Living and Non Living

I don't have pictures for this one one but I wanted to share the idea with you. One thing a preschooler can learn is whether things are living or non living. Take your preschooler on a walk and see how many things they can point out that are living and how many things they see that are not living. 

My son LOVES to take pictures with our digital camera. So something we might do with this lesson is take our camera, get pictures of all the living and non living things that we see, then we could come home and make a collage of all the living things on one page and the non living things on another page.

Another idea if you are feeling super brave is to take your child to the pet store and let them see all the different kinds of living things and then go to a park or even the grocery store and see that the items on the shelves are non living.

Once you have living and non living down you could test them a little bit. Is a leaf living? Is a tree living? Is dirt living? Is a worm living? You take turns asking each other if different objects a living or non living. We really enjoy playing this game with numerous different subjects.

Most of all have fun with this activity. Kids love living things. In fact they love non living things also. Send us your pictures or tell us how this activity worked for you!

Stained Glass Crayon Art

Hello again. I have another fun project for you and your preschooler! We really enjoyed making our "stained glass" art.

Supplies: crayons, pencil/crayon sharpener, wax paper, metal pan, oven.



OK to start grab some crayons. We took all our broken ones that no one likes to color with. Using a pencil/crayon sharpener make some shavings of your favorite colors.

Next, arrange the shavings on one half of your wax paper.

The more colors that you use and mix the more your art will resemble stained glass. I really liked using a mix of bright and dark colors. Using black made it really look like there were metal bars between all my colors. (don't tell, but I had a BLAST using my own artistic skills to make these. I kept begging to make "just one more")

After you have gotten all the colors you want on your wax paper, carefully fold it in half. If you tip it all your shavings will fall the the crease, if that happens just spread them aout again.

Put a crease in the wax paper. Your preschooler should be able to help with this. Mine was adamant that he could do it by himself.



Put your waxed paper art on a cookie sheet. ( As the wax melts some of the clear stuff leaks out of the wax paper and onto the sheet)

Put your pan in the oven on 200 degrees for a few minutes until the crayon has melted.

Then when you pull them out they looke like stained glass. (We let ours cool on napkins. And it absorbs the extra wax)

This is the one with black. I really enjoyed making these and so did my preschooler. If you and your preschooler enjoy this project we would love to see your stained art.

Another addition to this project would be to frame them and hand them in the window. The sunlight coming through all the colors is beautiful!