How we take children’s interests and build our curriculum around them.

The warm weather has come and water play is in full swing. From the hose in the 8 tons of sand sandbox to the colored bottles on the science table, water is providing our children with hours of  great fun and many valuable lessons. Our preschool curriculum often develops around what is relevant and interesting to children; two things that are especially interesting right now are water and rainbows and their  colors.

Below, you can get a glimpse of how we follow through with children’s ideas ; hopefully it will offer  you some insight into how we integrate children’s interests into our curriculum over the areas of:

• science,
• art,
• literacy,
• fine motor activities,
• sensory activities.

Rainbow interest began, in part,  when we read Hawaii is a Rainbow by Stephanie Feeney, a beautiful book about Hawaii and its fabulous colors. Here are some of  the exciting things that happened after that.

The children  made bottles of water to have all of the colors of the rainbow. We put them in the window with pictures of real rainbows.

• We got out  the eyedroppers ( good small motor activity) to create rainbows and color designs on paper towels.
• That led to experimenting with the eyedroppers on different paper, including waxed paper, to see what happened.
• We layered tissue paper to create colors and see how colors changed.
• Out came the computer so we could  look at many different pictures of rainbows and talked about how they are made. We looked for the their pattern of color with a question in mind, “Do they always go red, orange, yellow, green, blue violet.” Yes! I showed the children the picture I took last Thanksgiving of a double rainbow that had a double thickness of the colors. Amazing!
• We read a  poem about rainbows.

My heart leaps when I behold

A rainbow in the sky

William Wordsworth

• On the “pretend you are at the beach day”, one of the children discovered that if you wear sunglasses with red lenses, the color of things around you change color. Everyone had to try that out.
• So we added the new colored paddles with red, yellow, and blue color gels for exploring how the things in the classroom look and if they change color.
• Outside, we set out  watercolor, tempura paint, and spray bottles filled with water and  colored paint for art exploration.
• Colored water was set out for experimenting and mixing; could  new colors be created.
• The water table was filled with colored water, tubes, and funnels. It was great fun to watch as the color water passed through the tubes and then mixed with the other color.
• We talked about the physics of force and pressure  as the water was pushed by the turkey basters through the tubes and  funneled into bottles.

• We used big water  bottles with  special connectors to create both fountain and tornado effects. Over and over the bottles were turned upside down to see the water create the vortex or send a fountain up the tube.
• A third bottle was  made mixing mineral  oil, water, and food coloring; they gave it a good  shake  and watched the oil and water combine, then separate.
• Someone asked what it would be like to mix food coloring with sand or salt, so we tried it out  to see what happens. The colors weren’t as clear as expected; the white salt did better than the beige sand.

• Using glue bottles and paper, the children made designs and sprinkled on the new colored sand and salt.

• One day, the inside tables were filled with children making flubber in a rainbow of colors. They stretched and pulled them into different shapes.

Our water and color exploration will continue along side  other curriculum ideas. Gravity looks like the next area of interest as the children were trying out a rain gutter in the big sandbox and tilting it to see what happens. Ramps for the cars and trucks will likely be very popular. Sinking and floating are also likely to be of interest when we introduce them. We will make a chart of what sinks and what floats just the way we did when we figured about what was attracted to magnets and what wasn’t.

And so it goes in preschool as one idea leads to the next. There is always something interesting to explore and to write and read about and to create in art.