Did you know from infancy light and color fascinate any child and it carries throughout their childhood. They are always enamored with the wondrous world of illumination and color as it is something that they are naturally drawn to because they are able to explore a whole range of theories and enhance so much of their development.  Light and color continuously fascinates and deeply engages the interplay of the shapes, patterns, shadows, effects, spacing, imagery, light, sizes, and colors. Since light and colors magic is ever evolving, this #gifted  TTS Light Up Learning Bundle  from Discount School Supply can truly ignite a child's curiosity and provide a tool to continue to blossom their imagination. So let the magic of light and color continue to enamor the child by honoring their ability to explore the world through the power of illumination in any early childhood environment.  Bundle Overview: Light Up Twist And Turn Spinning Tops 3 pcs, Light Up Circular Infinity Mirror, Stack & Build Glow Blocks 9 pcs, Illuminated Sensory Glow Pebbles 12 pcs, Light Up Glow Cylinders 12 pcs, Colored Plastic Potion Bottles 6 pcs, Clear Plastic Potion Bottles 6 pcs, Giant Potion Bottles 3 pcs, Radiant Stacking Zig Zags 12 pcs, Radiant Stacking Crosses 12 pcs, Cozy Woodland Pillows 27" Set Of 4, Whatsit Navy, The Whatsit Companion Round Ottoman, Above Board 7'8" X 10'9" Area Rug.  One of the coolest aspects about this bundle is that all the light up materials connect to the USB cables that are provided to charge all of the items.  Here are more Invitations to Explore Light and Color:  Invitation to Explore Illuminated Glow Roller Shakers Whatsit Light Table Exploration Translucent STEM Exploration on the Light Table Flashlight STEM Light & Shadow Play Cellophane Light, Shadow, & Color Exploration STEM Light and Shadow Play Rainbow Light, Shadow, & Reflection Invitation to Explore Light Up Glow Cylinders

Invitation to Make Champurrado// The book ‘Twas Nochebuena written by Roseanne Thong and illustrated by @sarapalaciosillustrations follows a family as they prepare to host a night filled with laughter, love, & Latino tradition. Make tasty tamales,hang colorful adornos (decorations) on the walls, gather to sing festive canciones (songs), all while sipping #champurrado (hot chocolate). Exposing children to cultural diversity is a beautiful way to showcase how holidays are celebrated around the world. Since culture is a strong part of people’s lives, it when different cultures are introduced, celebrated, & shown to children at a young age, they gain a level of understanding & perspective of others, which is needed in order to build community in relationships, facilitate collaboration, & encourage cooperation & respect in the future. Integrating stories that are related to the concept explorations are motivating, inviting, engaging & appealing to children. Additional information & comprehension can be gained from these books in the context of a story. The pictures can impart a lot of meaning to help the children learn more about a topic, interact, relate their own experiences, & guide the children’s inquiry. After reading the story we set up our @discountschoolsupply #TuffTray with hot chocolate powder, water, @dollartree shaving cream, cups, utensils, & invited them to create Champurrado. Champurrado is a chocolate-based atole, a warm & thick Mexican beverage. It is prepared with either a masa, masa harina, or corn flour; piloncillo; water or milk; & occasionally containing cinnamon, anise seed, or vanilla. Ground nuts, orange zest, & egg can also be added to thicken & enrich the drink.

This STEAM invitation is SNOW much fun! With cut out circles of poster board, we invited the children to first paint the snowmen with cool colored liquid watercolors (turquoise, blue, teal), darker colors tend to work better for this. The next part was where science came in. The children were invited to experiment by spraying rubbing alcohol onto the snowmen and seeing how they would transform their painting.  The science behind how it alters the paint is when rubbing alcohol is added to liquid water colors, it pushes the paint away, almost like bubbles. Watercolor paints have chemicals in them that bind the pigments to the paper so when alcohol is sprayed to the paper, the liquid watercolors and the alcohol cannot mix, so it repels, causing white spots on the paintings or "melting" the snowmen.  STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Math) invitations such as this in early childhood  encourages active hands-on experiences that support building understanding & vocabulary, critical thinking, problem solving, communication, observation, & reflection. By creating opportunities for children to learn about the world through STEAM invitations will provide young children with a wide range of opportunities to approach problems in new and authentic ways whether it is through exploring art, science, technology, math or engineering.

There are so many amazing celebrations during the holiday season, and the more children learn and represent all cultures in the classroom and in our homes, the more knowledge and understanding we provide for everyone while making every child feel seen and heard in their community. Preserving and practicing cultures brings us all some kind of meaning and connection to nature and major concepts of life. Whether you are an adult or child, the more we know the stronger cultural diversity we have in our societies. Previous years we explored Sahb-e Yalda through Yalda Night Loose Parts Play  and  Invitation to explore Shab-e Yalda or Shab-e Chelle also known as Winter Solstice.  The bilingual books Yalda Night  and Yalda Night Celebration  both by Anahita Tamaddon, tell the story of families who celebrate Yalda and all of the amazing traditions. While many countries celebrate the Winter Solstice, the country of Iran celebrates every year on the coldest and longest night of December, (typically the 21st). It has a very long history and is among the most important Iranian celebrations. Here are the traditions of celebration: A sofreh table setting where everything is usually decorated in crimson hues of red to represent dawn and glow of life, along with candles to bring light, life, & joy into the long night. Sweets, pastries, fruits (pomegranate, watermelon, persimmon, oranges) and nuts are eaten all throughout the night. Every family member does a “Divan-e Hafez” where you get a "Fal." This is where you make a wish, ask a question, and when you open the book, the page that appears will be the answer to your question. To deepen the understanding or connection to this holiday a fter reading those stories, we invited the children to create their own watermelon and pomegranate out of playdough and loose parts (flat marbles). T he children also wanted to pick apart their own pomegranates and eat them as a snack!

