Bits and Pieces

Just a small update on some of our latest crafts.
Working with Aistear, I decided to do a little project on well-being and self-confidence. I cut out paper people and the kids painted them to look like themselves. I went around the table and asked each child something they liked about themselves. To start the ball rolling, I first told the kids what I liked about them.
I kept to focusing on dispositions and skills, rather than appearance or knowledge. It's nice to instill a sense of who you are from a young age, and to identify what you love about yourself.
Once the people were painted and had dried, we stuck on eyes (we used googly eyes and stickers, and the kids chose their own preferences) and cut hair from wool and glued it on.

We turned our project into a display for the families to enjoy too, and I got a real thrill watching the kids identify themselves to their families, and pointing out their friends too.

Here's a close up:

That's supposed to be me on the left, but of course you already knew that! I made another for my boyfriend and now they live on our fridge door, proudly smiling out at us!


They homemade playdough that I mentioned in a previous post got put on the back-burner until I could find a better recipe. Unfortunately, I couldn't find one, but I still had one group who hadn't had a chance at messy play that week. So I decided to try something else, and we made our own paint!

This was a very easy task. Again, the kids all experienced some measuring, mixing, heating (though that was the adults' job!) and got an early start on these scientific principles.
The paint was very gooey, so we used it as finger paint, rather than trying to spread the thick mixture with brushes.
This turned into such a sensory experience, and the kids loved smearing it around. It was nice for them just to experience the movement and feel of the paint as well, rather than focusing on creating specific pictures.
Our paint didn't last long, and it's already all gone!
If anybody would like the recipe to make at home just let me know!

At the moment, we're doing some work with clay (more sensory exploration, I love it!) and celebrating the start of Summer (whenever it would like to arrive) by playing outdoors a lot, and making paper windmills.

We have a simple game at the moment which is developing their gross motor skills, balance, and recognising letters and the sounds they make.

I draw out the alphabet in a huge square on the concrete outside the pre-school. The kids all hop around on top of the letters and when I say "Stop!" they freeze on whatever letter they've landed on.
I ask them if they can identify the letter, and if they can we try to figure out a word beginning with that sound. For example, one little boy stopped on 'M' and identified the word 'Mummy'. So we walked around like Mummies until I said "Stop!" again, and we picked another letter. They adore this game, as it's so silly and they get to demonstrate their knowledge of sounds.

Bye for now!