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Incorporating nuts and bolts into an activity can indirectly help a child with their development! We know that bolts twist into nuts so we could slowly teach the child how to mimic this movement which helps with their fine motor skills. After, we can design flowers with the nuts or washers to use that imagination and creativity a bit more.

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Goal APL-3: Children engage in increasingly complex play

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Goal APL-3: Children engage in increasingly complex play

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Develop and sustain more complex pretend play themes in cooperation with peers. APL-3r

Choose to use new knowledge and skills during play (add features to dramatic play scene related to class project, write list, build structure like displayed picture). APL-3t

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Goal APL-5: Children are willing to try new and challenging experiences.

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Goal APL-5: Children are willing to try new and challenging experiences.

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Try things they are not sure they can do, while avoiding dangerous risks. APL-5n

Express a belief that they can do things that are hard. APL-5o

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- Communication
- Teamwork
- Creativity
- Experiments
- Open-mindedness
- Eager
- Crafts
- Building

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- Do you all want to make this tower that is on the box?
- Why don't we all share the building blocks?
- If I show you a Christmas tree can we draw it on the paper?
- Let's do a craft where everyone has a different job! Does this sound doable?
- Can we color inside the lines with this picture?

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Nuts, bolds, and washers can be challenging for a young child to play with but I think it can be rewarding in the end. Playing with these materials allows them to dig deep and sparks creativity to have fun. *Definitely a choking hazard if using smaller ones so be careful and watch out!*

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Building blocks are another great example of loose parts materials. Loose parts allow the child to open their imagination because their is no set and stone design they have to create. It is whatever comes to their mind and then it forces the question of how will I create this? It is also a great form of self expression!

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Everyone knows a child that likes the box better than the toy it came in and I think that is perfectly okay! The box allows the child to freely use their imagination to turn the plain box into whatever their mind wants. I think this is way more complex than playing with a regular toy.

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A great team building and communication activity involves the use of newspaper. Asking about specific pictures will help the young children listen to each other's answer to help themselves figure out what's the right answer! Teamwork and cooperation with peers is important to learn at an early age.

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I think a sand box is important to have because it gives many benefits for the children playing in it. With the plastic molds, the child is going to have to think about how they are going to get the sand in the mold and stay then how they are going to get the sand out of the mold without breaking it. It is also going to teach them communication to share with their peers who are also in the box. It is also great for sensory as we have touch, smell, sight, and hearing all playing a role in this!

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Natural Materials & Art: Rocks & Paint (2 Materials)

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Natural Materials & Art: Rocks & Paint (2 Materials)

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Painting is a great stress reliever for all ages and instead of painting on paper, the rocks add texture and a level of difficulty. This activity plays into both of our goals as the rocks make painting a bit more challenging and painting will force the child to share with their peers.

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We all probably have a memory of creating a hand turkey in preschool or elementary school and I think this is a fond memory for some of us. I used to love creating art like this and I think many kids today also love art. Art allows children to express themselves in ways they cannot verbally. Creating something like a hand turkey opens up many doors for creativity and learning as well!

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Natural Materials: Sticks, Grass, Flowers

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Natural Materials: Sticks, Grass, Flowers

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Similarly to earlier this semester, outdoor materials are a great way to spark creativity and play-based learning in young children. Sticks, grass, flowers, etc will help the child very easily made a self portrait just of a face and possibly hair.

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The cardboard challenge is popular in children older than my specific age group but we with out a doubt can pretend participate! The cardboard challenge is where children create and design something using only cardboard. For my preschoolers, I think we would use our imaginations and challenge ourselves to do the same. This leaves the child with a very broad, challenging, and deep-thinking assignment!

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Inspired by the short film, 'Caine's Arcade,' the Global Cardboard Challenge is an annual event originally founded by the Imagination Foundation, and facilitated by Tulare County Office of Education.

The Global Cardboard Challenge is afree opportunity for children to play and learn by using simple materials to build the things they imagine. The Cardboard Challenge lets children explore their interests and passions, teaches valuable 21st Century skills like critical thinking, resourcefulness, perseverance and teamwork, and brings communities together to foster and celebrate child creativity.

Annually in the month of October, kids of all ages are invited to build anything they can dream up using cardboard, recycled materials and imagination. Campuses who participate then invite kids to bring their creations -- and even make more on site.

