Thursday, June 26, 2008

Crayon Resist


The idea of crayon resist is to draw the picture in crayons and when we apply a thin layer of paint, the crayon resist the paint and pops up. The light colour crayons work best. Dheekshu wanted to draw with purple crayon and paint with thick purple acrylic paint. I let her go with them. The overall output was good and it is a very nice easy project.

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

After a long time..


We did not do both Peg puzzle, shape sorting for a long time. I could see so much difference in the way she did both the activities today. Previously she used to call me whenever she got struck. But today she was trying her best to keep the piece. If she can't keep, she moved to the different piece and came back to this piece again. Great improvement. Previously she did not use the pin to pick the peg puzzle piece. She used to pick the entire piece by hand. But now she uses the pin. Nice to see the improvements.

Mystery Bag

We tried this activity few days back and Dheekshu was not interested. So we tried again today. She liked it very much this time. I took a metal pig and a plastic Giraffe. I showed her both and kept only one in the bag without showing her which one I am keeping. Then I put my hand inside the bag and said pig without looking the object and took the pig out. She got the idea and wanted to try. So we repeated with Girafee and she was able to find out. Then I placed both pig and Giraffe and asked her to pick the pig. She did that correctly. Then I introduced two more plastic animals - elephant and camel. She was not able to differentiate using the shapes. She was doing previously using the material. So I am planning to do this activity with different materials first and then slowly introduce different objects of the same material.

Colour Sorting


I cut out few shapes from construction paper, as Dheekshu wanted to do more collage the other day. That let me to the idea of colour sorting, shape sorting and arranging shapes by size. So I cut out 6 pieces in each shape - circle, triangle, square and rectangle in four different colours. Today we did colour sorting using those shapes. She like the activity very much and repeated again. Tomorrow I am planning to do shape sorting in the similar manner.

Nature Collage


A branch had fallen from a tree because of the rain. That made us to create a tree using the stem and leaves from the branch. Usually Dheekshu likes the stickiness of the glue. But today we wanted to wash her hands very badly within 2 mins. So I settled down with the basic structure itself. Not a very big hit.

Monday, June 23, 2008

Ice hunting

This is another idea I got from Crafty crow. To make Ice hunting, fill a vessel with 1/3 of water. Place some treasures in the water and freeze them. Once a layer of ice is formed, make another layer in the same fashion like filing another 1/3 with water and placing some other treasures. Make the third layer in the similar fashion. We used plastic toys, animals, beads, buttons, spoon etc. as treasures.

We had planned this activity for the father's day. Since it happened to be a rainy day, we postponed it for the last week end. Even the last week end was a rainy day. So this outdoor activity had become an indoor activity. It was a huge hit in our house. Dheekshu was playing with it for more than an hour. Her father explained her about Ice forming from water and water coming from rain etc. Not sure how much she understood.

As soon as she saw the water from Ice, she started playing with it. She took two tumblers and started pouring between them. Overall it was a fun activity.

Friday, June 20, 2008

Monoprint

The book "Preschool Art" by MaryAnn Kohl is a must read book if have a preschooler at home. It has hundreds of art ideas. Monoprint is one of them. I did some modification to the actual idea given in the book
I taped a transparent paper (paper from the corn flakes box - looked like wax paper - Not sure) to the news paper and asked Dheekshu to paint in the transparent paper.



Once she is done painting, placed a piece of white paper over it, applied little pressure and removed carefully.

The output was very good. It looked like some abstract art.


Thursday, June 19, 2008

Shapes Collage

I wanted to give her some thing to do with glue today as we have not done one for quite sometime now. So I cut out some shapes from the construction paper and asked her to paste them on a piece of paper. She wanted to do more but I had cut only few shapes. May be we will do more collages in this week.

On her own...

Dheekshu has started learning to wear her clothes. She knows to wear socks, shoe, pant, hat, gloves etc. I came to know about wearing the jacket from "How To Raise An Amazing Child" by Tim Seldin. It is a very good book which teaches to implement Montessori techniques at home.
Lay on the jacket on the ground and put the hands


Pull the jacket over the head.. and done
I taught her when she was 22 months old and it is quite easy that she learnt this on her first attempt.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Water coloured Tissue Paper


As Dheekshu loves painting, we got her water colour over the week end. Since then, she is colouring atleast 30 mins everyday using that. Yesterday I gave her some tissue papers to colour. She wanted to Write 'A' using the brush or simply pate to see how the colour spread in the tissue paper. The output was very good and she enjoyed the activity thoroughly for more than an hour :-). She always wanted to unfold the paper and check the colour patterns.

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Learnt to remove first

As a montessori activity, I wanted to teach Dheekshu to use the clothes clip. I presented them to her. She wanted to use them, but could not open wide enough to place them on the bowl. However she was able to open wide enough to remove the clips I have placed:-). We may need to try this activity sometimes later.

Father's day gift


I got this idea of making 3 dimensional art from a book( sorry I forgot the book name). The idea is to cover the entire canvas surface with glue and stick some random objects to cover the surface. I used a circle cardboard and applied the glue on the entire surface. Then asked Dheekshu to stick the objects until she is quite satisfied with the sticking. The objects we used were piece of yarn, honey comb, Ear buds, Cotton balls, paper clips, rice, Straws etc. Let the art dry for the whole night. Next day, I gave her various colour paints and brush. She painted with various colours. Though the outcome was not very good, Dheekshu enjoyed. We gave this art to her father as Father's day gift.

Friday, June 13, 2008

Play knife to cut...

Dheekshu wanted to unwrap the DVD cover. Since we were very tired, I said that the cover can be removed only using a knife and we could do that later. She thought for a second, then ran to get her knife from her vegetable basket playset. She was trying for 1/2 hour to unwrap and atleast she did with her play knife itself.


