Thanksgiving Turkey Crafts for Preschool and Kindergarten

We made two turkey cuties this past week at preschool.

   I think the parents were as excited to have them as the kids were to make them!  

(Everyone likes to have a festive house, right?)

Here's how we created them.

Playdough Turkeys

Teacher Prep:

• we made some homemade PLAYDOUGH in a shade of brown (Clay would be better, but playdough is cheaper! :))
• we prepared the "turkey heads and bodies" by sticking a pipecleaner in the bottom ball and then poking the head on top

(This step helps keep the head from detaching.)

The children then:

• Pressed in some GOOGLY EYES

• Added PIPECLEANERS for the BEAK, "WATTLE" (that red thing by the beak:)) and LEGS  

• Poked in an assortment of FEATHERS in fall colours for the wings

And, voila!  The perfect little turkey for your Thanksgiving table!

Turkey Long Legs

Teacher prep:

• We cut TURKEY BODY SHAPES out of brown paper, BEAKS out of orange paper, and strips for LEGS out of orange paper (legs not shown in photo)

• We folded the legs into "accordions"  (unless you have an older group who could do it themselves)

The children then:

• Glued the LEGS, GOOGLY EYES, and BEAKS to the body

• Coloured half a folded COFFEE FILTER with markers in shades of orange, brown, and red 

• SPRAYED the coffee filter with water to cause the colours to "bleed" together

I hung the coffee filters on a string so that they would dry by the end of class.

We then stapled the coffee filters to the back of the turkey body.    

And here he is...Mr. Turkey Long Legs!

Super cute AND easy! 

Gobble, gobble!

Fall Counting Game for Preschool or Kindergarten Center Time

We start our preschool day with close to an hour 

of free play.

Keeping the table top activities "fresh" is always the goal!

Here is a new game I created for fall. 

  I created this game by cutting and gluing the parts for the trees onto a poster board.  

I find that generally looks more attractive (and more colourful) than drawing the images directly onto the paper.

The children add the "apples" (red glass stones from the dollar store) to the trees.  

The game was designed to be a counting game with children matching the number of apples they add to the number written on the trunk of the tree.

Some of the children (particularly the 3 year olds) however, simply enjoy playing with the beads and placing them on the trees.

Although they are not counting the "apples," they can still develop number awareness as they play.  

I will ask casual questions such as which tree has the MOST apples, which tree has "0" apples, or  

how many apples do you think you could eat? :)  

If you want, you can also add a "Mr. Slinky Worm" to the table.  

The children love it when he tries to sneak off with the apples!

We continue with the apple theme at circle time, by singing the classic Mr. Slinky Worm song.

If you'd like magnet board pieces for this song, you'll find them in my Worm Unit HERE along

with a variety of other apple related activities.

All the activities are great for fall, but sometimes Halloween crowds in and I just use the apple ones in the Fall and save the worm activities for spring! 

(That's when the kids particularly seem to enjoy digging in the soil for them!)

This set is on sale in my shop now for 20% off! 

Take a peek HERE and get your own Mr. Slinky Worm song, magnet board pieces, and class activity sheet while the set is on sale!

Corinne

Fall Craft Ideas and a Fall Clip Art Freebie!

You always know what season it is in a preschool classroom.

Between the bulletin board displays, the crafts, and the songs at circle,

there's no mistakin' that it's fall!

Here's a few shots of the projects we've been doing in our class this past week.

Excuse me if the pics aren't perfectly cropped or rotated!

Fall's a busy time! :)

Yarn Wrapped Acorns and Apples

Step 1 - Roll red and brown paint on cardstock (great project for the kids)

Step 2 - Teacher cuts out apple and acorn shapes 

Step 3 - Kids glue on letters, glittery shapes, etc.