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Inspired by the short film, 'Caine's Arcade,' the Global Cardboard Challenge is an annual event originally founded by the Imagination Foundation, and facilitated by Tulare County Office of Education. The Global Cardboard Challenge is afree opportunity for children to play and learn by using simple materials to build the things they imagine.

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Teaching with a newspaper has so many benefits for the young child! Going through and explaining the newspaper like the city they live in, important people, events, etc. Then, allowing the child to look at the pictures and asking questions for the class like, "Is that the park?" or "Is that our school?" will allow the children to think hard and bring back past information.

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Ten terrific classroom activities that use the newspaper to teach all sorts of valuable skills -- including reading and writing for meaning, map reading, media literacy, sequencing, word meaning, and math.
"The newspaper is the most widely used of the media [as a teaching instrument in the classroom], the direct result of a national campaign by publishers, known as Newspapers in Education (NIE).

Before the advent of NIE, newspapers tended to be used only by secondary school social studies teachers in two-week units or for Friday current events sessions. Now, however, newspapers are used throughout the school year in every area of the curriculum."

Those are the word of Nola Kortner Aiex, author of Using Newspapers as Effective Teaching Tools. Indeed, the news is more a part of the school curriculum than it ever was -- for many reasons. Ten of the reasons teachers find newspapers such effective classroom teaching tools are detailed in the NIE feature "Why Use Newspapers?" which points out that newspapers

1. are an adult medium that students of all ability levels can be proud to be seen reading.

2. deal in what's happening here and now, providing motivation for reading and discussion.

3. make learning fun.

4. are extremely flexible and adaptable to all curriculum areas and grade levels.

5. bridge the gap between the classroom and the "real" world.

6. build good reading habits that will last a lifetime.

7. can be cut, marked, clipped, pasted, filed, and recycled.

8. give everyone something to read -- news, sports, weather, editorials, and comics.

9. are a cost-effective way to educate.

10. contain practical vocabulary and the best models of clear, concise writing.

This week, Education World offers ten additional reasons -- in the form of ten terrific classroom activities -- for you to use newspapers in your classroom.

More from Education World

When you're done reading this story, be sure to check out these stories from the Education World archives:
* It's News to Me: Teaching Kids About the Newspaper Celebrate American Newspaper Week by teaching students to be knowledgeable and discerning news readers. Explore six great sites that will help you teach about the newspaper -- before you start teaching with it! 9/27/1999
* Extra! Extra! -- Eight Great Web Sites Connect News to Your Curriculum! Discover eight great sites that will help you link the day's news to your curriculum and challenge students to look beyond the news! Connect the news to science, geography, social studies, art, math, language arts, critical thinking, and technology! Included are six online news quizzes for students of all ages. 9/27/1999
* Twenty-Five Great Ideas for Teaching Current Events Looking for ways to work news into your classroom curriculum? Check out these great ideas for connecting current events to all subjects! 8/3/1998

TEN GREAT ACTIVITIES FOR USING THE NEWSPAPER

Read and write for meaning. Remove the headlines from a number of news stories. Display the headline-less stories on a classroom bulletin board. Provide students with the headlines, and ask them to match each to one of the stories. As students replace the missing headlines, ask them to point out the words in the headlines that helped them find the correct story. Then distribute headlines from less prominent stories and ask students to choose one and write a news story to go with it. When the stories have been completed, provide each student with the story that originally accompanied the headline. Ask: How close was your story to the original? How effectively did the headline convey the meaning of the story? You might follow up this activity by asking students to write a headline for their favorite fairy tale.

Read a map. Arrange students into groups, and assign each group one international story in the news. Have students explore Maps of the World and choose a map related to their assigned story. Ask students to use the map to answer some or all of these questions:

1. In what city did the story take place?

2. What country is that city in?

3. What is the capital of that country?

4. What language is spoken there?

5. What continent is the country part of?

6. What countries or bodies of water border the country on the north, south, east, and west?

7. What physical characteristics of the country might have contributed to the events in the story?

8. What effect might the event or series of events have on the physical characteristics of the country?

Understand the media. Distribute advertisements cut from newspapers, and ask students to list the products in order, according to the appeal of the ads. Create a chart showing how students rated each product. Then distribute a list of the following propaganda techniques:

Bandwagon -- the implication that "everybody else is doing it."

