i love to offer preschoolers real items to use (the montessori influence). starting early in the school year, i bring out phone books for preschoolers to use as they like. when i use current phone books, we can usually find each preschooler’s family…what fun that is.
and yes, the fuzzy blue hat will make this work feel even more important.
using some thrifted rope-like-crinkly paper (i’m sure there is a name for it), we unrolled and unrolled to make a classroom-size tornado. it took a couple of tries to make it strong enough for little ones to handle, but we got it. hot glue and a couple of old rulers to wrap the top around made it work.
with this tornado hanging in our block corner, there were many farms, zoos, cities and spaceships that had to escape the powerful wind.
this is a great example of when the process is more important than the product…though the product was spectacular. instead of trying to “make a flower” or “make a cloud” we focused on using as much paint as we wanted…most preschoolers had the clear goal of no white showing.
we could also make these different shades of yellow, egg shape, shamrock shape, leaf shape, heart shape, apple shape, dinosaur shape, beach ball shape, umbrella shape, the landscape for a paper zebra to be glued on to, pumpkin shape, a bunch of grapes shape, igloo shape, jewel shape, kite shape, nut shape, octagon shape, violet shape, whale shape, x shape, money shape, quilt block shape, tree top shape, rain drop shape, etc. : )
we used industrial-size coffee filters (and i mean industrial: these things are at least 18″ in diameter) cut in cloud/flower shape, folded 4 times in pie fashion, then used plastic pipettes and food coloring containers to drop liquid watercolor paint.
oh, the excitement would brew as a preschoolers suspected they put enough paint on to have no white showing when they unfolded it…and if not, we could easily refold and add more paint.
these were sopping wet, but dried easily when we draped them over chairs, gates, etc.
here we have colored rain on pre-cut umbrella shaped paper…
we made rain by mixing liquid watercolors. a teacher poured little pools of paint and the preschoolers blew through straws to move the paint around. we were sure to take breaks for some deep, slow breathing. : )
