Discover what loose parts are and why you need them in your classroom. Download a FREE list of over 150 loose parts resources you can use to set up age appropriate investigation areas and learning invitations to start loose parts play in your early years setting.
Los rincones o ambientes de experimentación son unos espacios delimitados en la clase. En los que los niños trabajan de manera individual o en pequeños gru
With the nice weather on it's way, it has brought alot of attention to the outdoors for our children. Spying out the window, reading spring books and noticing signs of seasonal changes are all things that have happened over the last two weeks. Also, birds seem to be the interest as well. Our "nesting" adventures began as our students found a nest outside. We were asked about the birds who built it, what was inside and from simple research and documentation it began to stem a two period (now) of birds and hatching. We are also lucky enough to have access to an egg incubator that was purchased by one of the teachers in another kindergarten room. We are able to expand our children's interest by observing daily what is happening. Questioning what is inside, what is new, why we need to turn them daily. The excitement is intriguing! As a provocation; a teaching partner and I went hunting around our homes for natural items that would possibly be used to build a birds nest. As the student's came in and saw the table of "stuff" they were super excited to find out what we could build. Immediately a NEST was suggested and off to research HOW a bird builds a nest, they went. We found a simple you tube video, watching a bird bring pieces of natural thing and create his new home. They drew what they wanted the nest to look like, chose items that would work to build it (sticks, clay, twine, feathers, grass, string, etc.) And off I went to leave the student's to create. (PS. The table and floor were COVERED with bird nest building props-JUST A WARNING a mess is guaranteed!!!) But it was so much fun!! It also was quite amazing watching the nest begin to take shape. By the end of the day almost all of the students had volunteered to assist some way or some how. They were all so very proud of what they had created. With the suggestion, from a small group of students we have attached our new nest to the sticks hanging from our ceiling. (As if it were up high in a tree-I will take a photo this week to post) As an expansion of their creation- the next day, I printed off several pictures of different types of birds to place in the nest and around the room through the week. Because this is such a big piece to our room and so many of our students take ownership and pride in this, I had a strong feeling they would notice if a bird was perched up in the nest, hoping it would strike interest for new discovery. Sure enough once one student noticed the robin the nest, student's were finding robins in books and drawing robins, asking questions about the blue eyes inside the nest. Building a new home out of blocks. It began to become contagious! What an exciting week! Can't wait to see what this week brings! Above is an example of incredible, independent documentation from one of our students. She wanted to be a researcher sharing her knowledge about a "robin." And how it comes to be. (The bird that was nesting in our nest)
Exciting play for curious young minds...
101 Ideas Montessori para que tus hijos aprendan y se diviertan en casa El método Montessori esta basado en investigaciones cientificas relacionadas con la ca
Combine pretend play and art to create bird nests with this fun play dough invitation.
The CVC Word Building Nest printable activity will get your little learners engaged and excited about their learning! These colorful birds will help your kids build CVC words and encourage their early
I have dreamed of setting up a build a bird nest sensory activity for Little Bee since last year. Over the year, I saved fun items for our Montessori Inspired Bird Unit and building a nest activity. Little Bee loves sensory play and this activity was a wonderful tactile experience for him. Before we built […]
Lovely spring activities for preschool! Find spring activities for every subject, including crafts, math, art, literacy, science, and more.
Make A Birds Nest STEAM Challenge. Can you build a nest using natural materials just like real birds do? No glue or tape allowed!
Give your brain a boost with some smelling games!
