Circle of Friends

A simple and tactile craft to illustrate once again that we can all be friends at preschool. I found the little kid stickers at Ben Franklin Crafts and added some shiny school tool stickers for a bit of color and fun. I pre-printed the "My Happy Day Friends" onto cardstock and cut the circles out. The kids had a bit of trouble taking the backing off the foam stickers, but it was great exercise for those little fine motor muscles. It took us about 10-15 minutes per small group.

Materials, for each student:

• Round cardstock paper (8" circle)
• stickers for the # of total students
• other stickers (optional)

The Rainbow Fish

One of my favorite books about sharing and friendship is The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister. The fish learns that by giving away his most prized possessions, he gains happiness and a circle of friends. Being beautiful and lonely is no way to live!

We created our own rainbow fish with these .
For each child:

• a fish cut-out (I printed them on blue cardstock and pre-cut)
• tissue paper circles/10-20 per student (ovals or semi-circles would also be nice)
• one silvery scale
• large googly-eye
• glue
• optional: silver and gold crayon for markings on fins, tail and gold lips.

This craft was simple enough for all the kids to do very independently (some help with glue), but also fun and exciting to them to create this character. The story is simple and they get the meaning right away. Sharing is good!

Manners Moose and Rude-y Rhino

Two of our favorite hand puppets at school are Manners Moose and Rude-y Rhino.

 

The kids love helping Rude-y learn to talk more appropriately and kindly and to follow the rules at school. This simple craft let them create their own stick puppets to take home.

 

I created simple drawings of the puppets and printed them on cardstock with their names printed below. I pre-cut them this time.

 

Each child colored their puppet with crayons. Some of them wanted to copy my example and others did their own thing.

 

 

 

They stuck them on pre-glue-dotted craft sticks with their name labels on the back. The entire craft time took about 15 minutes with washing hands after for lunch. I heard quite a few funny conversations between the two puppets!