8 Outstanding Options for Over-the-top O Activities

What's so outstanding about letter Oo?  The variety of options for learning activities!  From oceans to outside time, baking oatmeal muffins to sorting ovals to lovely hand print art, there's so much to do!

Let's start with oceans and octopi... octopuses...the octopus.  You probably have some favorite ocean themed books - and of course so do I!

If you're wanting to learn octopus facts, I love Gentle Giant Octopus by Karen Wallace, and so do my students.  Just for fun?  Octopus's Garden, by Ringo Starr.  Bonus points, it includes a sing-a-long CD, so you and your littles can learn (or relearn) the song.  While you're at it, check out the gorgeous illustrations in Inky's Amazing Escape by Sy Montgomery and Over in the Ocean by Mariann Berkes.  

I haven't get read Manfish A Story of Jacques Cousteau by Jennifer Berne, but a study of the ocean is incomplete without learning about him, and again, the illustrations look awesome!

Many years ago I made an ocean tent to go over a card table - super easy to do - and my students have had a lot of use out of it!  I found a couple of panels of ocean fabric that measured the same size as my card table, and added some plain blue fabric for the other 2 sides.  I put a cord through the top hem, and tied it onto the card table.  It takes about 2 minutes to put up or take down, and folds quite small for storage. (I was inspired by tents from https://www.etsy.com/shop/missprettypretty ).  Just add ocean stuffed animals or other toys for some fantastic pretend play!

 Your littles might also enjoy working on patterns with ocean animals - here's a fun way to do that:

and early readers will enjoy this FREE reading center - click here to download it!

If you're in the mood to do some cooking with your little ones, AND you want them to eat healthy foods, try the oatmeal muffin recipe I wrote about here. Look at all the delicious ingredients: 

Remember to let your little ones help you cook - they're spending quality time with you, learning life skills, and if they help you cook something, they're more likely to try eating it.  Want more?  They're also developing fine motor skills, counting scoops, measuring ingredients and learning vocabulary - they are learning.

If you've been reading my blog for long, you know I also love to do hand print art with my kiddos, and letter O is no exception!  Here are 3 fun ideas: otter, owl and ostrich!  

The ostrich came from CreativityTakesFlight.com, the otter was uploaded to Pinterst without credit, and I'm not sure about the owl either.  As always, you can find more hand print and foot print art ideas on this Pinterest board:

Don't forget to add outside time to your letter Oo activities!  This is so open ended, you're sure to have some favorite outdoor ideas - or brainstorm with your children and try something new!

It's always a good time to revisit shapes and other math concepts; we broke out some magnetic shapes that include ovals.  As you can see they're fun for sorting, or making patterns, or simply look for ovals and other shapes in your environment. 

Finally, here are two great picture book characters for the letter O: the giant squid from I'm The Biggest Thing in the Ocean (by Kevin Sherry) and Olivia (from the series by Ian Falconer).  I came up with both of these crafts, which encourage lots of fine motor skills (cutting, gluing, even painting).  I hope you and your little ones enjoy them!
 

Click here for a quick tutorial on how to make the squid from  I'm the Biggest Thing in the Ocean, or get everything ready made for labeling, graphing, measurement AND this activity in my TeachersPayTeachers store.

Here are the shapes your child will need to cut out and assemble to create Olivia...

... we think she's pretty adorable!  

Have an over the top outstanding week of O activities, and come back next week for penguins, polar bears and positively perfect ideas for letter Pp!  See you then, Paula

Insanely easy math fun that will make your children beg to learn!

 As I walked by the Target Dollar Spot this week, I spotted this little treasure!  200 mini erasers for $3 - and it's packaged in a divided container! 

 

This is a perfect math activity for our little ones to enjoy this spring.  Think of all the math they can learn as they play:  counting, sorting, graphing, patterning, 1-1 correspondence... there are so many possibilities.

I came up with a few more too - how could you use these for a Venn Diagram?  It's easy enough to make your own blank diagram - simply trace around a large bowl twice, overlapping the two circles as you do.  Can your child sort eggs/things with blue/eggs with blue?  How about bunnies/pink things/pink bunnies?

It would be easy to graph these too: have your child take a handful, and sort them.  Then line them up, and compare the rows of erasers.  What are there the most of?  The fewest?  How many more bunnies than carrots?

Have a slightly older child?  Can they add 3 bunnies and 6 eggs?  Two carrots with blue edges, and 4 carrots with yellow edges?  Can they use the erasers to answer a word problem: If I had 7 eggs, but gave 3 away, how many eggs would be left?

If your child has mastered addition and subtraction, try having them work on early multiplication skills by making a grid with the erasers.  How many is 3 rows of 5?  Can they show 12 erasers in rows and columns?  Can they do it another way?

I'm looking forward to sharing my new eraser collection with the kiddos!  How would you use it?!

More easy steps for amazing STEAM learning

Recently I began a blog post series about STEAM learning (STEAM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math) by looking at some ways to practice observing and recording data - 2 of the most basic science skills.  Today I want to continue with sorting, classifying, and labeling.