Step 4 - Kids wrap the shape in yarn 

(Teachers help them tape the beginning and end of the yarn piece)

Fall Wreath on a Paper Plate

Step1 - Cut out the center of a thin paper plate 

(You don't need a Chinet plate for this project! :))

Step 2 - Students glue a variety of real leaves, paper leaves, and tissue leaves to the plate

Tip:  The real leaves don't stick very well to the plates, so after the kids glued them to the plate, we reinforced them with a staple or two!) 

Step 3 - Add a ribbon for hanging at the top (It's on the side in this photo)

Also, for fall....I've just added Surprise #4 to my shop!  

This FREEBIE can be used for a very special holiday coming up next month.  

But I won't say more, 'cause it's a secret!  

Shh......

Link to your surprise HERE!

Corinne

New FREE Fall Printable Surprise!

I've been back at school this past week prepping my classroom, but  

tomorrow is the first day our little ones arrive.

I better get a good night's sleep!

My Five for Fall Celebration continues this week with a new FREEBIE!

This one is a little different in that it's not actually clip art, but a pdf file of 

8 printables that I hope will be really useful for fall!  

 

If you like it, please leave some feedback.  

Thank you!

Also, Freebie #1 and #2 are still available in the FREE section of my shop if you haven't picked those up already.

 

Link to Surprise #3 in my Chirp Graphics shop, HERE!

Have a wonderful week!

Corinne

FREE Fall Clip Art Surprise!

My FIVE FOR FALL Celebration is in full swing for the month of September! 

Lots of you left lovely feedback on last week's clip art surprise.  
Thank you so much!

By the way, I thought I'd keep the sets a surprise to make it more fun.  

We just don't get enough good surprises in life, right?!

 I have just posted SURPRISE #2 in my shop and it's waiting for YOU!

If you like it, please remember to leave feedback.  

It only takes a minute, and it makes such a huge difference to me as I continue to build my store.  

Thank you so much!!

Link to Surprise #2 HERE!

Awesome Halloween Book for Pre-K or Kindergarten Plus a Set of FREE Pumpkin Playdough Mats

I must say, I love fall - fall songs, fall crafts, fall activities...and of course, Halloween!  

I'm the prissy type of Halloween lover though.  

Give me the happy jack o' lanterns, the smiling ghosts, and the friendly bats.  

The gory stuff is not for me!

One of my favourite Halloween books for this time of year is called The Hallo-Wiener by Dave Pilkey.

By the way, I'm linking this book idea to Deanna Jump's Book Talk Tuesday series.  
You may want to check out the book recommendations there once you're done this post!

Now, The Hallo-Wiener is about a little daschund
 named Oscar.

Oscar gets his fair share of ribbing for being a wiener dog

 and as you would expect, the teasing only gets worse when his mom buys him a "hot dog" costume to wear for Halloween.

Poor Oscar.  The humiliation!  

But everything changes when Oscar becomes a hero on Halloween night.

This book is hilarious and the perfect choice for the preschool or Kindergarten crowd.

It's definitely my favourite book for this time of year.

Halloween is still a few weeks away (and my Hallo-wiener book will have to stay under wraps for now!), but I plan on introducing a few Halloween inspired activities right away.

I want to squeeze in as many as possible before it's too late!

I just made these pumpkin printables today.

I'm going to print a couple copies of each and then laminate them for use at one of our centres.  

Students can either draw faces on the pumpkins with 

wipeable markers OR they can create faces on them with play dough.

If you'd like to download these pumpkin mats,

click {here} to grab the set!

Enjoy!

 

p.s. - New freebie coming soon! 
If you don't want to miss it, you can sign up to receive my posts by e-mail on the sidebar of my blog! 

  

Fall Tree Finger Painting and Free Fingerpainting Printables

We don't do a lot of finger painting in our classroom, but we probably should!

The children love to stick their hands and fingers into the paint - even when supplied with brushes and instructions to use them! :)  

This past week, I thought, why fight it?

Painting is fun, but indulging in the act of dipping hands and fingers into the paint makes it an awesome sensory experience, as well!

So we did some fall tree finger painting and saw quite the variety of results!