Colour Matching


I was able to get some colour samples from the hardware store. My idea was to do colour matching like picture matching. Since Dheekshu was used with picture matching, she got the idea as soon as I spread out the colour tablets. She was able to do the matching.


Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Matching picture game


I got the printout for matching picture from here. I spread out the entire 16 pictures on the floor and asked Dheekshu to match the pictures with their pairs. She got confused and not interested. Then according to my husband's idea, I introduced only 2 pictures at a time. Once she gained the confidence, she was able to do the entire 16 pictures.


Monday, June 9, 2008

Mountain climbling



We went to a park over the weekend. This time Dheekshu did not have the mood to swing rather than she wanted to climb the "Mountain". For every step, she said "UP", "UP" and after reaching the top, she had a smile of achievement. She was repeating the climbing 3 to 4 times and got tired.

Drawings



Dheekshu is able to draw a face with dots as eyes, line as a nose,line as lips, cirlces as ears and lines as hair. She can draw a sun with either pencil or paint. These are her first drawings. She has started writing her letters. She will say 'W' and write like 'M'. After writing the letter, when she sees 'M' instead of 'W', she pretends as if she wanted to write 'M' only.

Saturday, June 7, 2008

Nesting and stacking blocks



We got Alphabet Nesting and stocking blocks from here. I liked it very much because it looked similar to the pink tower of Montessori. Though Dheekshu was not showing much interest previously, she is able to stack the blocks now. She is able to correct herself if she places the wrong block. I think she would have understood the concept of big and small from this.

Friday, June 6, 2008

Pouring Beans

Though I am inspried by Montessori, I was not following the Montessori's activities, thinking Dheekshu is too young to follow the activities correctly. I wanted to give it a try. I started with the first practical life activity pouring the beans between jars. I gave her two cups instead of the jar and presented it to her. She was showing interest but could not pour the beans properly every time. She was not using both the hands. I will try again after sometime.

Collage



Dheekshu knows to use the scissors. She does not know to cut in straight lines however can cut paper into various size papers.

I gave her paper which she had already painted to cut. We used a old cardboard box as a collage surface and pasted the cut paper to the cardboard box. First she was hesitating to use both the hands. But once she liked the stickiness of the gum, she started enjoying the activity. The output of the activity was good. We decided to use her painted paper to wrap gift items hereafter.

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Books

This week we got "Gallop - A scanimation picture Book" by Rufus Butler and "Can you see what I see" by Walter Wick. The scanimation picture book has to be in sure to read book list. Whenever you move the pages in the book, the animal in the page moves. Dheekshu tried moving the page with various speed and checked the animal's movement. The next book "Can you see what I see" is a bit challenge for her. We need to locate some objects from the picture which has a group of similar objects. She is able to find out one or two but not much. This book is for Beginning Reader skill. I think I need to get the previous skill level book "First Reader" for her.

Shadow Matching


When we went for a walk, I showed her shadows and we discussed about it. She raised her hands, legs, walked, ran to check how her shadows react for her actions. Then I found a shadow matching activity here. She was able to find out the animals from the shapes in the page but it was a little bit challenge for her to keep the pieces in place. With little help from me, she was able to do them better.

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Hungry Caterpillar


We borrowed the book "The very hungry Caterpillar" by Eric Carle from the library. Dheekshu was very excited saying that caterpillar eats by making holes. After reading the book, she understood that caterpillar becomes butterfly. Then we made a caterpillar using construction paper. She was quite interested in applying glue to the paper and I did all the remaining work :-). We got the idea of making caterpillar from here.

I was not sure very sure whether I can give her the store purchased gule. So I prepared it at home. I got that idea from the book Toddler Art by Susan Hodges. It is a nice book that can give hours of fun activities for toddlers. The glue came out pretty well and it was very much sticky.


Water Drawing




I did not know that she can spend more than 45 mins on a single activity till I gave her empty body wash bottle filled with Water. Before throwing the empty bottle, I gave the bottle to Dheekshu, filled with water. She started pouring water saying arcle, arcle (circle) and playing with it for 45 mins. After sometimes she started worrying seeing water everywhere. After my explanation, that water will be dried out, she was standing out just to watch water drying out for another 30 mins :-)

Puzzles


Dheeksju enjoys doing Melissa and Doug Beginning skills Floor puzzles. It has 4 puzzles of 12 pieces each. The pieces are big enough for the toddlers. Once she was able to do the big pieces puzzles, we got a puzzle book of Elmo - her favorite charater. The puzzle book has five page (each page is a 12 pieces puzzle). Remove the puzzles from the page and do them again on the book itself. But she wants to do the puzzles on the floor only like her other puzzle. She enjoys doing the activity and thats want I want.

First Art


I read some where in the internet regarding a painting using a marble. I placed a paper in the shoe box. Dipped a marble in the red paint. Placed the marble in the paper in the shoe box and gave it to Dheekshu and asked her to slightly shake the box. She liked it to do very much. She again repeated using orange colour. The art came out very well.

First painting



We got her Crayola Washable All in one paint. She enjoyed painting with them. She paints atleast 10 to 15 mins every day with them. She learned mixing colours, draw circles. So I gave her my acrylic paint and a wooden elephant. She liked it very much. She started with Brown color, but painted different colours in layers and the elephant ended with Red at one side, Cream at another side and orange at the bottom :-)

My preschool daughter's Journey

My 2 years old daugther Dheekshu is going to playschool for 3 half days a week. However I want to be a part of my daughter's learning activities as we both enjoy the same. So we try to spend most of the time together, when she is at house doing some activities. I want to record her activities, challenges, achievements in this blog.

 
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