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9:00-Diapers/potties
930-Snack
945-10:15-morning meeting
1015-10:45- centers
10:45-10:55- clean up
10:55-11- get ready to go outside
11-11:45-outside
11:45-12- potties/diapers
12:00-1245-lunch/cleanup/get ready for nap
12:45-3: nap
3:00-3:30-potties/diapers
3:30-4 snack
4:00-430- centers
430-5- outside time

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Circle Time Transition Song for Preschool, kindergarten

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This week, let’s review the Spanish word for “water.” To say “water” in Spanish, say “agua.”

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This week, let’s review the ASL sign for “water.” To make the sign “water,” make the sign for “w,” which is the first three fingers held up like the number three. Tap the pointer finger of that hand against your chin: water!

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This week, let’s work on a yoga flow from cat pose to cow pose that will help stretch out your back. Start on your hands and knees with your back flat like a table. Next, breathe in deeply and arch your back up like a cat, rounding it up and out. As you exhale, allow your back to relax and bow downwards, like a cow. Breathe in and out, arching and relaxing your back, for a couple of minutes. When you are done, check in with your body. How do you feel? Are you more relaxed?

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How to Do a Cat Cow Pose for Energy | Yoga

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Health, Wellness, & Physical Development

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Health, Wellness, & Physical Development

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Let’s decorate a “tree” today! Collect some longer twigs and branches and place them in a container so that the ends are sticking up like the branches of a tree. Using clothespins, attach pieces of paper, string, and ribbon to your tree. Using the small muscles to open and close the clothespin is great for pre-writing practice.

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Let’s work on comparing sizes today! Collect a number of sticks from your yard or local park. Line them up. They are all different sizes, right? See if you can order them from smallest to largest! Show us how you did!

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Today, let’s learn about the movement of the sun using chalk and our shadow! Go outside at the start of each hour and stand in exactly the same spot (you can make an “X” on the spot where you want to stand). Ask a parent or sibling to trace your shadow each time you go outside. What happens to your shadow? What is the difference each time? Show us what you learned and tell us what you think is happening. Since you are standing in the same spot each time, the only thing that is moving is the sun! You are documenting the movement of the sun through the sky. A long time ago, people used things called Sun Dials to tell time. Ask your parents if you can look up Sun Dials on the internet to learn more about this fascinating way to tell time!

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Today, let’s use flowers as our paintbrushes! Gather some flowers of different shapes and sizes. Put them out along with paint and encourage your child to use the flowers to paint with. What beautiful art did they make? Show us!

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Today, let’s read “Be Still, Love Nature,” by Dalia Jean. This lovely book reminds us to be still and enjoy the beauty of nature each day.

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Dalia Jean: Artist, Author, and Illustrator

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Be Still, Love Nature: Children’s Book Read aloud by the Author, Dalia Jean

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Health, Wellness, & Physical Development

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Health, Wellness, & Physical Development

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Let’s practice our fine motor skills with artificial flowers and a colander! To do this activity, set out some artificial flowers and turn a colander upside down. Encourage your child to put the stems of the flowers into the holes of the colander. This will take both fine motor control and problem solving skills!

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A fun way to practice early math skills is to gather items that can be counted. For instance, while on a walk, try to find 1 pinecone, 2 dandelions, 3 leaves, 4 twigs, and 5 rocks. Can you find all of those things? Once you have, line them up and count each one. This exercise will help with one to one correspondence as well as early number recognition!

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Who loves Dandelions? I do! They are bright, sunny little flowers that pop up in the spring time. They are also the first food for honey bees when they wake from their winter hibernation. Dandelions do so much for us, but today, we’re going to use them to make beautiful play dough! Collect lots of dandelions from your yard. An adult will need to bring one cup of water to a boil and then remove from heat. In a blender, mix the hot water and the dandelions until the dandelions are completely incorporated with the water. Add the mixture to a bowl and add in two tablespoons of oil (baby oil or vegetable oil), 1/3 cup salt, and 1-2 tablespoons of cream of tartar. Stir until salt is dissolved. Add in two cups of flour and mix until combined. If the dough is still sticky, you may need to add in more flour until it is malleable. Once the mixture cools, your child can take over the mixing! Knead the dough until it reaches the perfect consistency. You now have a beautiful naturally made and dyed ball of playdough!

