What's New on the Shelves?

Over the weekend, I spent several hours putting some new lessons together for the Practical Life and Art shelves.  Ordinarily, I have some sort of plan when it comes to what will be used such as theme-related (i.e. seasons, holidays, etc.)  This time, however, I really did not have a plan!  Instead, I decided to make sure all the Practical Life lessons used clear vessels.  In this manner, the child can have full visual access to any material placed inside.  As it turned out, the pouring lessons ended up with plain water (no colors added) while the spooning, tonging, and dry pouring work all ended up with colorful items!  Here is a peak at some of the lessons which await the children upon their arrival to school after the long weekend:



Tonging:  Sorting by color...



...green and yellow.



Spooning:  Sorting pom-poms...



...into jars.  How adorable is this butterfly tray?  I bought six of them for a dollar each!



Spooning pony beads:  I found these jars way back in my cabinets and decided to leave the lids on for the lesson - it provides an added point of interest for the child because now, they must open the jar (and close it at the end)!



Tonging:  Sorting pony beads by color...



"Color-fun!"



A clothespin/color-matching activity I made a very long time ago...



...which the children still enjoy today!

It came to my realization after setting up the lessons, that some of the works have sound (pony beads) while others are silent (pom poms).  This lead me to the idea to set up a Sound/No Sound lesson for the Science area of the classroom...  more on that later though - I just wanted to share with you  how some of my ideas are generated.

I will also be sharing some of the new Art lessons set up as individual activities as the children are introduced to them.  Those will be coming over the next days and weeks, so stay tuned....!