Can You C What I See?

 

C is for Cookie! - can you tell I grew up with Sesame Street?  My children did too, but even if we hadn't, we'd still love cookies for the letter C week.... and all the other weeks too!

Activity #1 this week is cooking!

Children love to cook, or at least, that's been my experience.  There's something almost magical about spending time with your favorite grown up, doing grown up things like cracking eggs and measuring flour, and turning all those ingredients into something delicious!  It definitely takes longer to cook when you have little hands helping you - but let me jump waaaaaaaay ahead and tell you that you'll be so glad you took the time to teach them when you have a teen who can make dinner for the family!  I've taught at least 100 children (age 3-5) how to crack an egg, and you can too!  You'll do a lot of explaining and hand holding, and you'll probably pick some egg shells out of the bowl and wipe some egg of the counter top, but how else will our little ones grow?  

I digress.  C is for cookie - so help each other make a simple sugar cookie dough, then roll it on the counter like you would to make play dough snakes, curl it a little into a C shape, and bake.

While they're baking, I recommend reading any one of the books about Who Stole the Cookies from the Cookie Jar.  Your kiddos will let you know what to do after you cook them 😄.

For times when you can't actually cook, making a camera cookie is a fun alternative!  You'll need a square of graham cracker, some peanut butter (or other spread), a small round cookie, and a few small round candies.  Give your child a butter knife, and let them spread the peanut butter on the graham cracker, then arrange the toppings to look like a camera.  Smile!

Activity #2:  Hungry Caterpillars

Surely you know the book The Very Hungry Caterpillar, by Eric Carle?  It's wonderful for learning about the life cycle of butterflies, but that little caterpillar lends itself to making a letter C shape to reinforce the letter sound too! For the upper case letter C we make a simple clown face on our letter cut out - and hey, cutting starts with C too, so remember to let your littles work their finger muscles and cut their letter out!

Activity #3 Hand prints - are you and your little ones loving the hand painting process as much as mine always have?  Here are some cute ideas for letter C!  (I've linked the original source for each handprint below, you can see many many more on my Handprints and footprints Pinterest board.)

Cake - paint your child's palm and enough fingers to show how old they are.  When the paint is dry use markers or glue on small pieces of paper to make the "flames" on the candles.

Camel - paint their whole hand, then let them add a neck and head to their camel.  When the paint is dry they can draw on the details.  For the sandy background on my example we tore some tissue paper, then used a glue stick on the solid paper, and stuck the tissue paper down.  (If you try to put the glue stick on the tissue it will probably tear.)

Caterpillar - perfect for anyone who is hesitant to get their whole hand painted, just finger tips and a leaf cut out.

Crab - paint one hand at a time, make the palm prints overlap slightly.  When it's dry let your child add wiggle eyes and claws.

Castle - paint their whole hand, when it's dry they cut and paste triangles to turn their finger prints into turrets, and add doors and windows.

Clifford - one big red hand print.  I have to admit I drew the outline for Clifford's features, then the children added a triangular nose and wiggle eyes. 

Activity #4: Crawl into a cave and find things that start with Cc.  "Sure," you're thinking, "Let me pop out to my local cave with my babies in tow and see if there just happen to be C things in it.  What could go wrong?" 

Well... nothing if your "cave" is a card table with a blanket thrown over it, and you and your child look in the toy box or around the house for things to put in the cave.  Think cup (I had a clown cup from the circus!), cows, caterpillars, cats, castles... it's amazing what you'll find when you start looking!

No room for a card table cave?  Put your letter Cc things on a table to play with!

Activity #5 Sensory play with construction vehicles or toy cars in corn.

If you've been following me a while you will know this, but for those of you who are new: if you can take sensory play outside, you'll have less clean up.  I love using feed corn for sensory play: it's super inexpensive, natural, and the squirrels clean up everything we spill.  One bag lasts a whole year, as long as you keep it dry.  I store it in our sensory play table in the garage, then scoot it out when we want to play with it.  Some people store sensory materials in tubs, and choose which one(s) to play with.  Some people don't like the mess of it at all, and choose not to do this kind of activity.  Do what works for YOU!

I hope these activities keep you and your little one happily busy learning!  If you post to social media about these activities I would LOVE to see!  Tag me on IG @PaulaBeckerman2399 or on FB Paula's Primary Classroom.  

Come back on Wednesday for 5 MORE ideas for the letter Cc!  

 

Art for the letter C: painted cats and collage castles

 Art for preschoolers is all about the process, the experience the children have while creating.  Blue and pink cats with purple eyes?  Sure!  Brightly colored castles that float in the air?  Of course!

 We provided each child with a plaster cat, fine brushes, paint, and however much time they needed to be satisfied with the painting experience.  We were really impressed with how long the children persisted in painting, with almost all the children painting their entire project.  I've taken photos of everyone's finished products; they're posted on our Artsonia share site with all our other art work.

We also looked at Paul Klee's Castle and Sun, and noticed the geometric shapes he used to create it.  We looked for doors, windows, turrets, towers and walls before we practiced building our own castles with blocks.  We had to build from the bottom up, and I encouraged the children to make their paper collage castles the same way.

We were all very pleased with the final art work the children created, and have it on display in our lunch room, as well as on Artsonia.com  I hope you'll click on the link to see it!

Caterpillars, cows and other C things

 As usual, we had a busy week of learning and fun at school.  Ms. Julie brought in a giant Clifford stuffed animal, so we had Clifford books and a Clifford listening center.

