I have done this for a couple of years now. I have to make quite small circles to ensure the longer names will fit on the A4 paper. Then I have the children tell me how many circles they need for their name - they have to count the letters in their names and add one if they want a separate ball for a face. One girl actually just turned the L of her name into the nose for his face - so cute!
Then the kids cut out the circles, wrote the letters on them, and build their snowmen. We looked at all of our snowmen and talked about which ones were the tallest/shortest or which were the same size.
First, we mixed our own simple play dough (1 c. salt, 4 c. flour, 1 c. water - we had to add a bit more water) - this recipe was enough play dough for ten children.
We didn't have time to complete our activity in the morning, so I wrapped up the play dough in cellophane and we got back to it in the afternoon.
Each child got one clump of play dough. I modeled how to make a sphere and then flatten it into a pancake. Next, we got out the plastic animals to make tracks in the "snow." We placed the creations on paper (with names) and onto the heater to dry. It takes a few days to dry totally through, but it's mostly hard already after one day. The paper does stick a little bit to the dough, but it's not a huge problem.
Don't forget the cleaning up! In the past, I have done similar activities and then spent about twenty minutes cleaning dough or paint off of these tiny plastic feet. This year I had an idea - the kids can bathe the animals! We put warm water and dish soap into the tubs in our water tables and let the kids go at it. It did leave a bit of mess (just water) on the floor, but it was a great activity for the kids. They were involved in every step of this activity and I love that!
Frozen Paint
Another teacher in our school made frozen paint pops and invited us to use them that week. She simply put paint into plastic yogurt containers, added a popsicle stick, and placed them in the freezer. They were pretty interesting to paint with (it was a little difficult to get some of them out of the containers), and the kids had a great time. Here are some of their creations:
No comments:
Post a Comment