Homemade sand and water table fillers for preschool learning centers

Hello Omschool blog friends! Teacher Omi here with another post in my series on the venerable preschool sand and water table. What's a sand and water table (also called sand table)? It's a low child-sized table with tubs that can be filled with materials for children to explore. The sand table is the backbone of preschool science activities in learning centers. Early childhood special education classrooms use a sand table for hands-on, sensory, tactile stim and interactive lesson plans to build cognitive and perceptual development. 

In my previous post, we looked at sand table alternatives to the expensive models in many preschool learning centers. These homemade sand tables feature repurposed, recycled and reused materials. Select the best sand and water table alternative to fit your classroom or homeschool needs, Then use these sand table fillers in science activities for early childhood lesson plans.

Water: Fill tubs with water to make a water table. Add floating toys and bath tub toys. Here are free printable lesson plans to make homemade water and sand toys from your recycle bin. Provide different sized containers that encourage children to practice pouring and measuring. Place revolving water wheels in the water table. Add some items that sink and some that float. Use water table for hands-on exploration with the scientific concepts of flotation, water displacement, density and specific gravity. Create a "Does it sink or float?" chart. Here's a free printable chart. 

Bubbles: Make a simple bubble solution with water, lemon Joy dish soap and glycerin for sturdy bubbles. Add bubble making toys and every day household gadgets: apple corer, egg beater, whisk, egg slicer, slotted spoon, fork, cone shaped applesauce mill and any other safe gadgets for water science activities in learning centers.

Rocks and seashells: Fill your sand table with water and sand. Add rocks, seashells and old (sanitized) recycled toothbrushes. Children can scrub shells and rocks with toothbrushes. Shells and rocks are best seen in water, which brings out their hidden depths. Children will love exploring the intricate beauty of shells and rocks.

Shaving Cream: Allow children to squirt shaving cream into water table tub. Concentrated gel shaving cream is lots of fun because it foams up as it sprays. Teach safety so kids don't get soap in their eyes. Exercise caution with aerosol cans. It may be advisable to have an adult add the shaving cream. Encourage finger painting and drawing in shaving cream. Make sure children wash their hands after doing science activities in learning centers.

Snow: Fill the sand table with snow and add plastic sand shovels, trowel, ice cream scoop, melon baller, recycled plastic cups and containers for molding and shaping snow. Have children to wear gloves and keep several pairs near the water table.

Recycle bin paper scraps: Place scrap paper in sand table tubs and add scissor with patterned edges and paper punches. Children love to snip, trim, cut and punch paper. Exploring with paper in the sand table keeps scraps in one place. This exercise provides good practice in cutting skills, scissors skills, eye-hand coordination and fine motor skills.

Dried beans or rice: Add plastic measuring cups, spoons and cups with pour spouts. Teach children about measurement math. Preschool children can practice counting, sorting while getting good tactile stimulation in learning centers.

Aquarium Fish tank rocks: Buy bags of multicolored aquarium fish tank rocks (the small kind that line the bottom of the tank). Fish tank rocks make excellent media for pouring, scooping and measuring. Aquarium rocks also don't draw insects like beans and rice. Beads work well in the sand table, too, but can be expensive. Explore other materials for your sand table science activities.

Picture is a very special grandson, mucking about with his homemade silly putty! 

 

DIY Sand and Water Table alternatives for homeschool and classroom

 Hello fans of my Omschool blog. I've been a licensed general and special education teacher for 37 years and part of my career work was spent homeschooling our four children. Now, I'm Omi--grandma--to 9 going on 11 and am continuing the homeschool traditions I began, with the second generation as Omschool (Omi's school). Lesson plans are designed with cheap to free materials, many of which are reused, repurposed and recycled. 

For today's lesson plans, we'll create a DIY sand and water table for preschool, special education and lower elementary learning centers. This sand table alternative was developed in our homeschool and works well for small spaces. As budgets are usually tight, whether in public, parochial or homeschool, this is a low cost alternative as well. 

Instead of the expensive sand and water table purchased from school supply companies, I've used a repurposed child's sandbox such as the enclosed Little Tikes turtle sandbox or Step 2 brand sandboxes. The turtle sandbox is washable, portable and covered. It moves easily indoors or out. For an even more budget friendly alternative, get a small plastic wading pool. I've found these as cheap as $7 from Dollar General. Inflatable kiddie pools will work too however they aren't as durable. 