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Learn how to naturally dye homemade playdough using dandelions with this simple tutorial + video.

Inside of this post we will show you how to create a vibrant yellow play dough using simple ingredients that you have around your home.

Spring is finally here and with the sunshine, my kids are bringing me dandelions by the handfuls. There is just something magical to children about dandelions.

Maybe it is how bright and cheery their sunburst yellow is.

Maybe it's that they are absolutely everywhere.

Or maybe it's just because they are one of the few flowers most kids can pick without getting fussed at.

Whatever it is, we are tapping into that magic today as a method to naturally dye homemade play dough.

And as an added bonus - this dandelion play dough smells pretty good and has a ton of developmental benefits for your child!

Items Needed for DIY Dandelion Play Dough
Optional: A blender to help you blend the water with the dandelions to create a vibrant yellow. (We love this blender )
How to Naturally Dye Play Dough Using Dandelions

1. Bring one cup of water to a boil and remove from heat.

2. In a blender, mix the hot water and dandelions.

3. Once the dandelions are pretty much completely destroyed in the water, transfer the water to a bowl and add in oil, salt, and cream of tartar. Give it a good stir to dissolve the salt.

4. Add in 2 cups of flour to the mixture and stir really good until it is fully mixed.

5. Then dig your hands in and mix some more. If it is sticky at this point you might need to sprinkle in some more flour and knead until it no longer sticks. The amount of flour that you may need to mix in will vary based on how much water the dandelions were holding.

Then Play! Easy Peasy!

Watch This Video to See How We Make Our DIY Dandelion Playdough

More Homemade Playdough Recipes YOu Will Love

Easy Homemade Playdough - this is our favorite basic recipe!
The Secret to Vibrant and Soft Playdough
Bubble Bath Play Dough - this stuff really bubbles up!
How to Make Playdough from Peanuts
Candy Play Dough
Printable Alphabet Play Dough Mats

Not making this DIY Dandelion Playdough right now? Then pin the image below so you can easily find it later!

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Naturally Dyed Dandelion Play Dough Recipe

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Learn how to naturally dye homemade playdough using dandelions with this simple tutorial + video. Inside of this post we will show you how to create a vibrant yellow play dough using simple ingredients that you have around your home. Spring is finally here and with the sunshine, my kids are bringing me dandelions by [...]

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A fun way to celebrate spring with beautiful art is to make suncatchers with found objects. To do this activity, you can use either a Ziploc baggie filled with water and oil or the sticky side of contact paper. For the baggie, encourage your child to add found objects into the bag. Seal it and place it on a window where you child can reach and use the bag to push around the objects. For the contact paper, tape it to the window with the sticky side facing out. Encourage your child to stick the found objects to the contact paper. Once everything is on, cover with another piece of contact paper and tape to a window. Enjoy the beautiful art as the sun streams through it!

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Today, let’s read “Patterns in Nature,” by Jennifer Roy. Let’s learn about the different patterns that we can see and find in nature.

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Patterns in nature by Jennifer Roy AR read aloud accelerated reader

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Health, Wellness, & Physical Development

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Health, Wellness, & Physical Development

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A fun way to explore nature and work on fine motor skills is to explore a nature tray using scissors. If your child is ready to use child-safe scissors, you can provide a shallow bin with leaves, flowers, and petals for them to cut with the scissors. If you feel your child is not quite ready for scissors, you can encourage them to pull the items apart with their fingers and explore all of the parts.

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An important part of early math skills is learning how to classify objects as either bigger or smaller than something else. Today we will practice this skill using found objects in nature. On a walk, collect as many different nature items as you can. Find big ones and small ones and any in between. Once back home, encourage your child to sort the objects into big and small. In order to do this, you will have to pick an object that they can measure by. Perhaps you can use a midsize pinecone. Anything that is bigger than that pinecone goes into the “big” pile. Anything smaller than that, goes in the “small” pile. Show us how you do!

