The Creative Campus The Place For Learning Activities for all ages!

Welcome Back! This week I would like to share with you Tips, Tools and 10 activities for learning and building Sensory skills. You can access all this content FREE by clicking the link below! I will be happy to answer any and all questions you have as you use these fun and engaging ideas. Sensory https://yescourse.com/~/the-creative-curriculum-creator-service/#!store/week-17-creative-curriculum-weekly-training-sensory-skills/ If you are looking for even more Silly learning fun that will support you in building Speech, as you learn about animals. I would like to invite you to download my "Invitations to Play with Open Ended Loose Parts" program. For $65.00 you will get 30 days worth of fun Learning activities. Click the link below to get started! https://yescourse.com/~/creative-campus/#!store/invitations-to-play-with-open-ended-loose-parts-and-under-the-sea/ I hope you have a great day of Learning and Skill Building! Your Creativity Producer and Profession...

Gardens is a theme that you can use several times.  you can use it to talk about food or you can use it to talk about flowers and plants. To be honest, I'm not sure which is more fun. I like to offer dirt in the sensory area, I leave out material flowers, gloves and garden tools (kids size). I let the kids decide what kind of garden they are gonna create and what they want to put in it. I also like to use this theme as a science experience. I let the kids plant real plants and then over time I encourage them to take care of them as they grow. when they are ready the get planted in the ground. you can further the activity by cooking with their produce.  These are just a Few of my favorite ways to work with this theme. Bugs and plants as a theme is one of the few that i get a little carried away with. You can use it for so many things in so many ways. the fun is endless from scavenger hunts to Gross motor and everything in between. Some of my favorite ways to use this theme...

Hi Everyone! I wanted to talk to you today about, Loose Parts Play! This is something I recently discovered... and I LOVE IT! Instead of offering Teacher directed activities, I love the idea of offering pieces for play, as an invitation to explore and learn on their own. Letting the child create a game that is based on a theme. the creativity is endless and totally personalized. You can offer this kind of play for Any Topic or Subject. this play lends its self well to Art, Science and Even Make Believe Play. You Could offer small parts for a "Monsters" theme. Offer your little ones Googlie Eyes, pipe Cleaners, Buttons, Paper cut outs . Then give them different colors of play dough and let them make silly monsters! You would even do this with robots as well. I am so excited about using this Learning Method with my friends. The Math ideas are endless as well. Leaves, Trees, Pumpkin,  Snowmen! You can offer so many different materials depending on what your learnin...

Hello Again! I have a wonderful Science oriented color mixing activity for you.  line a container with tin foil, cover with shaving cream, drip food coloring or I Used Liquid water color (worked great) into shaving cream. You can use holiday oriented colors depending on when you use this activity. Provide the child with a stick or brush. ( I use popsicle sticks). Either let the kids make their own designs    OR encourage then to write their names  in the shaving cream which will spread and mix the colors. I encouraged my friends to make shapes as well. gently press white paper on top after your art is done, peel paper back. (if it sits too long the paper gets wet so be quick). Scrape off excess and Enjoy Your Art! I hope you have as much fun with this as we did! I would love to hear your comments! http://thecreativecampus.weebly.com/

Cooking   Math and Science   Advice One Critical Thinking and Cause/Effect   (Math and Science Skills) Cooking is a wonderful activity that creates fun interactive learning experiences with your children and students. What children don’t realize as they are cooking, is that they are also learning. They are using Math Skills (measuring) Science Skills (mixing wet and dry ingredients) They are even using their motor skills (Mixing, Rolling and even sometimes cutting with cutters). One of the things I love to use with children is Play dough. Not only can the children engage in the “Making” process, they also get to enjoy the finished product over and over again. I like to make a very easy Cinnamon Applesauce Play dough.   Mix Equal Parts Applesauce, Cinnamon, and add flour little by little to help the thickening process.               Advice Tw...

Hi Everyone!  I am so sorry I didn't realize how long it had been since I last posted for you! I want to write a little about some fun stuff we did during October. We made Ghosts, Witches , Spiders and all kids of Sensory Fun.     This is one of my favorite ways to use art. Tissue paper is a wonderful learning experience for young friends. They love the sticky, soft sensory experience of the paper and the glue together. I thought these friendly witches turned out super cute . We also made Spiders and Webs. This was a great way for our friends to use their small motor skills. We started out spreading black string and pipe cleaners. We overlapped them to make spider web lines. Then We used Black paint and made hand print spiders with google eyes.   Once cut out these are adorable Halloween Décor and wonderful keepsakes. We Ended all this wonderful fun with Jello Sensory.   We added bugs and eye balls before the jello was solid for extra...

Welcome Back Friends! September is here again! I love this time of the year! not to hot, not to cold, the weather is Just Right! There are so many fun experiences we can have and create this time of year, and I cant wait to share my take on them with all of you. I would Love for you to leave me comments and share your ideas on the things that I post as well. I recently did a fun activity with my friends and I think you and your friends will enjoy this as well. we made Weather Change Mobiles. We Made a Cloud which you can add rain drops to if you want to show rain clouds and white clouds as different ones. and we chose to make a sun as well. For older friends I would suggest creating snowflakes as well, however my friends wanted to move on to something different and we forgot about the snow. I love to create activities like this because it usually leads to science exploration and extension of play and learning.  Another Activity we did this month is a really fun Tree Ac...