The last sand table alternative is a low sided plastic box or tub with lid. This works very well when space is limited. When learning center activities are done, simply close the box with media and manipulatives inside and stack in the storage area. Here's my blog post on homemade sand toys for the sand table. 

These preschool learning center activities worked very well for our homeschool. I could allow the  youngest children to explore independently while instructing the older children. The DIY sand and water table wasn't just for preschool learning center activities either. The older kids could use it to practice and explore mathematical concepts such as measurement, geometry (volume) and science (sing various media). Sand tables provide excellent sensory experiences. More on sand table filler alternatives later! 

I'm sorry I don't have an image of how this sand and water table fit in our homeschool. But let me assure you the even in our tiny 10x10 room, it fit well! I've linked the picture to Amazon. This small reasonably priced Step 2 sandbox would work perfectly. 

Free lesson plans: how to homeschool for nothing (zip, zero, no cost)

 Hello my friends! Om-school Omi here with some good...nay great...news for homeschool families. You can literally homeschool your children for nothing, as in zip, nada, zero cost with these free lesson plans and a little know-how. I'm going to share easy, free ways to educate kids, gleaned from 43 years of teaching. 

I've been doing this education thing in one way or another since I was 15, at summer camps, VBS, Sunday school and then as a certified teacher in K-8, Montessori, adult, preschool, special needs, tutoring, homeschool and substitute teaching. And I can assure you that it's not really that difficult if you plan and prepare accordingly. 

If the Covid 19 pandemic taught us anything about homeschooling our children it's that we prefer to pay for things (or feel more comfortable with purchased curriculum, cyberschooling, apps, etc.) than we do trusting our own teaching skills and common sense. But happily, as quarantine wore on, I saw many parents begin to have aha moments as they realized, hey, this isn't so difficult. We can teach our kids! To quote my beloved Barack Obama, yes we can! Parents began to wean from purchased packaged and digital lesson plans and experiment with ideas of their own. 

So now that Covid 19 is winding down, you can also keep up that momentum with homeschooling if you want. You don't have to homeschool every day or keep them out of group education. The key is to remember that every moment we are with our children we are teaching, modeling, and communicating in every act we perform or word we say. Daunting? A little. But also exciting. So how do we teach, model and communicate positive healthy, proactive ideas to our kids? Here are some ideas, my "free lesson plans" if you will. 

1) Be authentic. Just because we are educating constantly, doesn't mean we have to adopt a fake "teacher voice." Educating doesn't mean pontificating, preaching or proselytizing. Speak to children respectfully, positively and gently. 

2) Build for natural learning. Teaching is more about doing and showing than talking. St. Francis of Assisi said of preaching (which in its truest form is teaching) "preach always. Occasionally, use words." Genuine learning takes place when teachers share, foster and facilitate experiences. 

3) Facilitate. Montessori identifies this as the teacher's main duty. Make natural learning experiences accessible to students. Create activities--a craft project, for example--and then step back and let children interact with materials. Or just point out learning experiences (a bird's nest on a nature walk). Don't hover, orchestrate or  manufacture results. Let kids take from experiences what they will. See my post on grandchildren Lucian and Ezra and their experiences with a sand mold project we did with them. 

4) Observe. I can't emphasize enough the importance of quiet observation and reflection in the classroom. In an upcoming post I'm going to cover observation journals. There's so much going on around us in our world. Children know this and are constantly making us adults aware of this, if we listen. Sometimes, we learn more from them than they learn from us and what a blessing that is. I guess that's why Montessori says to "follow  the child" and the Bible that "a child will lead them." 

5) Empower. Sadly some children have had their experiences, observations and ideas diminished and need an infusion of confidence. They have come to believe that they aren't good enough and require constant validation from someone they think is superior. This is where we educators can interrupt and redirect that cycle and validate them. When subbing in an alternative high school for troubled teens, students were reading "The Crucible" aloud as a play. I complimented one young man who was generally very angry and withdrawn, on his delivery as Judge Hawthorne. I said he should consider community theater. He literally blossomed and I heard him after class telling students that he was thinking of trying out for a play. 

Stay tuned for more ideas on how to educate children without spending a cent! Photo is eldest grandson Silas mucking about with his homemade slime, making a mess, having a blast, oh and btw, learning about polymers. 

