Saturday, April 7, 2012

More Shape Activities

Making shapes with play dough - this was challenging for the 4 year olds, to shape the dough into squares, round (circle), heart and star shapes. But with the teachers' guidance and encouragement, the shapes turned out to be great.
Threading the different shapes was fun. There was no particular pattern to follow, it was more of shape recognition and to be able to thread the different shapes together (fine motor skill development).
In this exercise, the children were asked to cut out the shapes from old magazines using scissors. Cutting triangles, rectangles, diamonds and squares was not too bad for the children.
The shapes were outlined on the papers as the cutting guide for the children.
Cutting the circles proved to be quite challenging for the children.
Another favourite activity was stamping the different shapes. The shapes were from things like : bottle caps, square blocks, etc. The children had a lot of fun in this activity.
'Shape Train' - the children were given the different shapes prepared by the teachers - to be pasted on the train wagons. This activity develops the child's creativity in designing the wagon with the different shapes and fine motor skills development when pasting the shapes.
An exercise using the shapes to create the house : the roof, door and windows. Requires a lot of motor skills to paste the shapes on the 'house'.
You can bet the children are 'experts' on shapes by the time they finished this theme.

Sunday, April 1, 2012

A Star-ry Day

This activity is part of a family project. The children were given a 'star' and to decorate it with the help of parents at home. The objectives of the activities were to focus on the shape 'star' - (language and cognitive development), creativity and fine motor skills development.
On the 'Star-ry Day', the children brought the stars they have decorated to school. The decorated STARS were made into crowns. Every body came to school in a 'star' motif dress, t-shirt, etc or bring something 'star shape'.
There were many unique 'stars' for the crowns as shown in the photos below:







The children loved their crowns and were very proud of their 'creations'. The different decorations reflected the parents and child's unique creativity. We hope that the children enjoyed decorating the stars with their parents.
The other activity on 'A Star-ry Day' was making a 'star' mobile of different shapes. The children coloured the different shapes prepared.


Then the shapes were threaded to big STAR. It was quite challenging for the children to thread but it is a good activity to develop the fine motor skills.
That's the finished mobile : Big STAR with the circle, square, rectangle shaped cards.

The mobiles hanging in the classroom.