There were trees with small fingerprint leaves evenly distributed around the page...

trees with large blobs of leaves and fully painted trunks and branches...

and then there were the full-on hand smeared extravaganzas!

That reminds me.  

You'll want to have paint smocks on hand as well as some damp paper towels for finger wiping at the table!

But surprisingly, the finger painting process was not much messier than when we use paint brushes.

When I prepared this craft, I cut the tree shapes out of brown paper.

The students then glued the tree cut outs onto a blue page before they started painting.

Another option would be to print copies of a tree image on blue paper and then have the children do the painting directly on the page.  

The students could then colour or paint the tree trunk AND add the leaves. 

(And you would save time by not having to cut anything out!)

If you'd like to try this craft in your classroom, you may want to download the free tree printable below.  

And if you'd like to try a similar, but more involved project, you may want to download this page of 4 trees.  

Your class could paint one for each season!

If you decide to try worksheet #2, you may want to do one  tree at a time to avoid confusion (and lots of smudging!)

Since the trees on this printable are smaller, you may also want to consider having the students paint the leaves on these trees with a Q-tip rather than their fingers - or at least offering the suggestion!

To be notified of more ideas and freebies like this, just click on the sidebar of my blog to receive my posts by e-mail.  

I post a couple of new ideas every week! 

To download the tree images, just click {here}.

Leaf Crafts with Personality!

I collected some leaves on the weekend to use at one of our art tables. 

It was a great excuse to get outside and enjoy the woods with my doggy!

Yes, Sammy, sniff in that lovely scent!  

 I was initially thinking the kids could do some sort of collage or painting activity with them, but then I thought of something a little more unique - 

Leaf People!

It was such an easy art activity - no cutting or prep for me - and lots of fun for the kids.

All you need for supplies are:

• leaves
• background paper
• glue
• googly eyes
• markers/felts

 As you'll see in the picture, my leaves were a little spotty!  

Unfortunately, there's not too many red or orange leaves around here yet, but the projects looked fine nonetheless.

One thing to note is that the lighter leaves allowed the marker drawn mouths, etc. to show up the best.  

(An obvious result, but something to keep in mind when collecting leaves for this project the next time around. :))  

Here's some of the crazy leaf characters that were created.

:

I still have a lot of leaves left, so expect another fall leaf craft coming soon!

Fall Bulletin Board Idea and Free Crow Template

 Ah, the start of a new week!  

Mondays are hard (especially in September), but hopefully none of you have problems like the teacher in the cartoon! :)

Like most of you, I started off the year by freshening up the class with some new bulletin boards.

This year we decided to go a little "earthier" 
so we began by covering the board in burlap instead of the usual coloured paper.

I love the look (and the smell) of burlap and we'll likely use it as our backdrop right through till December, just changing the images on top.

I set the stage for the students' artwork by adding a scarecrow, a corn stalk, and a scattering of fabric leaves on top of the burlap.

The students added their mark to the board with some leaves that they painted in fall colours (with a sprinkling of sparkles and sequins on top for fun!)

We laid out some leafy colours to paint with including yellow, green and red.  

We also encouraged students to mix colours in a separate container to see if they could make
 some new shades.   
Orange and brown soon arrived on the scene!

On a different day, our class made these adorable crows to add to the board, as well.
Some were more fluffy than others!

   

Put it all together and here's the final result!

It's been lots of fun singing songs about scarecrows and crows at circle time with this festive backdrop!

Some of our favourite songs include:
5 Crows All Shiny Black

This is Jack O' Happy

Have You Ever Seen a Scarecrow

and 12 Little Acorns

If you're interested in getting a copy of the magnet board songs above,  you might want to check them out in the
 packs below -  {here}

and {here}.

As for the bulletin board, if you'd like to try out this idea (or even just make the crows), just click {here} or on the image below to pick up a free crow template!

Materials required for this craft include:

black paper
yellow paper
black feathers
googly eyes
glue sticks

Enjoy!