How to Adapt Lesson Plans for Multiple Ages

 Greetings from the Om-School! Teacher Omi (grama) has been lucky to spend more time with the grandkids lately and it's got me thinking again how important it is, not just in homeschool, but in any educational setting to tailor lesson plans to various ages and ability levels. Two things you want to avoid when doing activities with kids is boredom and planned failure. And activities that are geared to young or too old will cause both of those. But age-flexible lesson plans will automatically provide the opposite: engagement and success. 

I know you may be thinking, but I don't have time to create separate lesson plans for every age or ability level that I'm teaching. Good news! You don't have to. Here's how to adapt lesson plans for multiple ages. You may have noticed that the lesson plans on this blog are flexible to fit many ages. That's because I want them to be user-friendly for you as the teacher but also for the students who even if they are all the same age, are variable in skill levels. 

The key to age-flexible lesson plans is breaking down the activities and steps involved and then let each child do the part he can have most success with. I'm thinking especially of craft projects here. Too often, children fear crafts because we adults make kids think they have to be done a certain way to "look right." The child fears that he is doing his wrong or that it doesn't look as good as someone else's.

For example, on our recent vacay to visit our six grandkids we made plaster sand molds with them. Children range from baby to age 8. Moses and Silas, the 8-year-olds, could follow the directions to mix up plaster, configure the molds and create their designs. So they were project managers. This gave them a great feeling of success. 

6-year-old Lola was able to follow the directions the boys gave but needed an active duty, to stay engaged. She was the materials coordinator, counting out and distributing what each person would need. 4-year-old Lucian was less interested in the actual craft project part, than he was in the sand play. So we gave him some decorations to place in his mold and then a tub of sand, shells, water and a scrub brush, to explore to his heart's content. 

We helped 2-year-old Ezra and baby Remus make quick hand print molds and let them spend the majority of the time exploring. Ez and Lu built sand castles and had fun burying, digging up and then scrubbing their shells. Baby Remus got some large clean shells to explore. When everyone was done, the big kids joined the littles in seashell exploration.

Everyone got from the project exactly what he or she needed. When focus of an activity is on everyone making a cookie cutter project in the same way, children feel a lot more frustration, boredom and failure. When each is allowed to engage with materials as he feels comfortable, regardless of what the final project looks like, or if, indeed a project is even made, the outcome is authentic learning, success and enjoyment. 

Easy and cheap outdoor spring lesson plans for all ages: Art Walk

 Hello fellow educators! Yes, you too, grams and gramps, if you care for kids, you're an educator! Today, on this bee-you-tee-full spring day, I'm sharing some super simple outdoor spring lesson plans that cover science, art, math and even music and community outreach. These lesson plans were inspired by my baby grands Milo (3) and Juno (18 months). 

We're Omi (granny) and Opi (grampa) to nine kiddos. We were homeschool parents for many years in the early 1990s-2000s. Now I call myself an Om-schooler. Recently, Opi and I took Milo and Juno for a walk around the neighborhood. Milo insisted he bring the nifty egg-shaped sidewalk chalk that Auntie Molly (our oldest and a second gen homeschooler herself) sent. 

Along the way, he,  Juno and we would stop to color lovely pictures on squares of sidewalk. At one point, a neighbor called out the window that she really appreciated the sidewalk chalk drawings as they brightened up her day. Later, the we took mom and dad on the Artwalk to show them our pictures. It occurred to me that we could extend this into cross-curricular lesson plans by making our own sidewalk chalk and sharing our Artwalk throughout the community. Sidewalks surrounding hospitals, nursing homes and senior centers would be great places to share Artwalk drawings. 

To make sidewalk chalk, mix plaster of Paris, water and tempera paint. Tape off the ends of coin rollers, paper towel or toilet paper tubes. Fill with mixture and allow to harden. You could also fill Styrofoam egg cartons for half-egg shaped sidewalk chalk. 

For preschool math lesson plans, teach skip counting by encouraging children to color on every third, fifth, tenth sidewalk square (depending on which skip counting pattern you're currently working on). For music lesson plans, we sang spring songs on our Art Walk, kind of like Christmas carols only spring singing! 

I know, these are ridiculously easy but that's the beauty of authentic learning experiences...they develop naturally from activities you're already doing! Peace!