It has been a long, long, lesson for us. With the unpredictable weather and quantity of work I have to do, I am thankful that we are done with another lesson.
Z had a great time exploring the sense of touch and I think she is ready to move on to the sense of smell. But before that, here is a summary of the sense of touch for you and I hope that I am able to help you mommies in guiding and helping your children if they will have a similar lesson to bring home from school.
ACTIVITIES:
Texture Rubbings: Encourage your children to explore the outdoors. Ask them what objects you could use to make the rubbings. I let Z decide the objects to rub on after suggesting the first object which is the tree trunk.
Ice Chalk Painting: A very fun activity but the ice melted so quickly because it was a very hot day when Z and I painted with the ice chalk. They melted so quickly but Z had a great time brushing the melted ice on her oily paper. The recipe can be easily downloaded just type "ice chalk recipe" on the search engine and you will be directed to wonderful websites prepared by mommies.
Exploring the Sensory Table: Letting Z work at the sensory table is fun...it really eats up time and she has lots of fun especially when the table is filled with water! Here, she played with soil and water. I included rocks that I painted using gold poster color but the paint just washed away! She liked the idea of panning for gold so I decided to add the painted rocks in this activity.
To introduce the sense of touch lesson, I filled the table with different objects that have interesting textures like pom pom balls, wood shavings, sea shells and a coconut husk, not included in the picture is a feather duster.
Sand Painting: For art, I prepared finger paints with colored sand...you can also use colored sand that goes with the color of your paint for added effects since this is a sense of touch lesson. But since I only have blueish purple and green colored sand, the blue and green paints were the only ones that had sand in them. Let your child feel the rough texture of the paint while he/she creates a masterpiece.
Textured Hands: I also prepared hand cut-outs and pasted different objects with interesting textures on them to introduce the sense of touch.
Making and Playing with Playdough: I decided to try making our own playdough. I am not a big fan of the modelling clay available at the bookstore. Unfortunately, we didn't have food coloring available so I had to use the liquid paint we had handy.
Aside from Z having a blast making her cake, I also enjoyed playing with it for it was so soft and easy to handle. You can divide the ingredients to make playdough using different colors. I am sure going to make another batch since this batch cannot be stored for a long time and I will be using powdered juice for the scent of smell lesson.
Other Activities: I also prepared other activities for Z to enjoy while we learn the sense of touch. I decided to also focus on teaching her the alphabet and the letter sounds to prepare her for reading since she loves books.
We started with the letter A. I am so blessed that there are a lot of mommies out there who have done homeschooling and sharing their resources with other mommies. You can find the links below to read more about the activities.
Z created an alligator munching on letter A's. She also read the book "Albert's Special Day" and learned how to write the letter A using a tactile alphabet tile.
She decorated her big 'A' and small 'a' with pom-poms.
She also made a small 'a' craft with paper plate. The little 'a' looks like an apple!
To close the letter A, we made a collage of things that start with the letter A!
We also tried dot painting her name using a Q-tip and paint. This activity is also a good fine motor activity as well as teaching the letters of her name.
You can add as many activities as you can as long as you don't go too far from the main lesson. Such activities you can include are playing with blocks, some manipulatives to teach math and other activities to strengthen developmental areas.
These activities are not that difficult to prepare especially if you have the materials available at home. And if your children go to a preschool, then you can help them understand their lesson more by doing some supplemental activities at home.
It is our responsibility to help them learn and understand what they are studying. It will also serve as a good bonding time with them if we are hands-on especially during the preschool years. It will make learning fun and interesting for them.
Links:
http://crystalandcomp.com/2013/08/letter-of-the-week-crafts-for-preschoolers/
All you need to do is to download the pages, cut them, laminate them and put them in a ring to hold the pieces/pages in order.
Alphabet Flip Book Pages:
