The Connett Connection

This post focuses on weather themed crafts and activities for Pre-K and Kindergarten classrooms! This picture is called painting with rain.  We simply placed powdered tempera paint onto the plate and splattered water onto the plate.  Then, shake off the extra paint and you are left with what looks like rain splats on the plate! This was one if the favorite activities of my pre-k kids when I taught.  I had 3 different sized "puddles" and the students had to guess how many feet would fit in the puddle.  They then got to take off their shoes and test their guesses! This is a very simple craft where students create a blue college on a raindrop pattern ( found in this packet ). This particular student chose to color with a blue crayon and add scraps of blue paper and tissue paper on their rain drop.  Other craft supplies can include pom poms, markers, paint, dab it markers, stickers, etc. This activity, students dictated why they were ...

Spring is such a great time of year!  The cold grip of winter is lessening and the sun is beginning to shine more and the warmer weather is moving in.  I love spring time.  This post is to focus on different crafts and activities that are great for a spring time theme! This first picture is a rainbow.  We looked through magazines to find pages with solid colors on them, tore them into pieces and created our rainbow! This picture is called painting with rain.  We simply placed powdered tempera paint onto the plate and splattered water onto the plate.  Then, shake off the extra paint and you are left with what looks like rain splats on the plate! This was one if the favorite activities of my pre-k kids when I taught.  I had 3 different sized "puddles" and the students had to guess how many feet would fit in the puddle.  They then got to take off their shoes and test their guesses! This is another fun spring craft!  With thi...

There are so many Christmas themed crafts and activities that one could post about.  Here, on this post, I will be highlighting the crafts and activities I actually do with my kids! With this activity you decorated your Christmas tree while playing a game!  I gave my daughter craft objects of various shapes and then I gave her a Christmas tree page.  I instructed her to color her Christmas tree.  Then she drew a card and had to put the correct number of objects of the chosen shape on her tree!  Students are finished when their tree is filled with shapes or they feel their tree is complete!  The tree printable and the cards can be found HERE ! These pine cone Christmas trees were a huge hit at our house, with both my kindergartner and my preschooler!  Simply paint your pine cone green and stuff pom pom between the spines.  I did not even use glue!  They turned out so cute and are now decorating our kitchen counter! My son brough...

We had a full week this week, despite this short post!  I just did not think about getting pictures!  I did manage to get some pictures from our activities from studying the forest, so I will share them here! My daughter learned the difference between deciduous trees and coniferous trees.  Last week, we focused on deciduous trees, and this week we focused on coniferous trees.  My daughter loves doing art, so she loved this pine cone painting activity!  We have done a variety of pine cone crafts this year, and to see some more, you can check out my Pine Cone Activities Post ! We also learned some about bears, since they live in the forest!  We did this guided writing activity and then my daughter drew this awesome picture to go with her story! We have also been doing several activities about owls.  She thought her torn paper owl was "super cute!"  MORE WAYS TO CONNECT Teachers Pay Teachers Store Boom Store Facebook Page Hands on...

I have spent the last several weeks collecting pine cones to use with my kids for a few projects this winter. The first project we did was this turkey pine cone art project.  It was more difficult than I initially anticipated.  The feathers kept falling off the turkey, even after we glued them in.  Perhaps they would stick better with hot glue, but I am not comfortable with my 5 year old using a hot glue gun! We made a pine cone Christmas tree as well.  We painted the pine cone green and glued different colored pom poms to the inside of the cone. We made these cute pine cone owls as well!  Simply stuff the pine cone with cotton and glue eyes and a beak!  This makes a perfect craft for a winter animal or owl unit! We also painted with our pine cones.  We dipped our pine cones in paint and rolled them around our paper! We made rainbow pine cones to decorate our counter!  My daughter loved making the pine cone all different ...

Thanksgiving is almost here and we have been working on some pretty neat Thanksgiving crafts the last few days! We did a whole lesson on corn.  I wrote a detailed post about it HERE . Above are two corn crafts what we made from a corn template pattern .  The first we used q-tips to make the corn kernels and the second we used tissue paper. We also made this turkey center piece using a toilet paper roll and a turkey template .  We decorated each feather a different color and with different materials! We also made this turkey out of a pine cone.  It was a bit trickier than I had thought it would be.  We had trouble with the feathers sticking inside.  I think, despite the trouble, it did turn out pretty cute! I was also surprised that many continue a pumpkin theme into November.  I have always ended pumpkin themes with the end of Halloween.  If you are looking for pumpkin activities, please check out THIS POST for things to do ...

It's fall and the day before Halloween!  Are you looking for some fun last minute ideas for your pumpkin other than just carving it?  Here is what we have done with our pumpkins! I first bought three pumpkins, one for each of my children.  I let them sit outside and paint them any way they desired!  They turned out wonderful!  I use them as decoration on my counter! I also bought a small pumpkin pie pumpkin to do come activities with.  I cut the top from the pumpkin and dug out the insides.  I let my daughter feel the inside and had her pick out the seeds. After washing and drying the seeds, we counted how many we had with a pumpkin seed counting mat .  I first, before even cutting the pumpkin, had her predict how many she thought would be in there.  She guessed 50.  We had 77 seeds total!  Apparently smooth pumpkin have less seeds.  I learned this after picking out this pumpkin.  Some people had pumpkins o...

Halloween time offers such fun opportunities for unique crafts and activities!  I have highlighted the activities and crafts that my kids have really enjoyed! My daughter loved painting her own paper plate pumpkin!  Super simple craft for even the youngest of kids, just pain or color your paper plate orange and add a stem! I created this Hundreds Chart puzzle for my daughter with a pumpkin patch theme!  She has enjoyed putting it together over and over! We have a Halloween tradition where each kid gets to paint their own pumpkin.  My five year old did the purple one on the left, the 2 year old made the one on the right and I painted the one in the middle for the baby.  They will remain on our bar until Halloween when we place them outside for the trick-or-treaters.  Then they will go back on our counter until they are no longer good. Another pumpkin activity we did was this pumpkin mosaic.  My daughter insisted on making a pattern...

Looking for activities to go along with teaching the letter A?  Look below to see the activities we have done!   When introducing the letter A, I like to give the kids a large outline of the letter to do with what they want to, just so they can see the letter and get used to how it looks.  My two year old decided he wanted to color with markers and wanted to put some apple stickers on it as well!   This is a fun little activity I saw on one of my preschool Facebook groups.  Get a box and fill it with things that start with the letter you are working on!  Here is our letter A box: apple slice, alligator, A magnet, airplanes, cards from our letter A train and Apple Jack!  As we find more A things we will add them to our box!   [When my son started the alphabet, we just collected items.  That is the picture to the right.] We sorting capital and lowercase letter As with these sorting mats.   We looked through ma...