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How many frogs can fit on the log before it tips? Today, we’re going to do some experimenting! Fill up a bin with water, just enough that you can get things to float in it. Find a branch that will float in the water. Find small plastic frogs (you can cut these out of pieces of foam if you’d like, for instance, you can cut the shape out of a Styrofoam egg carton). Encourage your child to place the frogs on the log and see how many can fit on there before the log topples over!

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Today, let’s use found nature objects to create art! Gather leaves, flowers, rocks, and sticks. Encourage your child to use the objects to create different shapes and patterns. What did they create? Show us!

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Today let’s read “We’re Going on a Nature Hunt,” by Steve Metzger! Let’s see what some children find on their nature hunt!

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We're Going on a Nature Hunt by Steve Metzger

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Health, Wellness, & Physical Development

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Health, Wellness, & Physical Development

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Today, let’s create a necklace using found leaves! Encourage your child to pick up different shapes, colors, and sizes of leaves. It will be best to find fairly new fallen leaves, instead of dried out ones. Tie a piece of string to a small twig and encourage your child to push a hole into the leaf with the twig and thread it onto the string. This fine motor activity also encourage problem solving skills!

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Using a bin of soil, you can create a seek and find that will entertain your child for hours! Fill a bin with soil and hide letters, numbers, or puzzle pieces in the soil. Encourage your child to use gardening tools to uncover the hidden pieces in the soil.

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A fun activity that you can do on a rainy day is exploring magnets! Fill up a mason jar with water and place metal paper clips into the water. Next, take a magnet and place it on the outside of the jar. What happens to the paper clips? Will they follow the magnet as it moves up and down the jar? Tell us what you find out!

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Today, let’s make marbled art using oil and water. Oil and water resist each other, so they cannot mix. To set this activity up, add oil (vegetable works best, but mineral or baby oil will also work) to several cups. Put in water based food coloring (not the gel kind) and mix until the big drops turn into tiny droplets. Do a different color in each cup. Pour about an inch of water into a pie dish and then use a spoon or dropper to add the colored oil to the water. Be creative about where you add it. Lastly, take small pieces of white paper and lay them on top of the colored water. When you remove them, you will be left with marbled paper. The effect is caused by the water based food coloring sticking to the paper and the oil creating pockets, or bubbles, where the color cannot stick. Show us your creations!

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Today, let’s read “The Listening Walk,” by Paul Showers. It is important to listen as we walk around our neighborhoods sometimes. What can you hear if you go on a listening walk?

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Health, Wellness, & Physical Development

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Health, Wellness, & Physical Development

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Let’s feed the baby birds! Cut up small pieces of pipe cleaners or string. Encourage your child to pick up the pieces with a clothes pin and transfer them to a small bowl. You can explain that mother birds feed their young by picking up worms and then feeding them to their babies using their beaks.

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A fun math game that also helps develop fine motor control uses leaves and clothespins to practice counting! You can use either real leaves or artificial leaves. On each leaf, write a number between one and ten. Encourage your child to clip the correct number of clothespins to each leaf (try to make sure that the larger numbers have bigger leaves!). As you go along, encourage your child to try to count as they clip, working on that one to one correspondence that we have been focused on!

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Here is a long term project that you can do to learn more about how things grow. Most fruits and vegetables have seeds that you can harvest to grow new plants. Potatoes, however, are special. You can plant a potato and grow a whole new plant! To do this experiment, place one end of a potato in water, with the other end sticking out. Watch carefully what happens to the potato each day. What do the roots look like? What do the leaves look like? What can you learn from your experiment?

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While salt dough is an easy and fun way to create lasting art, placing what you make outside can be dangerous for wildlife. The salt in the dough can be harmful to different animals. This activity provides a recipe for salt free dough that you can use to make fun portraits that you can hang outside of your house for decoration! Collect interesting nature items that you find on a walk. Be sure to only use that which you find on the ground; never pick something from a tree or plant. Also, avoid berries as they can be poisonous. Take your finds home and use the recipe that can be found on this website to create a salt free dough. Use the dough to create nature portraits in the dough. Once it hardens, you will have lovely art that you hang outside!

