The Connett Connection

Glitter seems to be a vital part of many preschool and young elementary classrooms, and if you are like me, you HATE cleaning up glitter.  I used to dread projects that used glitter as it would get EVERYWHERE.   I would find glitter for weeks... Well, after a few years of glitter wars, I figured out this trick to keep the mess to a complete minimum and the kids still get to have fun with create art with glitter. STEP 1:  Find a shallow container (this photo shows a paper cup, but anything you can easily mix in would work) and fill it with white school glue.  Pour in the glitter and mix it all together.  (In this photo, I put about a teaspoon of glue with a teaspoon of glitter). STEP 2:  Using a q-tip, spread the glitter/glue mixture over the desired area.  STEP 3:  Let dry!  It is that easy! As you can see, the glitter stays shiny.  Students can walk around with their art you do not have to fear the tiny sparkl...

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...

We had another short week this week as my girl left this morning for a trip to see her great-grandmother.  We started 2 new units this week and had some fun activities to go along with them! The first new unit we started was learning about land forms.  I had not really prepared any in depth lessons on this subject and only planned to introduce the concepts and different types through pictures.  After looking at the pictures I thought I needed a way to at least test whether she understood, so I made these simple sheets for her to draw a picture.  We did 3 land forms on each sheet. Here is another fun craft that I found on pinterest!  She LOVED stamping her hearts to make this picture. The second new unit we did this week was to start our word families.  I plan to complete 1 word family a week with her.  This week was the -AT family.  She made this -AT family flower to introduce the words. We used this -AT family sentence mat ...

We started the week with the flu.  My youngest had the flu all week long and is just now starting to feel better.  I hate when the little ones are sick.  Despite the sickness, we did get some school time in.    We did a variety of Valentine's Day crafts this week!  To learn more about the different projects as well as other Valentine's Day crafts, check out THIS POST ! We started practicing addition fluency this week.  My daughter can answer 50 math problems in 5 minutes!  We started with sums 5 and under.  Next week, we will mix in sums of 10 and under!  Once she can do 50 in 5 minutes we will move on to bigger sums. My two year old was really interested in school this week.  He painted a Valentine's Day craft (see the heart above) and we learned that eyes starts with the letter E!  We use a letter outline to complete this activity.  I cut out the eyes and he glued them on his E! My daughter we...

With Valentine's Day right around the corner, check out some of these Valentine's Day crafts and activities we have been doing at our house! The first craft we did was one my daughter begged to do off of pinterest.  So we stopped what we were doing and started our craft! This cute heart fish was the result of our pinterest search! We used a heart template to create this simple craft.  I gave my daughter pink, red and purple crayons and colored paper squares and told you to make whatever she wanted with these materials. My daughter loved this activity!  I gave her white and red paint with pom poms and had her dot paint all over her paper.  We then removed the paper heart from the middle to reveal this beautiful heart picture! We also made a fun heart card symmetry craft by putting red and white paint dots on a paper heart. We folded the heart in half and squished it together.  We then opened up to reveal our design! With this ...

Winter time is for lots of snow and polar animal crafts!  Check this post out for a variety of winter themed crafts!   Here is a common winter craft, paper snowflakes!  Simply take a sheet of construction paper (or any paper really) fold it in half, then in half again and then fold the paper at an angle at the corner.  Cut the corner off and then cut the top into a nice pattern.  Afterwards, cut small shapes in the folded sides.  Open up the folded paper and see your snowflake!  We made this melted snowman art project.  I told my daughter what we were doing and she insisted she needed the three neat circles for a proper snowman.  I showed her a picture of a melted snowman and she said, "Oh!  I get it now!" and this is what she created! I broke out the chalk for this craft.  My daughter free drew her snowman and added these cut outs to make her unique snowman! MORE WAYS TO CONNECT Teachers Pay Teachers Sto...

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...

There are so many things you can do with fall!  This post will focus mainly around activities with fall leaves and acorns! To start off our fall theme, I had my daughter complete a mystery picture puzzle .  She loved putting the puzzle together to learn what we were going to study!  This mystery puzzle made a fall leaf ! The next day, we went on a leaf hunt!  My daughter had a blast finding and picking up all the different colored leaves!  We did a ton of projects with these leaves, like sorting by color, leaf prints, leaf rubbings and even had an unexpected surprise in our leaf bag when we got home!  I wrote about the activities we did with our leaves in more details in my post: Free Things to do with Real Leaves! I made these color and number playing cards for my daughter to practice her number words and color words.  We played War, Uno, Go Fish and matching with these cards! Of course, I game each game a fall leaf name.  W...