Preschool: Peppermint Candy Craft

Tis the season for all things Christmas! I LOVE it! I cannot tell you how tired I am of apple, leaf, fall and turkey crafts! I needed something new and exciting! This is my favorite month for crafts at preschool! I hope you enjoy this simple craft that uses fine motor and gross motor skills to complete!

Grab:
-A salad spinner that looks like this:
(It needs to have the handle that allows you to spin it, not the pump version.)

-Small paper plates that will fit inside. I used dessert sized.

-red and green paint

-cellophane or plastic wrap

-tape

-yarn

Go:

-Place the paint in the spinner. 

-Help children drop small blobs of red and green paint all over the paint. Make sure you get some        near the middle. 

-Place the lid on and have the children use the handle to spin the plate inside. 

-After the plates are dry, wrap each in plastic wrap and secure with tape on the back. I also tide the excess wrap on each side with a little red yarn to keep it in place. (My assistant and I did the the wrapping and tying part, but you could have older kids do that part on their own. 

Preschool: Pumpkins!

Here are a few pumpkin activities! 

What is inside a pumpkin?

I did this 2 different ways... first I stapled 2 paper plates together front to front. Staple a stem cut from brown paper to the top of one of the plates. Paint the paper plate with orange paint, mixed with a tad of glue and some pumpkin pie spice. When they are dry, open the "pumpkin" up and glue white yarn (pumpkin pulp) and dried pumpkin seeds inside. 

We also did this by cutting pumpkin shapes out of orange paper and gluing the insides on to it.

We also explored the inside of a real pumpkin! Dig, scrape and smoosh!  So much fun! 

We also did a pumpkin patch group project. I set out paper plates with orange paint and different size cups to dip in the paint. They stamped the 'pumpkins' onto the freezer paper. After they dried, we connected them with finger paint 'vines'.