Sharla Kostelyk

Winter Theme Unit

In our homeschool last week, we did a winter theme unit. The weather certainly cooperated in this as there was deep snow in the yard. No imagination about winter was needed!

The kids were able to get a lot of outdoor fun in including snowmobiling, making snowmen, digging, searching for animals by following their tracks, and just generally playing and having a great time!

Winter themed muffin tin lunch:

banana snowman (three slices on a toothpick)
snow (coconut)
snowballs (mini marshmallow)
pine tree (cucumber)
snowman (sandwich with cucumber peel scarf, raisin buttons and face drawn with edible markers)
candy hockey stick and puck (date)

Chalk snowman:

On blue construction paper, draw a snowman in chalk. Use your finger to smudge the chalk to even out the look.

Then put glue along the bottom of the picture and in snowflake shapes here and there. Sprinkle coconut over the picture. Glue on buttons. You can also use smaller buttons for the eyes. For the snowman’s mouth, use dried black beans.

Winter theme sensory bin:

For this sensory bin, I used cotton batting, the lid off a Christmas tin, a styrofoam ball, sequins (which the kids pretended were snow), foam trees and letters to spell out “winter”, penguins, pom poms, white spoons for scooping, marbles, and snowflake shapes from my cookie dough press. It was made entirely out of things I already had.

Good old fashioned snow flakes:

My kids love making snow flakes and this week was no exception. They spent hours using just white paper and scissors to create shapes. Here is just one pile of their snowflakes. As Einstein reminded me, no two snowflakes are alike!

Painting on Snow:

I filled spray bottles with water and food colouring and let the kids paint on the snow. Before you do this with your kids, learn from my mistakes! There are two things I should have done differently:

I should have explained to the kids that the “paint” was for snow only, not for windows (grrr…)
I apparently should not have used bottles that had formerly contained cleaning products because my kids decided to taste the different colours (ugh!)

Snow Ice Cream Recipe:

Stir together:

8 cups of snow (be sure to tell your snow gatherers to avoid the yellow stuff!)
one can of sweetened condensed milk
half to one teaspoon of vanilla (do not add more)

This was so easy to make and it was a huge hit with the kids! (The Husband enjoyed a bowlful too!)

Hot Chocolate Sensory Craft:

When we made these, I made sure to take advantage of how sensory rich this activity was. I had the kids smell the hot chocolate mix and sugar and touch them before adding them. To make this craft, I printed off the sheets here. Then I had the kids colour the mugs, cut them out, cut out the marshmallows, add glue and sprinkle first with hot chocolate mix and then white sugar. After tapping the excess off, they glued some cotton batting to the top of the mug and glued the paper marshmallows on.

Printables and activity sheets:

Winter Fun Coloring from 1+1+1=1

Snow and Ice from 2 Teaching Mommies

Snowman Preschool Pack from Living Life Intentionally

Snow Day from Homeschool Creations

Snow Theme Word Sort from This Reading Mama

If you are looking for information on making sensory bins, you may be interested in my book.

Zoo Theme Week

By Sharla Kostelyk

A while back, we did a zoo theme. We had recently visited the Calgary Zoo which is pretty fabulous as zoos go and the kids were curious to learn more about some of the animals.

Our zoo sensory bin was a very simple one made using dried lentils and dried chickpeas as the base and Safari Zoo Toob animals, a few trees from the Safari Trees Toob and a few people.

I had several activities set up for the kids in their workboxes including making foam animal puppets, doing zoo animal lacing cards and putting together a zoo train puzzle.

Our zoo theme muffin tin lunch:

-animal in the mud (animal cracker in pudding)
-zoo animal fruit gummies
-tiger tiger ice cream
-Zoodles
-trees (broccoli)
-animal crackers

We read the books Zara Zebra Draws, Animalia (one of our all-time favourites!), and ‘Twas the Day Before Zoo Day.

We used lots of fun printables throughout the week. Here are some of the links if you want to print off your own!

2 Teaching Mommies
The Zoo
Zoo Count and Color Books
Zoo Scavenger Hunt
Alphabet Zoo Scavenger Hunt
Another Zoo Scavenger Hunt
Z is for Zebra

Of course no zoo week would be complete without a trip to the zoo on the last day! We visited our local zoo this time which is undergoing renovations and admission that day was free which was a bonus!

This little guy kept coming over and jumping up to give Miss Optimism a kiss through the glass! It was pretty cute!

If you are looking for information on making sensory bins, you may be interested in my book.

I Spy Sensory Bin

By Sharla Kostelyk

To make this I Spy sensory bin, I used dry black beans (one bag) and various items from around the house. For my reading kids, I made a list of items for them to find so this also becomes an opportunity to practice their reading. For my non-readers, I included a sheet of visual cues for them to search for the items (as my artistic skills are lacking, I will not be including a picture of that sheet!).

As I used things we already had, the entire bin cost just over $1 as I was able to pick up the bag of black beans on sale. This was a simple, inexpensive and versatile sensory bin and the kids loved it!

If you are looking for information on making sensory bins, you may be interested in my book.

Easy Christmas Ornaments

By Sharla Kostelyk

The kids have been making these beautiful ornaments for their grandparents and a few other special people. They catch the light nicely on the Christmas tree and are so easy to make!

Materials Needed:

sequins (we used a pack with shades of blue and silver)
sequin pins
foam ball
ribbon

Push a sequin pin through the sequin into the foam ball and repeat this until the entire ball is covered in sequins. When done, add a ribbon on top using a pin and hang on the tree.

A few of my kids made mosaics with their sequins in patterns that created fish or faces or other shapes. You could also vary the look of them by using different sizes of foam balls or by using foam eggs.

*of course, since this craft uses actual pins, adult supervision should be used with younger children.

Thanksgiving Sensory Bin

By Sharla Kostelyk

I used popcorn seeds for the base and added a pine cone, silk leaves, some plastic gourds pumpkins and berries, ornamental gourds, and a caramel scented candle.

Lately, I have been adding something scented into most of my sensory bins as it involves another sense and I find my kids really enjoy it. I am careful not to add anything that smells too intensely so as not to overwhelm them. In this case, the candle worked really well as the kids enjoyed filling the top of it with the popcorn and dumping it out. The bumpiest of the ornamental gourds was the favourite item in this year’s Thanksgiving sensory bin.

If you are looking for information on making sensory bins, you may be interested in my book.

Shaving Cream Painting

By Sharla Kostelyk

Since I had oodles of free shaving cream from back in my couponing days, I had been wanting to try shaving cream painting for awhile. I wish that we had done it back in our Color Week because it was a great exercise in color mixing. It was also a great sensory activity. I used the lemon-lime scented shaving cream to add to the sensory experience.

I used muffin tins and it worked really well. Just add drops of food coloring to the shaving cream and stir. I let some of the kids help in this step and they had fun mixing different colors to see what the outcome would be as far as making a purple that was more on the blue side or making pink by only adding a few drops of red.

Next, they got painting…

Or I should say that the girls got painting! First, they experimented with different brushes and foam and then they got in there with their hands. Meanwhile, the boys had disappeared into the bathroom and were using their paint in a different way…

They were practising shaving using the foam brushes! Pretty soon, the girls had painted their own faces with shaving cream and all the kids had loaded their hands up with as much as they could carry and gone outside to paint the trees!

While my kids didn’t use the shaving cream paint in the way that I expected they would, they had an awful lot of fun!

FYI: On my paler kids, the shaving cream did stain their faces for a few hours so you may not want to do this prior to any public outings or family portrait sessions!