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We have always been a family that enjoys a woodland walk. Each season has something different to offer. There is always so much to discover and is a place that offers peace and calm. The fresh air and the open path ways are great for children to exercise their little legs and enjoy an hour or two of playing, climbing and discovery.

Last night at gone midnight - 12.36am to be exact (you will have seen me posting about this on my Instagram) I was putting a little challenge together for Neve. I knew we would be venturing to the woods today. Here is what the note said -

This activity was fabulous but there are a couple of very important points you must remember as we all have a duty of care for the woodlands and the animals that live there -

1. You must use a salt free dough. Salt is extremely dangerous to animals and because of the volumes needed in dough, if any traces were to be left behind and digested by the animals it would result in them being very poorly. It has been reported that pets who have digested playdough made with salt have even been killed. At the bottom of this post we share with you a great, easy dough recipe that uses no salt. A recipe that is much safer to venture into the woods with and enjoy this activity.

2. Only collect Nature that you find already on the forest floor. Don't pick berries/leaves/sticks etc off the trees and bushes. It will be a good talking point on your walk and will help children respect and appreciate the woodland.

3. Remember to take all the dough back with you. It easily removes from the tree trunks (see our video for the demo). Under no circumstances should they be left behind. Take a camera, use a photo or ipad to take photos to keep of your artwork.

4. Take a child friendly woodland guide with you to help identify the berries, seeds and trees you come across. I have two amazing books to share with you and I highly recommend you adding the two of them to your children's book collections, they are suitable to use all year round:

The Woodland Book - Find me on Amazon - UK/US

It has been a long time since I was so excited and captivated by the wealth of imagery and facts jam packed in this book - all child friendly!

The book shares with us the seasons and how the woodlands change as the months pass by. It gives you Nature Walk challenges depending on the seasons whilst encouraging you to use your senses. It introduces animals and bugs that live in the woods and suggests activities such as a making a Woodland Journal.

If there was one book I had to recommend it would be this one. You wont be disappointed!

Trees - Find me on Amazon - UK/US

This book opens your eyes to a world of Nature. Learn how to identify trees, discover how important they are for animals, people and the planet. The pictures are simply beautiful. Covering seeds, activities, animals, insects and much more.

Create a batch of dough using our special salt free recipe. I made it alone the night before, just so we were able to get up and go this morning. You may want to take the time to involve the children in the making process. If like me you are making the night before, make sure you store it in an air tight container.

Go out on your walk and select a tree trunk to press your dough into. Break the batch up into smaller balls and roll them before flattening onto the tree. We found you didn't need to press too hard for the dough to stick well. We were cautious not to over press and we didn't want dough being left behind in the crevices.

Once you have the dough flattened you have your canvas. Create portraits or patterns using the nature you have collected along the way on your walk. I would advise you to take a pot along with you to collect as you walk, just to make sure you have enough items when you come to creating.

The batch created enough for around 6 pieces of art:

With endless opportunities, this activity it is bound to captivate children of all ages. Perhaps they would like to create portraits of themselves, of a friend or if there is an event such as Halloween approaching they may want to create spooky monsters perhaps?

Hand over the balls of dough and see what your children enjoy creating. Make sure there is enough for you to make one too. I always find that children love you creating and making alongside them.

Lets take a look at the activity in action:

Remember to ask the children if they can name any of them items they have used in their portraits. If they are unsure, see if they can find the answers by using the books I mentioned above (and below again for your convenience:

Salt Free Play Dough

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Other posts to check out on Learning and Exploring Through Play:

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We have always been a family that enjoys a woodland walk. Each season has something different to offer. There is always so much to discover and is a place that offers peace and calm. The fresh air and the open path ways are great for children to exercise their little legs and enjoy an hour or two of playing, climbing and discovery.

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Today let’s read “Two Little Birds,” by Mary Newell DePalma! We will learn all about how little birds grow big and strong. One day, they saw the moon and wanted to go there. Let’s see what happens when they try to fly there!

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Two Little Birds by Mary Newell DePalma | Read aloud  Book for Kids 영어동화  Easy Science & Nature book