Mini Preschool: Halloween: Craft

Today for preschool it was my turn to teach. We're still doing the Halloween theme this month, and today my sub-theme was craft. Craft is a fairly tricky subject when your age range is 18 months to three years old. I did my best to pick something that even the littlest ones could do, but that the big ones would still enjoy. I got the idea for this craft here. The sun catchers she did were apples, but someone commented on her post and said that it would be fun to do pumpkins as well. And I thought, if you can do apples and pumpkins, why not jack 'o lanterns? (Which for some strange reason Lincoln calls "pumpkin jackals") And so the idea was born.

But I didn't just want to do a craft and be done. I wanted our preschool session to be at least some what educational as well. And I spent about a month brainstorming different ideas on what I could do. It's funny how the pieces come together. At first I thought I'd just teach them a song about jack 'o lanterns along with the craft. I'd talk to someone about it and what they said would inspire a new idea, and then I'd feed off of that, and someone else would say something and give me another idea, and pretty soon it all came together. I think Aaron was the biggest contributor though, he's the one who suggested I use each part of the jack 'o lantern's face to talk about one of the 5 senses. So that's what I did. :)

I made each kid a bag with their name on it. Inside the bag were all the parts to make their craft: the outline of the pumpkin, two eyes, a nose, and a mouth. And two pieces of clear contact paper. And the lyrics to a song I wanted to teach them.

First I had them stick the outline, or "skin" of the pumpkin down on the first piece of contact paper. Then we talked about our skin and how it's all over our whole body and how we use it to touch or feel things. I took around a pumpkin and let the kids feel the different parts of it. The outside of the pumpkin had a smooth, cool feeling. The stem of the pumpkin was hard and rough and scratchy and prickly. And the pumpkin guts (which I had in a separate container) were slimy, gooey, and squishy.

Next we stuck on the mouth of the pumpkin. I asked the kids to point to their mouths. Then I asked them to tell me what they had inside their mouths. Then I had them all stick out their tongues. We talked about how we use our tongues to taste. I brought out four different bowls of pumpkins seeds. One where the seeds were cooked in soy sauce for a bitter taste. One where the seeds were cooked in lemon juice for a sour taste. One where the seeds were seasoned with cinnamon and sugar for a sweet taste. And one where they were seasoned with seasoning salt for a salty taste. I let the kids try a few seeds of each flavor, and talked about the different tastes they were tasting.

Then we did ears. I explained that we have something that the jack 'o lanterns didn't have, and that was ears. I asked what we do with our ears, and they answered that we listen with our ears. I had them get up from the table and stand in a straight line. We played a wiggle game, to change things up a bit. I would say, "If you can hear me touch your head, or turn around in a circle, or wave your arms in the air, etc." And the kids would do it. Sometimes I gave the instructions in a loud voice, and sometimes in a quiet voice, just to make sure they were listening. :)

After that I had them go sit back down at the table and we talked about how we can listen to songs with out ears. Then they listened while Lincoln and I sang them "Mr. Jack 'o Lantern", which is a song I learned in preschool. Here are the lyrics:

Mr. Jack-o-lantern
Is very round and fat.
He has a yellow candle
Tucked underneath his hat.
It makes his face look scary
And very, very bright
When he winks and smiles at me
On spooky Halloween night!
--Alene Dalton, Myriel Cluff Ashton and Erla Young

If you are interested you can find the sheet music in the book "My Picture Book of Songs" by Alene Dalton, Myriel Cluff Ashton and Erla Young. My preschool teacher, Bev, taught us quite a few songs out of that book that I still remember and can sing today. I checked it out of the library, it's got great pictures to go with the songs, and has the songs divided up into categories like Winter Songs, Fall Songs, etc. And Lincoln asks me to read it to him like a bed time story all the time. We just go through it and I sing the songs I know while he looks at the pictures. (I can't read music, or I'd give the ones I don't know a go as well.)

After ears, we did nose. The kids found the jack 'o lantern nose in their bags and stuck it on. Then I had everyone point to their own nose, and we talked about how we use our noses to smell. At Macey's the other day, I found scented jack 'o lantern candles for $0.39 each. So I bought a pumpkin scented one and a black licorice scented one. I lit those and walked around and let the kids smell each one, and had them vote on their favorite. It came out to be a tie.

Next we did the eyes. The kids put the eyes on their jack 'o lanterns. Then, in order for me to do the activity with sight, we had to finish the project all the way. I had little squares of orange tissue paper cut out. So the kids stuck those to the remaining sticky spots on their jack 'o lanterns, and then covered the back with the second sheet of contact paper. Then I went around with a flashlight and showed each kid how they could see the light shining through their tissue paper. It also works really well if you hold it up to the sun.

Since I don't own ten pairs of scissors, and because I thought it would be chaos having ten kids under age 4 trying to share the two pairs I do have, I decided to send the jack o' lanterns home without cutting around the edges. That'll be a good project for the moms to do one on one with their kids later. ;) But I think they turned out really cute, and everyone seemed to have a good time.

This is how ours turned out:

Sorry this picture is not great, it's a bit of a challenge to take a picture of your window without glare. This is the best I could do. The one on the left is Lincoln's. He wanted his to be a scary face, which is why the mouth is upside-down, he also put the eyes on clear up at the top, so they kind of blend in with the stem. Mine is the middle one, I made it for demonstration purposes. Ivan's is the one on the right. His does have a nose, but he put it clear down at the bottom, so again it kind of blends in with the outline. But over all I was really pleased with how these turned out.

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