As an Experience Early Learning Blog Ambassador, we receive the Experience Early Learning preschool curriculum in exchange for sharing our honest and authentic stories resulting from our personal experiences. As always, our opinions on amazing things for children are 100% our own. Keep in mind that all preschoolers do things in their own time and on their own terms. What one is ready for, another might not be. Please use your best judgement when planning activities for your children.
This week, we started our Garden Treasures theme from Experience Early Learning (formerly Mother Goose Time). Our topics were all related to planting gardens: Soil, Seed, Sun & Water, Roots, and Worm. Talk about fun!
Teaching preschoolers about gardening is a wonderful opportunity to explore plant life cycles and how plants grow.
We discussed that roots absorb water and nutrients from the soil and deliver them to the rest of the plant and then the children pretended to be "roots," which made for lots of gross motor fun.
During circle time, we talked about where roots are found: at the bottom of a plant.
One of this week's favorite activities was the Roots Creative Art. It was perfect for practicing creative thinking and fine motor skills.
Every week, we receive My Creative Minds daily sheets to send home with each of the creative art activities.
These pages provide an excellent overview of what we did and why as well as some great, open-ended questions for parents to ask their preschoolers.
For example, "Today I made roots. Roots are important because they help deliver food to plants. I created my own root art by cutting a photo in half then drawing the other half. I used my own ideas and creativity to design my root art. Ask me: How did you make your roots? What was your favorite part about making this artwork?"
The children were each given a photo to cut in half and then glue half to a sheet of blank paper.
How can you finish half of your photo?
What colors will you use?
Will you add more roots or leaves to your drawn half?
This invitation to create was a wonderful way to introduce the concept of symmetry as well.
Not to mention, the children are developing important communication skills and improving their vocabulary as we sit together and create while discussing the prompts.
The preschoolers had a great time drawing the other half of their sunflower roots using markers.
As with all of our process art activities from Experience Early Learning, this one included a few observation questions:
Did the child use the materials to create a root design?
Did the child start and finish his or her art project?
These questions make it easy to assess children's progress for a wide variety of skills and standards.
Don't forget to check back next week to see what we're up to with our gardening theme from
