New Practical Life activities

I put together several new Practical Life exercises which are out on the shelves this week.  You can see them below along with a description for each one.

This is a transfer activity.  The wooden tray holds two ceramic leaf shaped candle holders.  I am using little tiny felt leaves for the transfer material.  You can see them close-up in the second photo.  I bought these at Hobby Lobby.  They were originally stickers, but I pulled the sticker part off the back.  They are pretty tiny, probably an inch or less in length.  The children will use tweezers to transfer them.

This is a dry pouring activity.  I liked the look and feel of these two wooden cups.  I am using green split peas mixed with lentils for the pouring material.  Good fall colors.

This is a tweezer transfer/color sorting activity.  By the time it reaches the shelf, the bowl holding the pom-poms will be on the left.  I just realized in this post that I had it reversed.  Usually, the container with the materials in a practical life activity is on the left so the child transfers from left to right.  This provides indirect preparation for the left to right directionality in reading and writing.  Also, I placed 10 of each color of pom-pom in the bowl.  When possible, it is good to go things in sets of ten.  This provides indirect preparation for the decimal system.

This is a spooning activity using more green split peas and brown lentils.  As you may have noticed, I like to use lots of wooden vessels in the fall.  It just seems to fit the season well.  As we move into winter, I will use more shiny and glittery vessels such as silver trays and cut glass.

 

This is an "open and close" activity which is going to replace the jars and lids that have been out all year.  The basket contains six containers which all open differently.  To provide an additional point of interest (aside from the uniqueness of the different containers), I placed a small blue glass heart into each container that can be "retrieved" when the container is opened.  You can see some of these in the second photo.

I've had a marble tonging activity out all year which the children LOVE.  When preparing the new PL activities, I found this leaf suction mat in the cupboard.  PERFECT for a fall marble transfer activity.  Since the children have loved the "plinky" sound of the glass container on the previous work, I am using a white glass "basket" to hold the green marbles.  I guarantee this will be a VERY popular work.

This is a tonging/nut sorting work.  I love the squirrel basket I used to hold the nuts.  I found it on a thrifting excursion.  I didn't realize until I got home that the little guy is missing an eye.  Oh well, it will be interesting to see if the children notice.

This is our new fall necklace work.  It will be on the art shelf.  The children will be happy to see this back on the shelf.  I had taken out the necklace activity for about a week to replenish my supplies.  Clockwise from 11:oo:  coiled pipe cleaners, leaves punched from construction paper with a hole punched in the middle (Thanks, Genevieve, for doing this tedious work for me!!), colored straws, plastic lacing, colored pasta.

This pegboard is actually on one of the sensorial shelves.  However, I am including it here just to show that one other change this week is that I replaced the larger pegs we've had out all year with smaller ones.

Comments

[anubama]

nice ideas, very creative. thank you for sharing your own ideas.

[Lindart]

Where do you get the suction cup shapes for the marbles? I've never seen them that big here. I use a round soap holder for eye dropper dots, but don't have anything bigger. Great activities, very colorful!!

[RM]

I have never thought about using an upside down suction mat before, such a great idea!

[RM]

I love all of your ideas, once again!!

You might like to tell the children that the squirrel is winking, if they notice!! You can them teach them how to do it themselves, which I would imagine to be incredibly cute..

Oh and thank you very much for sending that link, Santa told me to tell you he has been very inspired by the web site, lol.