Visiting The Nest, Virtual Tour For the health and safety of our community, The Nest will not be offering any tour for the foreseeable future due to the COVID-19 pandemic. […]
As part of our Math and Science Investigations (M.S.I) time in Kindergarten, our students explored a tower inquiry (In a previous post I wrote about Math and Science Investigations (M.S.I.) and how…
When it comes to eating healthy foods they did a number of great activities to learn all about how to eat healthy at Brighten Academy Preschool in Clovis, California! Check out all the cool things t
The kids had been showing interest in clouds so I asked them if they wanted to investigate the sky. They did so I found out what they knew and wondered so that I could see what direction this inquiry could go. For the past two years, our sky inquiries led to the sun, moon, stars and planets, but this year the kids went in a different direction. Most of our initial discussion seemed to revolve around the colors of the sky, clouds and rainbows. I started out by putting out invitations to explore sky colors in our art area. We read "Sky Colors" by Peter Reynolds and I put out pictures of the sky around them for inspiration. They created some beautiful Sky Colored art! Each day, one of the kids gets to look at the sky and mix paint to try to match it. They then paint a stripe on our canvas to show the color of the sky that day. This art piece will be titled "April Sky." At the end of the month, we will use it to figure out which color the sky was the most during the month of April. This is a perfect mix of art, science and math. The kids started talking about how rainbows were made, but were not satisfied with the answer of rain and sun. Some started wondering how rain and sun created rainbows. We watched a video on youtube that told us the sun's white light is made up of all the colors mixed together. When they all mix they look like white light. A prism will bend the light and separate it into its separate colors. The kids thought this was pretty cool, but I could tell they wanted to explore this further. I set out a prism, box, CD, and flashlight for them to explore and see what they noticed. They loved exploring with these materials. They were fascinated and made the connection about the raindrop being a prism and bending the light! We also saw an experiment where if you painted all the colors on a circle and then spun it really fast the colors would blend into white to show that all the colors mixed together make white. We created one, but could not get it to work. This was a good lesson to show us that not all experiments go as planned! Of course they wanted to paint rainbows so some friends helped set out all the colors and we invited friends to come paint. Our room became a very colorful place! After we learned all that we could about how rainbows were made, I took them outside to see what they noticed about the clouds. We laid down and discussed what we saw and noticed. Some kids from other classes playing outside laid down with us and joined in on our discussion. Through the week, we observed the sky and the clouds and learned that there are three main types of clouds: Cirrus, Cumulus, and Stratus. We did an activity where each child created each of the three types of clouds and showed which were the highest and which were the lowest. We started to discus the project for this inquiry and came up with a teaching mural in the hallway to show what they had learned. Part of our group wanted to show the order of the colors in all rainbows. We found material from a cloud a previous class made and used that for the our raincloud. A couple friends decided to paint raindrops directly on our mural while others wanted to make some that were more three dimensional so they strung blue beads onto yarn and hung them to our cloud along with some blue fabric and ribbon we found in our fabric drawer. Some wanted to show the raindrop acting as prism and bending the white light into the colors of the rainbow. The kids were noticing the different types of clouds as we watched the sky each day. We explored them through some books and the internet and showed what we learned by making the three main types of clouds. Some kids wanted to show the three main kinds of clouds on our mural so we found some materials and they got to work! We made some and added them to the top. Here is the finished teaching mural! I wonder what they will explore next?
This was our first preschool group! Our theme was introduced by reading Seven Hungry Babies by Candace Fleming. This cute book told the adventures of an overworked mom bird (we’ve all been there!) trying to feed all of her babies. Of course, all the babies wanted something different to eat, which made me think of “I do not run a delicatessen!” Or, “restaurant” depending on where in the country you grew up. After reading our story and discussing what some of the birds ate, the kids started at a “worm” sensory table made with cooked spaghetti noodles. Needless to say, some of the kids took to it a lot faster than others. After our morning of activities, the boys returned to the table to drive their trucks all over it. Poor worms! After interest waned with the worms, our leader had us fan out and collect items that may be used in the construction of a nest. We picked up sticks, grass, leaves, and straw – all good nest-building items. We guided the kids as they glued the materials into place to look like a nest. Who knew that birds used glue too? The silver glue was a hot commodity. Finished product! Then we settled down to create pipe cleaner and Cheerio bird feeders. Most of the kids did a great job threading the Cheerios onto the pipe cleaner. Jeff ended up just eating them like a candy necklace. Oh, well… String one Cheerio, eat two! Our yummy snack consisted of bird nest rice krispie treats with jelly bean eggs. Yum!!! It was a great morning.
I updated this post HERE with freebies and more bird ideas! Enjoy! Thank you for stopping by!