My students have always loved sorting / classifying.  Whether it's sorting building blocks by color, finding all the big buttons in my button box, or separating the mini erasers by shape, sorting seems to be a basic part of coming to understand their world.  Why not encourage it with fun materials, and add labels to those categories?!

It's easy to take sorting a step further with Venn Diagrams - which make us consider more than one sort-able attribute at a time. Do you see the red t-rex in this picture?  It isn't green, and doesn't walk on 4 legs, so the child asked me where it should go.  I helped him think it through - can it go in the green circle?  No.  Can it go in the 4 legs circle?  No. Is there a place on your sorting mat that isn't for green and isn't for 4 legs?  Children can do some amazing thinking!

Once children have begun categorizing things - not just sorting them, but also identifying how they've sorted them, it's a natural progression to count those things, and to compare what has more or less.  Graphs make it easy to compare several categories. (More on graphs next time!)

Children can also begin to label things they observe, from a single word for each item...

... to details as they develop vocabulary.

Don't you love teaching STEAM skills?!

A Quick and Free Sorting Center

True confession #1: I have a sweet tooth, and indulge myself with an altoid or 2 (possibly 3 or 4) when I'm driving.  So does my son.  Between us, we've accumulated a few of the awesome hinged tins that the breath mints come in. 

True confession #2: Since I'm using the empty containers for a learning activity, I can justify the candies... um, I mean breath mints.  I'm not having those for myself, it's for the children!

See?  Each empty tin makes a good place to sort 2 items, and 4 empty tins means 8 places to sort things.

My kiddos have always loved teeny tiny things - I recently blogged about our teeny tiny notebooks , and I've often mentioned our sensory bins full of all manner of items for the children to manipulate.  This tiny activity is one of my favorites, because it's a super easy, quick, FREE math center that engages young children for a long time!

As you can see, all I did was put a variety of seasonal items into a pretty dish, and put out the empty altoid tins with it.  In this case I've included plastic jewels, pompons, beads, jingle bells, and some small pictures.  I also like offering foam shapes, they usually come in a container with 6-10 different shapes, which are also usually 6-8 different colors, so we can sort by shape or by color.

(The pictures I used in this sorting tray are from a Christmas counting center that I just finished putting together, which is available in my TeachersPayTeachers store.)

One of the best things about this kind of sorting activity, is that you probably already have things on hand that the children can sort, and those tins?  You can use them over and over again, with any theme you want.  It's almost enough to make me eat more altoids! ;-) 

Teaching Math on a Budget

 Okay, right off the bat, I know we're pretty much all on a budget - who isn't?!  If you are teaching young children, chances are good that you supply a lot of the materials you use in your classroom, and it can really add up!  Today I thought I'd share a few ideas that I've used to make my own teaching resources for little or no money!

Large graphs for children to work on:

Materials required: a large piece of cardboard, approximately the size of poster board, a yard stick and a marker.  (You absolutely could buy poster board, or if you shop at a warehouse store, try asking if you can have some of the huge pieces of cardboard they use on pallets of cereal to separate the layers.)
Time to make it: 10 minutes tops
What to do: I measured and marked 1.5" intervals along each edge of the cardboard, then used the yardstick to draw lines between the marks.  I wrote numbers on one axis, and ta-da! One large graph.

Venn Diagrams:

 Materials required: a large piece of cardboard, a large bowl or plate to trace around and a marker.
Time to make it: less than 5 minutes
What to do: Turn your bowl or plate face down, off center on your cardboard.  Trace the rim with the marker.  Move the plate over to the other side of your cardboard, leaving a large area of overlap from the first circle.  Trace it again.

Sorting trays:

Materials required: a divided tray, I got this one from a dollar store.  I've also used trays from fruit/vegetable/cookie platters, and those are free - you just have to remember to either save them yourself, or to ask your families to donate them if they use them.
What to do: nothing more!
Prep time: This depends on how long you browse at the dollar store!  ;-)

What about manipulatives: the small parts the children are working with.  We all know that those plastic dinosaurs and bugs aren't cheap. What can you do?

Save those lids, corks, bread ties, etc.  I keep a container in a cupboard in my kitchen, and every time there's a bread tie or a cork, I toss it directly in there.  Lids from food containers I put in the cutlery holder of my dishwasher first, and save them when they're clean.  You may also find some awesome lids in the bathroom or laundry room, just save them instead of tossing them out.

 Look in your junk drawer.  Okay, maybe you're perfect, and you don't have a junk drawer, but I'm guessing that somewhere in your home there's a catch-all spot full of amazing little things.  Parts to that one toy your kids had a few years ago, party favors they never even played with, assorted blocks, plastic bits and bobs, rings, craft supplies, tokens from that game place you never go to anymore...  Just be sure to consider the children who will be using these manipulatives, do you need to think about possible choking hazards?  Sharp edges?  Be selective about what will work for your students.

 You may also have (or know someone who has) a tin of buttons, or beads, or maybe an avid crafter with a lot of left over odds and ends.  Maybe there's a box in the garage with odd nuts and bolts, or old keys, or... go look!  Once you start thinking about and noticing things that are often considered throw aways, you'll find resources all over the place!

