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I can't believe that we are already at the end of October. We have really enjoyed our Weather and Seasons unit from Experience Early Learning this month. This week we have been learning about different storms, and two of them were hurricanes and tornadoes. Because we are ending our week celebrating Halloween we combined these two topics into one day. I pulled activities from both lessons and we read about these two storms, where they are most common, and what kind of weather makes up these storms.
In our classroom we use Experience Preschool, for ages 3-5, from Experience Early Learning. There are lessons in all content areas and it is easy to adjust this curriculum to meet the needs of your students, as a class and individually. Our Invitation to Create project was to make a hurricane using shaving cream, paint and an eye shadow applicator. Have you ever painted with an eye shadow applicator before? When shaving cream is involved in the art process my students get really excited - it's fun to touch! They used the eye shadow applicator to make swirls on their paper, mimicking a hurricane.
I love that Experience Early Learning provides an inspiration photo and a discussion piece. We have some great conversations during art and I love hearing what the children have to say about the topic.
We got to use our scissor skills to practice Cutting Twisters. For this activity the directions were to cut out circles and draw a swirl on the paper for the children to follow along with their scissors. This activity proved to be tricky, but was great practice! If they ended up following the line all the way to the end it came out like a tornado. Even when we aren't learning about the weather and different storms, this is a great way for the children to practice turning their paper as they use their scissors to try and follow the line.
We worked together to build a town out of blocks. The children and I created houses, stores, and a barn. The children added cars to our town and we used our Tornado Twirlers to dance our way through the town like a tornado.
We learned that though these storms are part of nature, it is sad because of the destruction caused by them. The tornado twirlers created a great opportunity for dramatic play, and we learned that after these storms happen we can work together to rebuild. Experience Early Learning provides us with great learning opportunities and real-life conversations.
This week we are also celebrating Halloween! Every month we do Kids in the Kitchen and the children get to make their own snack. Since this fell during our Halloween party we made a Spooky Snack Mix! I found this recipe from Confetti and Bliss. The picture below is what we used. This fun snack consisted of Fall colors and spooky eye candy!
The children got to choose what they wanted in their snack mix, some chose to add some of everything and some chose to only add a few things to their snack mix. Either way they loved this snack and enjoyed making it! I think what made this snack so fun was the fact that they had options and they got to create their very one special spooky snack.
Next week we start exploring the Rainforest!