One of the things I’ve noticed about inquiry projects is how everlasting the learning is. Our projects never really end; though we may “shelve” our thinking and ideas for a time, …
These touch-and-feel sensory sticks intrigue babies and toddlers when they touch something soft, rough, or smooth.
Are you following us on Pinterest? My toddler, like many, has a real fascination with water and will happily play with anything involving water for quite some time. Water play is fabulous when the weather is hot and especially when you can get outside, but living in Melbourne, Australia, this is certainly not the case all the time so I have to come up with ways that we can still play and investigate with water, whilst inside, without making a huge mess! Here is a fun sensory Invitation to Play with water inside that encourages skills such as pouring, transferring and scooping whilst investigating size, depth, width, absorbency, capacity and more. Ages: 12 months + (N is currently 22 months old here. See the handy tips at the bottom to Simplify and Extend to suit your child's needs) As I didn't want water from one side of the house to the other, we only used about 2 cups of water in total. I lightly coloured the water with a couple of drops of food colouring so that it was slightly more visible but wouldn't stain or leave marks wherever little droplets landed. Gather your supplies from around the house and lay out on a small child-sized table. On the floor you should use some old towels to catch the water that will inevitably spill off the table. I do not recommend using plastic sheeting on the floor as it won't absorb the water spills and will in turn make the floor around the table slippery. The Invitation to Play Above you can see how I presented the Invitation to Play for my son and the materials I set out for him to explore. The problem solving begins. The neck of this bottle is too narrow to fit the measuring spoon! Trying to figure out how to use the pipette to transfer water and using fine-motor skills. Pouring and transferring. The water is nearing the top! Watching children of this age play like this is really fascinating. They play (work!) with such purpose and intensity. Moving water from one container to another was repeated again and again and again and I was impressed with his concentration and coordination. There were spills but that was part of the learning process. Using a little table like this meant that he could move freely around and easily access all the materials. At one point the frogs found a new home. And we discovered that if you have a spill, there are ways to reclaim your water! (But you have to be quick!) Discovering the absorbency of the sponge was helpful with the spills And squeezing the sponge gave new access to water again! Really testing the absorbency now! Not quite absorbent enough for a whole cup of water. But it sure does make a squidgy, squishy water pad just perfect for the frogs to live on. Pressing down on them squeezes water back out! The aftermath. For inside water play with a toddler under 2 years old, this is pretty good! He was busy for probably around 40 mins which is a long time for an under-2-year-old to be focused for. The pack-up was as quick and easy as the set-up, with the towels underneath making quick work to dry any remaining water spills. Handy Tips - Simplify this activity by providing a few less cups and containers and leaving out items such as the pipette and little syringe as they need well practiced fine motor skills. At 22 months, my son is just starting to grasp the concept of these objects and whilst he can't use them efficiently, I like to still provide them for learning opportunities. - Extend this activity by: Using a couple of different colours of water to practice colour mixing as well Using a variety of measuring tools to encourge more formal capacity and volume learning Challenging children to transfer the water from one cup to another without lifting up the cups at all Recording (writing down) the amount of water you start with and then measuring the amount of water you have left at the end of play Investigating how the same amount of water looks like different amounts depending on the size and shape of the container it's tipped into. - Mix it up with a variety of different types of containers and measuring cups or by substituting water with other transferable materials like rice or barley or flour. - Use descriptive language that goes with this experience to help develop your child's vocabulary. Eg "pour, absorbent, soak, wet, dry, squeeze, drip, splash" etc. - Invitations to Play are a favourite way of mine to set up an activity. Here are a few more we've shared: Numbers and Natural Materials Playdough and Magnetic Letters Plastic Food Painting Sticky Table Garden Paint with Recycled Materials Happy playing, Debs :) We like to play here as well. Come play with us :) New Here? Subscribe to get all activities sent directly to you Enter your email address: Delivered by FeedBurner
DIY nature sensory bottles are a great calm-down tool and science teaching aid. They also make it easy for babies and toddlers to safely investigate natural items without the risk of choking on them.
