Reindeer Heads

Fast and easy!  It just required brown, dark brown or black, and white construction paper, glue and a marker.  We cut out the shapes of the heads, the kids drew the antlers and pasted everything on.  Using a glue stick, minimal mess!

Halloween Marshmallow Ghosts

A quick and fun Halloween activity that works on fine motor skills. 

Materials:
black construction paper, liquid glue, mini marshmallows, (little tongs if wanted)

Steps:
1.  On a piece of black construction paper, draw an outline of a ghost. 
2.  Go over the outline with a line of Elmer's glue.  (an preschooler could also do this, great for strengthening hand muscles).
3.  Place mini marshmallows on top of the glue line, forming an outline of marshmallows.  Tonging the marshmallows is also good for strengthening and developing the pincer grip.

4.  Let it dry and add eyes or mouth details with a white colored pencil or crayon.


Hang it for Halloween!

Direction Words

 This can be created with any theme.  We used Saint Patrick's Day, which is commonly celebrated in this area of the United States, but most of my English language learners know nothing of it.  So to familiarize them with the day and to review direction words, (and for the kindergarteners work on colors), we made rainbows out of construction paper.  They then colored leprechauns that I had drawn (that are also readily available as clip art) and cut them out.  They pasted them above, below, next to, and under the rainbow and labeled them.

Clouds

We read a few cloud books and followed up with painting clouds.  This activity can be used for younger children with creating clouds and developing fine motor skills, or with older children studying weather and cloud types.  It's also a great way to paint snow or snowmen!


 

The cloud book we started with was Little Cloud by Eric Carle.  We read the book out loud a few times and then created our own clouds on blue construction paper.  To create our cloud mixture, I mixed equal parts liquid glue (such as Elmer's) and shaving cream.  It forms a sticky, fluffy substance (great for developing oral language and discussion) that can be painted/sponged/finger painting/foam brushed onto paper.  It will dry almost as puffy paint, in a textured, raised bubble, depending on how much is applied.  The children then wrote a story about a cloud.

Various clouds by kindergarteners.

This activity is also perfect for the Cloud Book, by Tomie De Paola and creating each type of cloud.

Tactile Letter Formation

Another fun way to form letters (straight line letters), is with objects such as toothpicks or popsicle sticks.  I do this with my three year old son.  Sometimes he just likes to create designs or play with the toothpicks, setting them side-by-side.  Either way, it's a great way to develop fine motor skills.  Popsicle sticks are a lot easier to manipulate and don't roll, but toothpicks work well also.