 We played with the construction vehicles in dirt outside - then the children helped me put the dirt into the garden so we can put another medium in the sensory table next week.

 We pulled objects that start with C out of a clown cup...

 ... and painted with car tires.

 Of course we had to read the ever popular The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle, and this year I found stickers to go along with the book, so the children sequenced the stickers and retold the story.  Unfortunately the stickers did not come with a butterfly - so we drew our own butterflies to finish the story.

 For snack that day we ate the first five fruits the caterpillar tried: apples, oranges, plums, strawberries and pears.  They were tasty!

 We even found a real caterpillar while we were outside playing, and the children observed it for a long time.

 One of our friends even brought in a cow skull for us!  We have the coolest things to check out and observe in our play space!

C is for Cookie!

There are some things we just have to do.  Making cookies for the letter C is one of them!  What a fun "have-to-do" it is!

We did two cookie projects this week.  For the first, I spread peanut butter on graham crackers, and the children used cookies and candies to turn it into a "camera".

Another day we made cookies from scratch!

As always, we started by washing our hands.  The children helped me a few at a time, but everyone had a turn to do something.

 They measured and poured, cracked eggs, sifted flour, and mixed.

To make our cookies C shaped, the children rolled the dough in their hands to make a snake shape, then bent it on the cookie sheet to form the letter.  It was hard to not eat them right away!

 I baked them as the children got up from nap, and we had warm cookies and cold milk for snack.  :-)

 Like Cookie Monster says, "C is for cookie, that's good enough for me!"

 " Cookie, cookie, cookie starts with C!"

Letter C Review Day

For the letter C review, I thought we'd get a little crabby.  We read two books about hermit crabs looking for new homes, Is This a House For Hermit Crab?, by M. McDonald, and A House For Hermit Crab by Eric Carle.  As we read, the children took turns holding our crab finger puppet, and they acted out the Eric Carle version, joining in on the refrain.  We made a Venn Diagram telling how the books were similar, and how they were different.

 

To follow up, I offered a crab craft.   I found the idea for this craft at iheartcraftythings.com.  The children had to learn how to draw a spiral shape, and chose to decorate their shells with whatever was on our art shelf: markers, crayons, pompons, foam pieces, paper, etc.

I didn't take any pictures of our meals today, but C is an easy letter to find foods for!  At lunch time we had chicken, carrots, cauliflower and corn bread dressing, and at snack I served cucumbers and crackers.  At first, only a couple of children wanted any cucumber, but when I offered to pepper and salt the slices, a lot more friends tried it - and liked it.  They ended up eating every bite of two large english cucumbers!

It was cold and wet for a good portion of the day, and we couldn't get outside in the morning.  Ms. Julie organized flashlight games, searching for letters, numbers, and words around the room.  I have an alphabet posted on my ceiling, just for this purpose, and laying on the floor with flashlights is a big deal!  We LIKE flashlights!

Later in the day we did play dough with all kinds of cookie cutters - more good C review.  I got out my real cookie cutters as well as the play ones, and the kiddos worked their finger muscles as they kneaded, rolled, and shaped the dough, and cut out cookies. 

Cookie Monster is right, C IS for cookie!

C is for cookie!

 Click!  On Monday we enjoyed cameras for snack.  I gave each child a graham cracker with peanut butter on it, a round cookie, and 3 candies, and they created their own camera snacks.  Of course, they had to snap a few pictures with them before eating them!

 

On Tuesday, I overestimated both the kiddos, and myself, with a Very Hungry Caterpillar lunch.   I thought I'd make a lunch that included lots of the foods the caterpillar ate on Saturday, the day he got a tummy ache.  We had watermelon, a slice of cheese and a slice of pepperoni (I didn't have salami, oops),  a corn bread muffin, and a variety of pickles to choose from.  The caterpillar needed one nice green leaf to make his tummy feel better, so I included a spinach leaf, and we had a very small piece of chocolate cake for dessert.  Lots of the same foods, right?  Really cute, right?  Make a lot of literacy connections, yes?   Well.  Yes.  Same foods, cute, literacy connections... but they didn't want to eat it.  The pepperoni, pickles and even the corn bread had strong flavors, and apparently a plain cheese slice isn't for eating, so the only food everyone ate was watermelon.  

 At snack time, I was much smarter, and served the fruits the caterpillar ate through during the week: apples, oranges, strawberries, pears and plums.  Every morsel of this fruit was devoured, while we listened to the story on tape, and I used my flannel board to act it out.

Here is the lower case c craft one of the kiddos made.

 

On Wednesday, we looked at a piece of art called Castle and Sun, by Paul Klee.  We talked about all the parts of the castle, noticed and named all the geometric shapes in the piece, talked about how we build our block castles from the bottom up, and could build our art castles that way too.  Next we set to work, building great castle art.

 Look how beautiful our art work is!  You can see all of our castles on Artsonia if you follow this link.

 

On Thursday we read books about cows, and made the cutest cow project, which I found here. We started by drawing flowers around the perimeter (there's that vocabulary again) of our paper with crayons.  We pushed hard, so the crayon would show through a watercolor wash really well. 

Later in the day we made some very geometric cows, reviewing lots of shape words again, while also practicing scissor and gluing skills.  Here are the cows, grazing in our fields of flowers.  You can see more of our cows on this link to Arstonia.

On Friday, we did one last exciting activity for Cc, we baked cookies.  Every child helped to put in one ingredient, and to stir the dough.  

We had warm cookies and milk for snack, and of course, bit the cookies into the shape of the letter c!