Learning With Liam: Outside Fun and Painting!

This summer has so far been a blast, although it is completely flying by! I am babysitting my best friend's little guy once or twice a week this summer and it has added such a fun element to my summer. Liam is three years old and I've been trying to come up with some different activities we can do together. His little three year old mind blows me away with what he retains and he seems to really love learning games, especially those involving numbers (more on that in a future post).

Here's the first of a series of posts about our adventures this summer called "Learning with Liam."

Day 1: Name writing and mask painting!

Sidewalk chalk is a really fun way to have little people start writing their name! I also discovered this little guy is a lefty!

We started with uppercase letters because the straight lines in the letters of him name are easier to form than the curvy kind in the lowercase letters. 

M is tough! Loving his "A." <3 

Outside adventures are not complete without some scooter fun!

I grabbed these little wooden masks for 75 cents at Joanne's Fabric and the little pack of paint tubs for $1. He LOVED these. We painted a turtle and a lion on this day, but I went back to Joanne's and bought 3 more. 

We used Q-Tips instead of paint brushes, one because I forgot to buy brushes... and two, because these are cheap and disposable. They are also easy for little hands to hold. They are also great for fine motor because since they are short, they cannot be held in a fist, forcing him to figure out an easier way to hold it. 

Liam and I had a lot of fun painting and playing outside. Next week, come back and check out the games we played with numbers! This little guy LOVES numbers and counting!

Collaborative Art in Kindergarten!

Did any other Kindergarten teacher do something awesome for MLK day? I think segregation is always a hard concept to teach to the little nuggets, but I decided I wanted to do something this week for the littles to honor a great man. And with Black History Month next month, celebrating MLK has laid the foundations for more great lesson plans next month!

I LOVE anything collaborative in my classroom. It teaches children how to share and work together for a common goal and when they are this young, they get SO excited to see the final product (and I do, too!). My friend Jenny over at Art With Jenny K. has incredible art resources that can easily be done within the classroom to integrate art with your other subjects (and she has new President's Day ones that I have my eye on!). I decided I would give one of her collaborative posters a try with my kinders. I initially thought it would be too hard and I almost decided against it, but I thought, why not?! If it is a flop, then lesson learned, but if it is a success imagine how the kids will feel when they see the finished product!

The way these posters work is each student gets a sheet with a square in it that they have to color to match the smaller square. This is pretty abstract so I was sure that some of my kiddos would struggle, but I was super impressed with their ability to transform their blank square into a colorful MATCHING square. I am SO glad I tried this project.

There were some students who struggled, naturally, so I accommodated that by putting little x's in the spaces they needed to color (pictured above). Some of the squares were certainly more difficult than others, so I gave the most challenging squares (the two with MLK's eyes, for sure) to two students who have great motor skills and patience and they did a wonderful job. I was so proud of my lowest students who struggle with attention span (well, I mean, don't they all?), who were super engaged and extremely excited about this project.

The moral of this story is, do not underestimate your students and if you want it to look real good, whip out some new markers and put some quiet Mozart in the background (made all the difference, those new markers...).

And, VOILA!

Well, with the exception of the one kiddo who was having a bad day and decided a big blue X would be better than doing what he was supposed to do, how great is THIS? I mean, the D in DREAM could have been better, but these kids are 5 years old! I am such a proud teacher right now. <3

Thank you, Jenny! Here's a link to her store that you need to check out! Art with Jenny. K.