So how can you store all this stuff?  Plastic storage containers can be quite expensive, especially if you have a whole bunch of these collections going on!  Check your pantry and your recycling bin!  This is the container I keep in my kitchen to store those lids and corks - it originally had cashews in it, but when the food was eaten, the container got a new life, storing manipulatives.  Many foods come in resealable and reusable containers, everything from lunch meats to rice, fresh salad greens to soup.  If there's something in a useful container that your family uses regularly, you can save them and even end up with a matching set!

 Still not sure you can find a nice variety of things for your kiddos to sort?  Go outside!  Here are some leaves that are in my yard right now.  I see different colors, sizes and shapes.  How else are they the same?  How else are they different?

 Okay, so maybe you don't have time to go outside and collect leaves and things for your children to use.  Not to worry, put the kids to work!  Here I've used a strawberry punnet as a collecting box for acorns.  You can see we found some in different sizes, shapes and colors.  There are acorns with holes, broken ones, whole acorns, acorns with and without caps, some that are still connected to each other, and some that aren't... there are so many ways we could sort, graph or put these on a Venn Diagram!

I hope you can use some of these ideas in your classroom!  If you have another tip for teaching math on a budget, I'd love to hear it!

Erupting With Fun: Preschool Volcano Activities

What is cold when it is dormant, hot when it erupts, and totally cool all the time?

Check out all the awesome volcano pictures Ms. Debbie pulled to show the children - they were fascinated by the glowing lava  - who isn't?!  The kiddos even got to act out being volcanoes, and going from dormant to erupting. Jumping up to erupt was their favorite part!

Debbie had a bottle covered in clay to look like a volcano, which we partially filled with some baking soda ahead of time.  When she poured in vinegar (dyed red), the chemical reaction had "lava" flowing out of the vent hole.  Oh my goodness were the kiddos excited!

We followed up our reading, singing, dancing and demonstration, with science and art activities that also stretched our fine motor skills.  To make our volcano diagram, the kiddos tore construction and tissue paper, glued them, wrote their names, and then cut and pasted labels for some of the important parts of a volcano: magma, vent hole, ash, and lava.

(The label for magma is on the back, because it is only magma while it is underground.  As soon as it emerges from the vent hole it is called lava.)

We had fun sorting out things that are hot (like a volcano) and things that are cold.

The highlight of the whole time was definitely letting the children build their own pebble volcanoes, and mixing baking soda and red vinegar.  They wanted to do it over and over - and with almost 60 children attending this week, we used 3/4 gallon of vinegar, and 4 pounds of baking soda!

The awe on their faces was worth every drop!

Dinosaur activities and books - roaring good fun!

We love dinosaurs!  There's so much to love: they're big (mostly), make awesome noises (especially when voiced by small children), stomp through the prehistoric forests, chase each other, and generally get away with behavior that isn't often encouraged in children.  Who doesn't sometimes want to live vicariously as a dinosaur?!

For story time this week we read 3 lovely dinosaur fiction books: Harry and the Bucketful of Dinosaurs, Bones, Bones, Dinosaur Bones, and Saturday Night at the Dinosaur Stomp.  I talked about how much I love Saturday Night at the Dinosaur Stomp in my last blog post, and it is, in fact, the reason we focused on dinosaurs this week - I really wanted to read it again!  Then big question was what we could do along with the books.

If you Pinterest (I believe that really should be a verb, because I do it all the time), you know there are a gazillion fantastic and fun activities to go along with any subject.  Here's a link to my dinosaurs board for those of you who also use Pinterest as a verb. 

We sorted dinosaurs by color.  I made some very simple sorting mats by cutting brightly colored copy paper into quarters, and then mounting 4 of the resulting rectangles on white construction paper.  We had a supply of red, blue, green and yellow dinosaurs in one of our resource kits, so a simple sorting activity was born.

 I say simple, because yes, it is simple.  Simple to prepare, and simple for the children to use, but still very satisfying for young learners!

 I brought in a couple of fossils for the children to explore (carefully).  This child was fascinated with the small vug of crystals in my amonite.

There was dough for the children to make imprints in, much like fossils, but without the millions of years of waiting. (Nobody has time for that!)

Of course, what I have in mind as I put the activities together, and the possibilities the children see, are not always the same thing.  Dinosaur skeletons dancing in the dough?  Why not, after Saturday Night at the Dinosaur Stomp?!

Here's another possibility I never considered.  Tyrannosaurus Rex balancing on his tail and doing the splits.  Bet you never thought of that either!

Here's another early math concept we worked on this week: patterning.  I made AB, ABC, AAB and ABB dinosaur patterns, and the children (and parents) read the patterns, then extended them. 

Our final activity was digging for dinosaur in the Jurassic sand.  There were usually 6 - 8 children gathered around this sensory bin, pretending, digging, or just running the sand through their fingers.  Little do they know they're working on their finger muscle strength, preparing their hands for all the jobs they will do!

As the children left, we asked them to put one stamp on today's graph: Which book did you like best today?

They loved Bones, Bones, Dinosaur Bones best of all.  After all, who doesn't like dinosaurs?!