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

Celebrating Earth Day With Natural Materials

Earth Day is just around the corner, April 22nd.  #Kinderfriends, a group of early childhood educators, decided to do a blog hop to showcase some of the fun ways we've found to celebrate Earth Day - thank you for stopping by!

I like to use natural materials with my kiddos whenever I can, so I thought I'd share some ways to use free, natural items from your environment to teach important concepts!  The only item you need to provide for this is a way for students to contain their collection - a lunch sack or reused grocery bag works really well.  Take a walk outside, and see what natural items your students can find!  Have them make a collection of treasures.

My collection includes a variety of leaves and fallen flowers, plus some seed pods - but your collection will vary, depending on where you live.  Your students might find rocks, sticks, pine cones, sea shells - what ever you have around your school or home will work!

Have students sort their collections into piles of similar things - they're working on sorting and classifying skills.  How many different ways can they sort them?

Natural materials make excellent counters too.  I found a lot of acorn caps in pairs - time to count by 2s.  How about making groups of 10s and 1s, then figuring out how many items you have?

Maybe your students would rather make a design, like this mandala - and practice symmetry while they are at it. 

For slightly older students, counting the individual items in a mandala will reveal multiples of the number of axis it has.  For example, this mandala has 6 leaves, but 12 pink seeds and 12 crepe myrtle seed pods - because everything is in multiples of 6.  Can they add items in another multiple of 6?

Designs don't have to be math inspired - check out these insects!  While they are all symmetrical, this is also a great way to show understanding of other concepts that you've covered - such as insects have 3 body parts, antennae, and 6 jointed legs.

There are so many ways to use natural materials in our teaching and learning, I'd love to hear how you and your students integrate them into your Earth Day celebrations!

For more Earth Day ideas, continue the blog hop and check out the free ideas from our clever #Kinderfriends!  Next stop: Class of Kinders