes (as you can see) and were used in various ways.  I initially put them out with cardboard tubes, and the children slid them down, discovering that the nuts rolled and the sticks and clothes pins just slid down.  Unfortunately some of the children decided the cardboard tubes made good arm cannons, so I decided to cut holes in a box and secure the tubes in the box for more purposeful play. (Yes, that's Paula talk for let's not pretend to kill each other.)  Sometimes we dumped the nuts down the tubes, sometimes we sorted, sometimes they ended up in the toy farm. Overall it was a good introduction to sensory bins for both me and the children, as we all learned something.

 

Number 6: Numbers

Sure, your child can count to 10, or maybe 20, isn't that everything they need to know about numbers?  Well, no.  Once children have the counting sequence memorized it's time to start counting objects.  Can they point to one object as they say each number?  Do they know to stop counting when they run out of objects to count?  Can they read the numbers and show you the correct number of fingers (apples, erasers, legos, etc.) to match the numeral?  This Christmas themed counting activity covers numerals and number words up to 20, and is a fun way to practice numbers. 

As they get a little bigger, you'll want your children to learn your phone number.  I've found that chanting it together regularly makes it so much easier to remember!  When my boys were little we'd recite our address and phone number every time we pulled into the driveway, and they had it memorized just in time for us to move to a new address. (You win some, you lose some)!

Number 7: Letter Nn crafts, of course!

For the uppercase letter N, I put out number stickers and challenged the children to put them on their letter in number order. The lowercase n was on either black paper, and decorated with stars to represent the night sky.

 

Number 8: Noise

The good news is, you don't even have to plan for this activity, chances are that your little one(s) will make plenty of noise anyway!  This is a good week to provide musical instruments (outside is really best) or to have your child make their own noise makers.  Not into noise?  Substitute in Nature - there is always something to explore and discover outside!

 

Number 9: Nine little reindeer song

I wrote this counting rhyme several years ago, perhaps your littles will enjoy singing it with me!

That's it for this week!  See you next time for the letter Oo.  Until then, have a lovely week, a delicious Thanksgiving, and stay safe!  

Paula

Nutty for N

It's the first week in December, and we're learning about the letter N, so of course we have to make nutcrackers!  We watched a short youtube.com video about nutcrackers (see it here), then got to work making our own.  I gave each child a paper cut to 3" x 8.5", with lines drawn at 4", then every 3/4", and the kiddos cut those out.  The large piece became the body, and the narrow strips the arms and legs.  They also cut out a circle to make their nutcrackers' face.  Look how hard this child is concentrating to hold the scissors!

Next the children assembled their nutcrackers, gluing each piece to their paper.  You can see we had both a real nutcracker and a kid-made example to help them understand where to place the pieces. 

The final touch was adding faces, hair, and details to the uniforms.  We even had a gold pen to dress up the uniforms!  I love how unique each nutcracker is!  We admired these as we listened to music from The Nutcracker during snack this week.

 You might think we'd work a lot on numbers this week, to tie in with the N theme, but shapes seemed to come up again and again.  We're talking about 2 dimensional shapes a lot, of course, but the kindergarteners especially have also been learning names for 3 D shapes.  I love The Shapes Song 2 on youtube.com to teach shape names - and many of the kiddos even remember dodecahedron from watching it!

I took a group of children to the story time at the Botanic Research Institute of Texas this week.  They have the best story times I've ever seen!  While the children were arriving, there was a tent with stories to read, word puzzles to go with the story of the week, and this fantastic sorting activity.

 After the stories, the children chose from more activities.  My group especially loved using nutmeg scented salt dough to anchor a sprig of rosemary, and wrapping it up to look like a little Christmas tree.  The nutmeg and rosemary smelled wonderful, and little fingers got a workout with the salt dough and red yarn.

 There was also a sink and float station, where the children put small stones and cranberries into a tub of water.  Can you guess which ones sank, and which floated?  Now, why haven't I thought of cranberries as a seasonal play item before?!  We'll definitely be repeating this fun activity at school this holiday season.

 Another new-to-me activity this week was making our names on snowmen and Christmas trees.  I found the ideas via Pinterest, the tree was from http://mrskarensclass.blogspot.com, and the snowman came from http://www.thissimplehome.com.  The kiddos chose which they wanted to make, and cut out circles or triangles to write the letters of their names on.  Cutting, especially circles, is a great fine motor skill, and writing and glue practice are always skills we need to work on in pre-k and kinder.

We'll definitely do this activity again next year!  I noticed that several children did a much better job of writing their names on this activity than they usually do.  Perhaps focusing on just one letter at a time made this seem a more manageable activity, or maybe they were so pleased with their cutting that they worked extra hard to write the letters in their names.  Either way, they worked hard, wrote well, and loved the activity!

I did notice that it isn't as easy to read the names written on the dark green Christmas trees as it is on the snowmen.  Next time I'll reward their careful work (and make it easier to read) with a marker to write their letters!

 I love the hand print narwhals and nests the children made for their hand print alphabet books this week.  Narwhals aren't exactly day to day preschool conversation at my house, so we watched a short youtube.com video about them.  You can't go wrong with National Geographic videos!

You can see all the art in our on-line art gallery at http://www.artsonia.com/schools/school.asp?id=141038.  We'd love for you to check it out!

 For another fun art project, we made torn tissue paper poinsettias.  I found the idea here, but it originally came from artprojectsforkids.org. 

I save used tissue paper from gifts, and offer it as an art medium.  The paper tears or cuts easily, comes in every color imaginable, is free, and takes up almost no storage space.  What a perfect medium!  The kiddos were very focused on their creating, and created gorgeous holiday art. 

Finally, here's a sneak peek at some more Christmas activities that we have in store for the kiddos!