Plain folks -- the implication that "users of this product are just like you."

Card stacking -- distorting or omitting facts.

Name-calling -- stereotyping people or ideas.

Glittering generalities -- using "good" labels, such as patriotic, beautiful, exciting, that are unsupported by facts.

Testimonial -- an endorsement by a famous person.

Snob appeal -- the implication that only the richest, smartest, or most important people are doing it.

Transference -- the association of a respected person with a product or idea.

Discuss each ad, and determine the propaganda technique(s) used. Ask: Which techniques were most effective? Which were least effective? What factors, such as gender, geographic location, or age, might have influenced the effectiveness of each technique? As a follow-up to the activity, you might ask students to design their own ads using one of the propaganda techniques studied.

Arrange in sequence. Cut up some popular comic strips, provide each student with one complete strip, and ask students to put the comics back in the correct order. Or arrange students into groups, provide each group with several cut-up strips from the same comic, and ask them to separate the panels into strips and arrange the strips in the correct order. Then introduce older students to a series of stories about an ongoing news event, and ask them to arrange the stories in the order in which they appeared. Encourage them to use the stories to create a news time line.

Expand your vocabulary. Assign each student a letter of the alphabet. Ask students to browse through the newspaper, find five unfamiliar words beginning with the assigned letter, and look up the definition of each. Then have each student create and illustrate a dictionary page containing the five words and their meanings. Combine the pages into a classroom dictionary. In a variation of this activity, you might ask students to look in the newspaper for any of the following:

words with a particular suffix or prefix

words containing a particular vowel sound or consonant blend

compound words

words in the past, present, and future tenses

possessives

plurals

Older students might look for examples of similes, metaphors, irony, hyperbole, and satire.

Explore geography. Ask each student to search the newspaper for stories that illustrate each of the five themes of geography -- location, place, human interaction and the environment, movement and communication, and regions. Display the stories on a classroom bulletin board labeled with the five geography themes.

Hunt for classified math. Ask students to use classified pages of the newspaper to do the following:

calculate the average price of a 1985 Cadillac

find what fraction of the newspaper is composed of classified ads

figure out the cost of running a 30-word ad for one week

estimate the total number of classified ads (based on ads per column and columns per page)

compare bank interest rates and determine the most and least interest $100 would earn in one year in your area

find what percentage of job openings start with T. As a follow-up to this activity, ask each student to create a classified ad and exchange it with a classmate. Ask: Was all the necessary information included? If not, what was missing?

Sort and classify. Label each of seven shoe boxes with one of the following newspaper categories: News, Editorials, Features, Humor, Advertising, Sports, and Entertainment. Ask students to cut out the newspaper stories they read each day and put each one in the appropriately labeled shoe box. At the end of the week, have students skim as many of the stories as possible and write an adjective describing each on index cards attached to each box. You might suggest adjectives such as factual, sad, inspiring, opinionated, misleading, silly, serious, and biased. Discuss and compare the adjectives. What conclusions can students reach about each category based on those words?

Play a current events game. Make a list of five categories that might be created using the newspaper, such as Countries, Weather Events, Mathematical Symbols, Movies, and Technology Terms. Ask students to search the newspaper for information related to each category and to write a question based on the information they find. (Remind students to make a note of the answers to their questions.) Arrange students into teams, and use the question-and-answer combinations to play a Jeopardy type of current events game.

Make papier-mâché. Finally, when you've done everything else you can think of with your newspaper, don't throw it away. Make papier- mâché! Here's how:

Make a paste by mixing together 1/2 cup of flour and 2 cups of cold water. Add the paste to 2 cups of boiling water and return to a boil. Remove from heat and stir in 3 tablespoons of sugar. Let the mixture cool and thicken. You can also make a quick no-cook paste by simply adding water to flour until it forms a soupy mix. (Since flour-based pastes get moldy over time, you might want to use powdered wallpaper paste mixed with water for a longer-lasting creation.)

Tear newspaper into narrow strips, and dip the strips into the paste, coating them completely. Squeeze out excess paste and drape the strips over a mold, such as a balloon or shaped chicken wire, overlapping the edges.

Apply as many layers as necessary, allowing each layer to dry before putting on another layer.

