Our New Friends

Our finished spider webs

Spider web painting (Jace has just started and has his black paper ready to go)

We have two new friends who joined us in preschool today, Luke and Roc. They did so well on their first day, soaking up all the instructions and catching on to school rules pretty fast, considering I gave them a crash course in how to "work" during our work time.

We started off with our welcome circle, and sang our welcome song to Luke and Roc. Then we read a book about spiders, practiced our halloween song before going to work time. Our special art project today was our spider webs, not my original idea (got it from my Montessori online class post).

Instructions:

Set-up: a Dish pan, two bowls, a spoon/ladle, a marble, black construction paper, white paint, apron

Notes:

The children can each do this project only one time, they take turns at the art table to do it. The other children may watch whoever is doing the work.

Here is the activity set up. The first bowl has white paint and the other white bowl has a plastic spoon and an orange marble. The geen plastic container has black construction paper cut to fit into the dishpan.

The child puts on an apron (We have an apron tray just to the right of the easel). After the child puts on their apron, I give them a name sticker to stick on the back of the black paper.

The next step is to place the paper sticker-side down in the pan. Then, using the spoon, they place the orange marble into the bowl of white paint and move it around until it is covered with paint. Then, they spoon the marble into the pan on top of the black paper. The spoon is placed back in the bowl. Next, they tilt the pan back and forth so the marble rolls paint across the paper. Then they use the spoon to remove the marble and place it back in the bowl with the spoon.

The paper goes to the drying rack to dry. They take their apron off, roll it up and replace it back on the apron tray. When the paint dries, I tape a plastic spider on the web (this step may be done by the child, but I didn't set the tray up for this, so if you do this in your preschool, make sure to set up a tray with scotch tape and spiders).

The rest of our preschool class went pretty smoothly.

Individual Work

Jace: sandpaper writing tray, using a funnel, playdough, triangles

Collin: eye puzzle, sandpaper writing tray, rice pouring/funneling, using a strainer, triangles

Roc: natural tower (grading from biggest to smallest), playdough, nuts and bolts, using a funnel, pouring rice

Luke: sandpaper numbers, numbers and counters, playdough, funneling, natural tower, sorting by color using a huller, pegboard

Phonograms 1-32, review sandpaper letters m & s

Book Reading: Elmer and The Dragon Chapter 7 & 8

Favorite Songs of the Day: "Rocketship Run" and "Buzz Buzz"