Rainbow Streamers in Preschool

This week was Letter R in preschool, and because of this I decided to do a Rainbow Theme.  I found lots of fun ideas to try, and we were pleased with most all of them.

One activity we especially enjoyed was our Rainbow Streamers.  I got the idea from a combination of two different places.

This pin from Pinterest:

Source: pre-schoolplay.blogspot.com via Julie on Pinterest 

and this post at Sense of Wonder talking about using streamers to learn about the wind.

The Sense of Wonder person used crepe paper as streamers, and the Pre-School Play person used plastic the she got from a "recycling bank".  (I've heard about these recycling centers from different bloggers in England and in Australia, and they really sound like wonderful places).

But alas, I have no such recycling bank, so I went to my new favorite and cheap material:  plastic tablecloths from the dollar store.

I got one tablecloth of each of the rainbow colors (and yes, I know this picture is sideways.  I keep rotating in my photo editing software, but then when I copy it here it goes sideways on me again.  I just don't know - my iPhone pictures seem to have trouble turning the right way sometimes.):

Then I used my handy paper cutter to cut the tablecloth into 1"strips.  At first I made streamers that were the  full length of the longest side of the tablecloth (108"), and while these were wonderful streamers, I deemed that they would be too long for the Little People.

So instead I made 54" streamers.  Since the tablecloths are 54" x 108", you can make 54 streamers if you cut them as long as the long side of the cloth, or 108 if you cut them short.  The only warning I have is to watch out if you have tablecloths coming from different stores/manufacturers.  Not all tablecloths are folded the same, and if not careful to check how each kind of folded you can end up with lots of short pieces.

Once I got my steamers cut, I folded them in half lengthwise and attached them with this simple knot to the curtain ring in rainbow-order.  (I just learned from the Internet that this is called a lark's head knot - learn something new every day.)   You will want to keep the knots loose, because you need them loose to be able to add the glue easily.  If you do as I did and tighten them at first, you will just need to loosen them later:

Once you have them on there and nice and loose, scoot them away from the bottom center of the ring:

Then place a dab of glue on the outside and inside of the ring and slide the streamers back over the glue.  I used Alene's craft glue.  Well, at first I used hot glue, but not surprisingly, it melted right through the plastic.  Once the streamer is over the glue, you can tighten up the knots, which will get the glue worked into the knot a little bit and secure it.

Here are the knots all tightened up:

And here are all the streamers ready for their car ride to school:

As you might imagine, the Little People have just loved the Rainbow Streamers.  They ran with them, let the wind blow them around, and threw them in the air to watch the streamers fly to the ground.

We still used the long set of streamers, but only as a wind-catcher on one of the playground trees. Of course, it was only a few minutes after I put it up there that I noticed a small cluster of the Little People standing solemnly around it with their hands on their heart saying the pledge of allegiance...  and while I could talk about how improper it might be or not be to say the pledge allegiance to something other than a real flag, I have to say first that I thought the association was clever of them.

To the best of my calculations, each streamer only cost $.14 each, which I think is pretty good, especially considering that $.08 of that is for the shower curtain ring.  That's not very much money for a lot of rainbow fun for the Little People.

The Lesser of the Two Evils

Yesterday was a "Choose the Lesser of the Two Evils" day, playground-wise.  Despite having three Little People out sick, our class was still bursting with energy, and when I received the news that the playground was really muddy, it was a true quandary for me.   On one hand, we could have skipped the playground altogether and gone inside and had extra center time or perhaps even watch a video.  However, my experience with this is that it never turns out as good as you might hope it would.  First of all, even on the coldest, rainiest days the kids rarely ever snuggle up and sit quietly to watch even the most entertaining movie.  They talk.  And move around.  And comment about every scene.  And argue.  ("I'm Buzz Lightyear!"  "No, I'm Buzz Lightyear!")  And on and on.  And if you go straight to extra center time, it's always way too long, and all that unspent energy manifests itself in a veritable plethora of frightening and hard-to-handle ways.

So, you could see why I was against that option.  However, the second option was to sanction some of the playground as "okay" playing space, and sanction some of it as not. (I'm not sure that's the correct use of the word "sanction", but you get the idea.)  Of course, that idea was a little shaky to being with,  because if there are two things that just don't mix, it's four-year olds and invisible boundaries.

Of course, anyone that knows me know that I chose the "Limited Playground" option.  I just couldn't stand the thought of all that wildness inside, so we went for option #2.  Much to the dismay of my coworkers, I'm afraid.  They in general seem to be colder than I am most of the time and seem to romanticize appreciate the "watch a movie" scenario much more than I do.

So, as a result,  we played outside.  I did try to create some visual boundaries by lining the grass area with cones, as well as by stringing some crepe paper banners around the forbidden area.  Some of the Little People did quite well with these boundaries.  Some were completely oblivious and wandered out into the mud - multiple times.  Wood Chip thrower drove his bike into the mud at least twice, and then wondered aloud in an amazed fashion as I pushed him back to the concrete, "I got all muddy!"  And some of the others just embraced the possibilities of it all, running and breaking through the crepe paper as if they were the winner of the Little People Mud Marathon.

But we got through it.  And we had a rather peaceful rest of the day.    Which was worth a little playground chaos in my book, hands down.