Spring is a great time to get out and explore the great out doors. New flowers and popping up, animals are coming out and things are growing and changing all around us. This makes great opportunities for learning about  nature. A great way to pull nature into your art is by making Textured Caterpillar's, Flowers and Butterflies. This is a lot easier then it sounds, I like to give my friends shapes that look like Caterpillar's (circles) this might mean giving them a bowl with some paint and dipping the bowl into the paint to stamp circles. Then the fun begins. I like to give my friends cut up straws of different colors, tissue paper, confetti if I have it. any kind of art pieces that will be bumpy or textured. Encourage them to fill in the circles they stamped with the pieces and before they know it, they will have a colorful textured Caterpillar's, Flower or butterfly. Now if your going to do a flower, I like to use glue and let my friends either dip the pieces in the glue ...

Hello Friends, I hope you had a fun Valentines Day! I wanted to share two things with you today. The first thing is a technique that I used this past week. We made scented paint! this was both a science experiment AND an art project that not only turned out amazingly, but the children all had fun doing as well. I took Tempra Paint and I added half a package of cool aid to the matching color. you have to stir it really well to make sure the powder all gets dissolved ( I didn't stir well enough and it turned into play dough at the bottom). The Science part is... that as you dissolve the powder into the paint, it starts to bubble and foam (looks really cool). The children in my class were all amazed!  THEN the fun art part started! I gave the children heart cookie cutters, and I had them dip into the paint mix, and stamp on paper! WOW were the results pretty! check this out.                I love how the Ko...

Happy Valentines Week!   This is a great time of year to talk to our young friends, about Friends and ways to be kind. I will be sharing lots of fun activities in my class this week as well. Before I do that however, I wanted to share something if YOU My readers! I am creating skill boxes that will be for sale through my website http://thecreativecampus.weebly.com/  in the coming weeks and months. Each box will talk about a skill area such as Color Recognition or Shape Practice est. If you are interested in any of these or have an idea for one you would like me to create, I encourage you to email me fragileangel@wowway.com and share your ideas with me.  I will start out covering the basic skills and work up to requests from their.  Enjoy Your Week, The Creative Campus Preschool Program

Happy 2014 Everyone! I hope your new year is off to a running start!!!!  I wanted to talk about a fun way to create play experiences and learning at the same time. MAKE BELIEVE! Remember that from when you were a child?  I do, I used to line up chairs and cover them with a sheet to make a camper and pretend I was going on long trips in the middle of nowhere. You can use Real items from around the house, and create a fun play learning experience. Give your children pots, pans, spoons and Let them use real recipes ( start with play dough recipes). Let them Pour, Stir and mix all the items together. This opens up opportunities to talk about Math and Science. Then you can have some fun with your child and let them roll, squish and create there own concoction's . I have even given students boxes to color and decorate and let them make "restaurants" with. Let them use their dishes and extend the play opportunity. A fun recipe to use for this is Applesauce Play dough all you n...

Hi everyone, Thanksgiving is right around the corner and with it comes all the prep for Christmas. I wanted to let you know that I found a better version of my Applesauce Play dough That doesn't get all watery. You still Mix Equal parts Apple Sauce and Cinnamon They suggest starting with one cup of each.  but to that they say to add one teaspoon of white glue . I tried this and it actually works. I also add instead of glue I used flower. it holds together just like the glue. This is still my favorite recipe because its smells so good after its solid. You can either bake the ornaments after you cut them or you just let them dry on wax paper covered pans till hard. Happy Holidays!!!!!

Hello Friends! I haven't posted in a long time, because I have been busy making new friends and having fun. If you are new to my blog I want to thank you for coming to visit! I look forward to hearing from you all. I hope everyone has had a wonderful summer, I have been camping, going to concerts and as I said, meeting new friends. I have also been engaging in some fun activities with my new friends that I wanted to share with you. I have done everything, from  "Fork  Fire Works" to making Alligators.  I even learned to use sand to make volcano's this summer. We have done a lot of sensory play as well this summer. this is actually one of my favorite teaching areas now. Sensory is very flexible. you can create so many different experiences from Messy to wet and everything in between. Sensory play can be used to teach many different subjects. I like to make play dough for my sensory experience and let the children use it to learn everything from colors to nature s...

Hi Everyone, I am back from my Mini Vacation.(camping with my Cousins and aunt). It was a great feeling to be by the lake and just relax again. I had forgotten how much fun camping can be. I got the chance to watch my two little cousins 8 and almost 3 playing and pretending and it reminded me of all the fun times I had creating play adventures when I was a kid. Being by the lake and the woods lends itself to lots of opportunities to learn about nature and science at any age. There are lots of ways that children can "learn" about nature and science and not realize it, because they are in their mind just "Experiencing" nature. Going on walks through the woods or along the beach is a great opportunity to create a  learning experience using games like "I Spy" which I did with my older cousin and he was a lot of fun. The other thing that this experience reminded me of from when I was a child, was  "Scavenger Hunts" we used to have these HUGE lists ...