Preschool Lesson Plans: Recycling Ideas for the Classroom

Hi!
I am sorry I haven't posted but my mom kidnapped my Monkey Girl for a bit so I have no one to teach. This post I really meant for yesterday, but my husband was using my laptop.

Today I want to show you how you can use everyday trash to help with projects, and organize your classroom.


This might just look like a meat tray, a muffin package, egg carton but the possibilities are endless.
Meat tray- you could use it for painting activities, craft activities like making a picture frame, or cutting out Christmas ornaments to decorate. Another thing is collages. This book is one of my favorite teacher resource books. In it the author talks about doing meat tray collages.
Just make sure they are washed well.

Egg cartons- Art projects. Example- Egg carton flowers, caterpillars, butterflies. Paint cups- use one segment for each color. Cut them in half and you get two uses out of one carton. Turn it upside down and then poke holes in the segments and you have a scissor holder that holds 12 pairs. Of course you can use it for holding small collage materials too.

Muffin Packages are great for holding collage materials or paint cups. They re close so they can store away on a shelf or in a cabinet.

So rethink throwing things away. Think about how you can turn them into great Preschool Lesson Plans.

Preschool Lesson Plans: "Green" Play Dough

Have you ever read the ingredients in commercial Play-doh? All I can say is, and I am a pretty intelligent person, that i have no clue whats in it. Why give this stuff to our kids when we have healthier, cheaper, and more environmentally sound options. Not to mention, more developmentally appropriate.

Why more developmentally appropriate? Well you can make your dough appropriate for the right age- oatmeal play dough for older babies/toddlers, a soft cooked dough for young preschoolers, a firmer play dough for older preschoolers, and a clay you can make and dry sculptures out of for older kids. You figure out whats right for you and go for it.
Here is the recipe I used today-

Materials

1 cup of flour

1 T. vegetable oil

1 cup water

2 t. cream of tartar

food coloring

saucepan

1. mix the food coloring into the water

2. heat all the ingredients over low heat until the mixture forms a ball

3. knead when cool

I didn't use food coloring- I am out of food coloring and find it works better without it sometimes. It doesn't matter if it gets mixed up like it does if you have several colors.

Without food coloring it can be anything. And since today's my bread baking day- you can guess what she pretended it was:)

Preschool Lesson Plans: Earth Day Theme Continued

Today we did a few things. We talked about the water cycle more and did an activity to illustrate it.
First we took a cotton ball, representing the dry cloud. We talked about how it was fluffy and dry.
But when the cotton ball was subjected to water (or a cloud filled with water through evaporation), it became heavy and wet(condensation).


When it gets full ,the water in the cotton ball (cloud) begins to fall in the form of rain.
Isn't it a great visual teaching technique??? Awesome!

The the artist also known as Emily had to do an art project. So I cut up some grass strips and some rain drops, and gave her some cotton balls. She glued the grass on, then the clouds and then the rain drops. she could explain how the clouds would fill, rain down on the grass, it would grow, but the water would go back to the clouds and repeat the cycle. i did this just to reinforce the water cycle.
We finished up by simply playing with play dough. She wanted me to make stuff for her, so I made letters and she would tell me what it was and the sound it made.
But the play dough was kind of hard, so tomorrow- we make play dough!

Earth Day Preschool Lesson Plans

It is April, so our focus moves to Earth Day, the environment, recycling and the like. Earth Day is April 22ND so that gives us about a week and a half to cover this topic in our lesson plans.

Green living has become such a big part of our lives that we can not skip over this very important topic. The very children we have in the classrooms now are the future caretakers of this Earth so we must teach them well.
What we did today was paint an earth on a paper plate with blue and green paint. Before we did this we looked at pictures of the Earth from space on the Internet. We talked about how the earth is where we all live and how we should take care of it.




We are raising plants from seeds in a small terrarium kit we got at Lowe's. I believe these will be zinnia's. We talked about how the earth sustains us, and in order to keep reaping those benefits, we need to protect the soil, plants, animals, etc.
We also played a game with some foam letters(you can get these from walmart in the baby section). We did a version of eye spy where we looked for items that started with that letter. D- dog, H- house......She had fun and it reinforced the alphabet.

We are also doing Hooked on Phonics. It is going well, but due to the fact it is mostly workbook stuff and some on the computer, she gets tired of the redundancy. So we take a day off here and there. That's working for us.

Here is a PDF of my lesson plan for the week-Earth Day

Publish at Scribd or explore others: teacher Earth Day

Preschool Lesson Plans: Going Green

There is a lot of talk now about "going green". And if you have read my earlier post then you know I think teachers have been doing this for a long time. But why don't we really practice what whe preach. I have a few ideas about how we can "go green" in our classrooms. Here are just a few.

• Don't use paper paint cups. Use yogurt containers with lids. That way when you are finished with the paint for the day, you don't have to waste it.
• Use old wallpaper books for painting. Not only does it add to your project, it puts use to something that was going in the landfill anyway. Ask wallpaper stores for them. I have gotten the old ones for free, and I have had to pay a $1.00 for them.
• Make your own play dough. If you have read the ingredients of store bought play dough, you have seen things you can't pronounce. (And it is gross,but sometimes the kids eat this stuff.) It is easy to make and you know flour is not going to hurt the environment.
• Have a organic garden in the spring time. The kids will have a blast, and you can teach ecology at the same time.
• This last one seems obvious but it is big. Stop using paper towels or at least cut down. Buy a pack of 20 cloth hand towels, and wash them when they are dirty.

Walking softly on the earth is something we should all do.