My Favorite Preschool Activities

What I learned from taking up FLCD (Family Life and Child Development) is that learning should come in forms of experiences-meaningful experiences that make the lesson stick to the children, not just for one day but for a life time. After all, you need your ABC's and 123's all your life, right? :)

I can't remember the moment that I learned how to read and write during my preschool days. What I do remember is how I learned about the color yellow. You see, my teacher asked us to bring a yellow fruit for Show and Tell. My mom wanted me to bring something different so she let me bring a "chesa" fruit straight from my lolo's tree. It's a small yellow fruit that tastes like "papaya" which is too slimy for me. As it turned out, we were supposed to eat the fruit that we brought in school. I sat there, jealous of my classmates who were eating mangoes and bananas. So much for bringing something different. hehehe At least, I really did learn about the color yellow :p And I can still picture that classroom moment until now.

So as I started teaching, I try to make each and every activity as experiential as possible. As hands-on, as fun and as interesting as that of Dora and all the other cartoons out there.
Si Dora may Boots, ako anong meron ako para maging interesado ang mga bata sa akin?

So this post is just a roundup of my favorite preschool activities that I think my students enjoyed. Some of which, I had fun doing as much if not more than they did. :)

I got some of these ideas in Pinterest. I am addicted to that site and so thankful to the hardworking and generous teachers around the world who shared their activities and even their printables. Seryoso, para akong batang in awe, everytime I see super nice teaching blogs. Ang effort lang nila!  To think that some of them are moms already. I hope I can also juggle work and being a mom in the future. :)

From now on, I'll try to document all my classroom activities so that somehow, I can give back to the teachers aroud the world. Much like giving world peace. haha! :)

So here they are, my favorite preschool activities (in random order)

1. We made crafts using the shape of the letter and called it "Alpha-friends" :) We used foam sheets, googly eyes and cotton for this letter R-abbit craft. I'll share with you all the crafts for the whole alphabet in a different post, SOON :)

2. During Nutririon Week, we made (and ate) fruit salad in class...

3 ... and used cut-out  real life vegetables to make these fabulous veggie prints. My favorite is the cabbage, which when cut near the stalk, makes flower-like patterns.

 4. K for K-ite :) Our kites were made of Japanese paper, straws, and painted ribbon pasta (my favorite! :))

 5. We pretended that we were cooking alphabet soup and spelled our names using bottle caps "macaroni" :)

 6. "Painted" and enjoyed these marshmallows using food coloring. We learned about "feelings" too :)

7. Printed out this Paper City from one creative daddy's blog (www.madebyjoel.com). Yes, you read it right, the blog belongs to a daddy who made this printable for his son to play with.  It comes with a Nativity set, Paris set and even a Sydney Opera House set :) Now, that's one creative daddy. :)

8. Learned about all the vitamins and minerals that we can get from eating a banana. We also did a little experiment where we wrote our names using toothpick in an unpeeled banana. We left it inside the classroom when we went out for outdoor play. Our names became clearer when we came back. I love their faces when they saw their bananas. (Teacher!!! may magic! :)

9. Of course, we read the "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom" book when we reviewed the alphabet. :) 
Look at our Chicka-Chicka Boom Boom Tree made out of tissue rolls and foam sheets leaves and letters :) 

10.  Can you guess what farm animals are these? Made them using our handprints, stamped in different positions. :)

11. More farm animal craft. This time, we made a chicken craft using a cut-out of our handprints, some paper plates and construction paper. :)

12. Recycled our old boxes and CD's by making these oh so adorable robots :)

13. W day is w-ater fun day! I attached laminated w-word-picture at the bottom of some rubber duckies for the kids to be familiar with them while they play. 

14. And lastly, made cute necklaces out of these painted pasta noodles while practicing our fine motor skills and patterns. :)

Sp that's about it. I hope that someday, my students remember not just these activities but also the fun and the learning that we had while doing it :)

Cheers to loving what you do and doing what you love!

Can you share some of your favorite activities too? Leave the links below and I'll be happy to visit them. :)