Welcome to Lil' Shenanagans...I have developed this website as a resource site for teachers, caregivers and parents of preschoolers and young children. I chose not to do this as a blog, because I feel they are harder to navigate and find the ideas you need at that moment. I hope to provide not only a wealth of art, music and science ideas to use with your preschooler, but also a place where you can drag and drop those ideas straight into a lesson plan and print it off directly from this site. There is also a forum on the resources link to facilitate the exchange of ideas I'm hoping to promote with this site. It will always be a work in progress as I find new songs or art activities that I just have to add. I have taught young ones for over 15 years, so I know that what works for my children, may not work for your classroom. But my philosophy is that the more ideas you have as a foundation, the more creative and fun your classroom can become. And yes not all of my art activities are completely creative, but our two and three year olds paint with these projects more often than they use crayons or markers. They love to paint and with the use of paint shirts, the correct size of sponge brush and/or utensil, and with trays and adult supervision it can be fun for both the child and the teacher or parent. We could also debate total free creative art, vs. paper plate duck, for example, till the cows come home. But through the years after having tried both, I have discovered that my kids are more proud of their artwork when it represents an animal or a preschool theme that they have experienced before. Yes, there are some centers that do not permit any themed art, so teachers this is probably not the site for you. I try to use a balance of both for our art activities. Sometimes we paint with different utensils like q-tips, rolling balls or kitchen utensils or even fruit & vegetables, sometimes we add things to the paint to make it puffy or smelly. All I can say is that if you try all the art activities on this site your children will have been exposed to fun and very creative ways to use a wide variety of objects. There are some items that I use sparingly like glitter, because of the chance of getting it on faces and in eyes, but sometimes that Christmas ornament needs just a bit of sparkle and sometimes glitter glue is a better choice on those occasions. Like I said before, what works with my classroom may not work with yours. I'm sure many of the preschool themed ideas I have provided, you have previously used yourself or seen else where. Hopefully there are a few new ideas tucked in that you would like to try and the option of dragging and dropping those ideas into your own lesson plans and printing it from my site will make life easier. PS. Yes I know that I misspelled shenanigans. There is personal reason behind that decision. |
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