Decorate as desired.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCE

KidBibs Learning Tip #40: Newspaper Activities Support Children's Learning in Many Ways
Joyce Melton Pagés, Ed.D, president of KidBibs, provides many activities that demonstrate how newspapers support language and literacy development, stimulate an interest in current events, support learning across the curriculum, promote higher level thinking skills, stimulate independent reading and writing, support character development, and more.

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Ten Great Activities: Teaching With the Newspaper | Education World

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Ten terrific classroom activities that use the newspaper to teach all sorts of valuable skills -- including reading and writing for meaning, map reading, media literacy, sequencing, word meaning, and math. "The newspaper is the most widely used of the media [as a teaching instrument in the classroom], the direct result of a national campaign by publishers, known as Newspapers in Education (NIE).

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Art is beneficial in a thousand different ways but isn't it neat that we can bring art and nature together in this activity? Painting rocks will spark creativity and communication skills in the child while also being a bit of a challenge. The children will have to share paint and try to talk through what they want. It will also be difficult to paint the small rock but the possibilities of what to paint are endless!

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Everybody loves a rock, right? Byrd Baylor would say Everybody Needs a Rock.

Maia went through a phase as a toddler and preschooler where she would pick up and collect rocks anywhere we happened to be.

Piles of rocks.

Now it's usually just a special rock here or there. And a budding interest in geology.
We like our rocks au naturel, but we also have a soft spot for rock arts and crafts.
18 Ways To Make Art With Rocks

(some we've done; some of these we'd like to do...)

Melted Crayon Rocks

1. Melted Crayon Rocks by drawing on hot rocks

2. Melted Crayon Rocks with crayon shavings (this was from Irresistible Ideas for Play Based Learning. The link no longer works, but to do the activity put crayon shavings on a rock and then leave it in the sun, or put briefly in a warm oven.)

3. DIY Wishing Stones (add words or drawings to melted crayon rocks)

4. Decorated Rocks Using Crayons - draw on the rocks then heat them to melt the drawings (on Paging Fun Mums)

Painting Rocks

5. Byrd Baylor and Painted Rocks

6. Pour Painted Rocks (on Hands on As We Grow)

7. Painted Rocks Yard Art (on Family Focus Blog)

8. Painted Rocks as Guerrilla Art (on Make, Do & Friend)

Land Art for Kids

9. Land Art for Kids

10. Rock and Nature Mandala (on Playful Learning)

11. Make Ephemeral Art with Loose Parts (on Mairtown Kindergarten)

Drawing on Rocks

12. Stone Owls (on Red Ted Art)

13. DIY Chalkboard Rocks (on Teach Preschool)

14. Story Stones (on Nurture Store)

15. Chalking On Rocks (on The Chocolate Muffin Tree)

More Fun Ideas for Art with Rocks

16. Rock With Chalk (on Almost Unschoolers)

17. Painted Rocks + Chalk Drawings (on Club Chica Circle)

18. More Painting With Rocks (on Fantastic Fun and Learning)

Question for you... Which of these ideas for rock art will you add to your summer bucket list? Or heck, which will you do with your kids in the coming week?

And if you're still looking for fun ways to enjoy rocks, check out our other rock-related posts:

Children's Art Enabler, Mother of Two, Lover of Cherry Pie and Nature
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Art with Rocks :: 18 Ways to Use Rocks in Kids Art

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Everybody loves a rock, right? Byrd Baylor would say Everybody Needs a Rock . Maia went through a phase as a toddler and preschooler where she would pick up and collect rocks anywhere we happened to be. Piles of rocks. Now it's usually just a special rock here or there.

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Learning outside is such a great way to expand a child's learning capabilities and broaden their imagination. With outdoor learning, it forces the child to get outside in nature and learn something new. In this activity, we would be creating a self portrait using outdoor materials like sticks, grass, flowers, etc.

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Connect with nature through outdoor art.

Description

Connect with nature through outdoor art.

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Connect with nature through outdoor art. Connect with nature through outdoor art. You may also like... Related products This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Accept Read More Settings

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I am aiming to increase complex play and I think puzzles are just that! They are challenging, frustrating, but fun if you take your time to figure it out! Puzzles will teach the child patience and will also force them to think hard about where each piece goes! They might not be able to think it can be done, but with all the pieces there, they'll create a masterpiece.