Posts

Teaching colors to young children can be part of their even day life. Think about all the colors you see while out and about: vehicles, landscape, signs, buildings. By making your toddler and preschoolers aware of the colors around them, they begin to build color recognition skills. You can also put together simple color learning activities that can be done inside or out in the backyard. Activities that are hands-on, exposing children to a variety of colors....

Inside: How to Encourage Toddler Friendship with Art – This fun roll-the-jar art activity encourages two friends to work together! At the beginning of our school year, our toddlers are usually playing side-by-side rather than together. While this is normal development for that age group, I like to find ways to encourage them to connect and play together. This easy toddler friendship art gets two toddlers working together as they roll their art activity in a jar back and forth to each other....

Inside: Check out these hands-on gingerbread theme ideas for toddlers and preschoolers. Free gingerbread printables included! The gingerbread theme is one of my favorites, and our toddlers and preschoolers love all the activities provided. After reading several versions of The Gingerbread Man/Boy/Girl, we put together several gingerbread dramatic play ideas in our classroom. During the same time, we create gingerbread art activities, use gingerbread mats at the playdough table, and provide gingerbread matching games for the children to enjoy....

Inside: Looking for a super easy and fun toddler rainbow activity? Grab those toy cars and drive them through puddles of paint, making a rainbow on sheets of paper. A fun action art idea! Toddlers love to move. I’m sure that’s no surprise to you all. I have an especially active group of 2 year olds this year who just want to move. Now that the year is more than half over, they are sitting for longer periods of time, but they still love to be moving....

Pour the liquid soap into a container. If you’ve ever made your own bubble mix for art projects, you know how important it is to have a strong solution with vibrant colors. Over my 15 plus years of teaching, I was never really happy with the bubble mix recipes I found because I wanted to make prints from them. The bubbles would barely mound, and the left weak prints on the paper....

You are a teacher with a classroom that doesn’t easily have access to a kitchen. Or, you don’t have the time to wait for the food to cook or bake. Or, you just want simplicity. These are times when you are searching for no-cook snack ideas. While we do have access to a kitchen in our preschool, it is on a different level of the building. There have been times where we couldn’t have a teacher leave the room to put the food in the oven because it would have taken us out of ratio....

Inside: Preschool St. Patrick’s Day Learning Activities – 37 Pages of Hands-On Shamrock and Rainbow Printables! St. Patrick’s Day is fun with shamrocks, gold coins, leprechauns and rainbows! We’ve developed 37 pages of printable activities that build important skills such as number and color recognition, counting, fine motor and pre-writing. There are 8 themed St. Patrick’s Day learning activities, including rainbow sorting activities that have English and Spanish text. Scroll down to see how each activity can be used, including additional ideas!...

Each year we close our fall units with a Thanksgiving theme. We focus on what we are thankful for, although that can be a hard concept for young children to understand. So, as I will talk about more in a separate post, I ask them what makes them happy. What do they love? This is also when we make a turkey craft and have fun with feathers. This year we even painted with them!...

Inside: This St. Patrick’s Day toddler art activity is a simple and fun way to work on color mixing. Download the free printable for an easy but fun idea for the art table. During our St. Patrick’s Day theme, we love to add some color mixing to show how blue and yellow make green. I created a super simple St. Patrick’s Day toddler art activity that shows what happens when we mix those colors....

Toddler and Preschool Back to School Resources Our Themes for This Year Check out what we will be doing this year, as well as additional ideas: Make sure to also check out my Instagram stories where I share daily peeks into our classroom. Follow me here! Also, you will want to get my emails where I share what we are currently doing, along with free printables and activities! Find the sign up box here!...

More activities for preschoolers: Indoor Movement Activities Using language and communication with young children is crucial for their success in school and beyond. Preschool language development activities should be part of each day in the classroom, and also in the home. In a previous post, I shared how important it is to build young children’s language development. Teachers and parents can help build listening and understanding skills by talking with them, listening to them, reading and singing with them....

12 of the Best Preschool Gardening Ideas Children learn from growing things. Ready to garden with your children? Teach your children how to plant seeds and take care of them with some simple tips. Create a sunflower gardening project by starting your seeds in plastic cups. For an miniature indoor garden, make a terrarium. An egg carton makes a nice greenhouse. (Hazel and Company) Make sure to check out our favorite gardening books!...

You want to teach your toddlers and preschoolers the colors of the rainbow, but are looking for hands-on ideas that will keep them engaged. I found over 30 different rainbow activities that invite young children to build skills while exploring the colors of the rainbow. So many fun ideas that include art, science, literacy, music, math … and more! Click on the photos below for the pdf download: Paper Plate Rainbow Suncatcher Spin a Rainbow....

Fall is here, and that means putting together ideas to use with our apple theme! One of my new favorites is this apple counting activities for preschoolers. The idea came to mind when I found the cutest little apple erasers. We have been working on one-to-one correspondence with our preschoolers, so I created a super simple printable that can be used with the apples. What’s really nice about this activity is that it’s easy to set up....

Inside: What happens when you drive toy cars through puddles of yellow and blue paint? This color mixing activity for toddlers is all about action at the art table! Toddlers are busy, busy, busy. I can see all you parents and toddler teachers nodding! So you’ve probably noticed that they don’t like to sit for very long, preferring to be moving. This is why I love to provide art activities with action....

Inside: Use this free color recognition owl printable activity while reading the book Hoot and as a table activity! We love using props during circle time. In my 20+ years of teaching in the classroom I have found that having visuals keeps young children far more engaged than if they were expected to just sit and listen to you. For example, my preschoolers love holding their spider sticks while we sing Itsy Bitsy Spider, and we have great fun counting when our colorful leaves are on the flannel board....

Have you discovered how toddlers love to dip paper tubes into paint and make prints? After doing paper tube printing for many years, I realized it’s the up and down motion that they love. After all, toddlers love to move, even at the art table! For the Christmas season I decided to use this method on simple tree shaped paper. The children loved “putting the lights on the tree” as they stamped colorful circles on their green triangles!...

Toddlers love cars! Well, they love anything on wheels. But cars seem to be the biggest hit. We’ve done many activities in our classroom involving cars, even painting with them! So, I just knew counting with race cars was going to be popular. Counting with Race Cars There are so many fun ways to build counting skills through play. This is perfect for toddlers who want to keep moving! I knew when I put together this race car counting activity that our toddlers would love it....

We love a good collage activity. In fact, the longer I teach (26 years now!), the more I love collage work. Here are some examples: Fall Collage Snowflake Collage Winter Window Collage Valentine’s Day Heart Collage I appreciate that it doesn’t take a lot of time prepping everything. All I need to do is collect the collage pieces, think about the background, grab the glue, and I am set! I also love that the children can add their own touches....

For a decade or so I’ve had our preschoolers make necklaces to wear at our Thanksgiving feast. This easy Thanksgiving necklace for kids involves simple counting, like with our ladybug craft. I cut an egg carton so that there were 5 cups, one for each piece of macaroni to be strung on the necklace. Not only is this a great counting activity, but also 1:1 correspondence. Of course, what the preschoolers love is the threading, as it is one of their favorite fine motor activities....