For this invitation there were two parts. First the children were invited to cut ribbons of all different colors, sizes, shapes, and textures. Second, they were invited to decorate a holiday gift with all the ribbon they cut. Did you know that when children practice cutting it allows a child to build up the tiny muscles in the palm of their hand with the continuous opening and closing of the hand. These same muscles that are being used are also the ones used for writing, painting, and gripping things. Cutting enhances eye-hand coordination by using vision, processing what is seen, and moving the hand simultaneously to accomplish a task. When they are cutting it encourages the child to use bilateral coordination using both sides of the body at the same time while each hand is performing its own task. Having the children cut different textured, size, and shaped ribbons gives a sensory element through the variety of materials that are stimulating the mind & body. It enhances fine motor practice, language development, improves focus and concentration. When the children were invited to freely decorate the box by collaborating they build community, foster cooperation, eliminate competition, and it is social! Children who engage in #Processart such as this allows them to explore freely, be in control of the outcomes creatively, & lets them discover art in their own way. This builds their confidence, fosters their cognitive skills & when they become aware of all the different ways they can do art, make predictions, plan it out/problem solve, everything comes full circle in believing they can create anything!

For this invitation we used wooden & felt tree cut outs as the base. Provided bells, bows, translucent loose parts (acrylic rocks, pebbles, gem squares). The children were invited to freely create and decorate their own Christmas trees with loose parts. When a child uses loose parts to create on drawn out images, shapes, or designs invitations, it gives opportunities to work on spatial awareness, exposes them to different forms of art, paying attention to detail, and enhancing their language skills as they communicate what they see or what they are doing. As they manipulate the loose parts to fit inside, outside, or around the designs they are enhancing their fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, and shape recognition. Loose parts also provide unique inspiration, endless possibilities, challenge them to think, & encourage them to be creative with unusual things. This is not only a creative way to create from an artistic point of view, it is a way that encourages brain development, scientific experimenting, mathematical thought, risk taking, & trial/error learning. Through this kind of creating, children are really creating: using what they have and what they already know, and combining that to create a whole that’s greater than the parts.

Today we experimented and explored candy cane science. For this invitation we set candy canes on top of a bed of baking soda and provided vinegar that we mixed with silver liquid water colors for the children to experiment and see what will happen when they combine the materials. As they squirted the vinegar with the pipettes, the candy cane's red color melted, fizzy bubbles were formed, and the smell of peppermint came about. The more they experimented, the materials went from solid to liquid states, and because of all of this so much rich language and observations were made in a collaborative effort. Scientific opportunities such as this let children learn and explore their environments through a multi layer hands on approach. As they learn about cause and effect, cycles of nature, comparisons, chemical and physical changes, reactions and properties of matter, their curiosity about how the world works continues to form. When a child's curiosity continuously builds, children learn to be patient with projects that take time and how to make decisions based on the data they gathered. They are exposed to the basic skill for "scientific research" which is the ability to observe and realize how things are the same and how they are different. Developing this ability to understand likeness and differences builds a science base as well as a skill for future math and reading skills.

The beauty of cardboard and process art is that anything & everything can be used as a canvas or morphed into something creative. Cardboard is such a versatile material that provides a great surface to paint on. Since it comes in so many different sizes, textures, & shapes it allows the children to explore art in a different medium, use their imagination to think of a range of ways to paint cardboard boxes, & promotes collaboration as the children can work together to paint & talk about what they are creating. Since the children were excited for Christmas we decided to honor their current interests & invite them to decorate a cardboard gingerbread house with a whole bunch of art materials from Discount School Supply ! This inspired so much excitement and engagement as the children transformed & reinvented these boxes into something magical! When we provide opportunities for a child to create freely with a wide range of materials in an open ended way, it will further help build their social emotional development. Creating with no restrictions yields positive results. Research tells us that children who participate in arts over an extended period of time show more sophisticated social skills such as sharing & cooperation, reduced shyness and anxiety, & reduced aggressive behavior. Children who engage in arts regularly are better able to control their emotions & express them in productive ways.  Since the social emotional development of a child is the foundation to support all of the other domains when a child feels empowered & confident through creating/exploring art they will also enhance their fine & gross motor development, hand-eye coordination & control, openness to experiment/take risks with tools provided, further develop their language as they express what they are doing in the process, & continue to have the avenue of using their most powerful capability creativity + imagination.

Today we invited the children to put aside their normal paint brushes and use Poinsettias, Gift Bows, & Branches instead as their tool to create! We provided butcher paper, paint, and Poinsettias, Gift Bows, & Branches galore! The children jumped right in and loved exploring the different ways they could use the Poinsettias, Gift Bows, & Branches in order to paint on the butcher paper. Children who paint learn to think with an open mind, to look at situations creatively. Working on the vertical painting surface puts a whole new spin on the experience. They develop critical-thinking skills and must make decisions about what works and what doesn’t on their own, how to mix colors to create new ones, or how to make certain movements/techniques to create designs and get the paint on the paper. Through painting, children continuously gain so many skills which gives them a foundation to look at the world with curiosity and wonder. Physically they are using the large and small muscles of the arm with vertical painting. Simply moving the "brushes" from the paint bucket to the paper requires focus and control which enhances their fine and gross motor skills. All these movements enhance their hand-eye coordination as well. Continuous exposure to these movements through large scale vertical painting also helps control their marks later on. Visual art deeply affects children, for it is one of the most important forms of communication. Painting freely has a fluidity that is different from other art media which in turn make children more empowered and confident to express their creative artistic style.

On bed of Steve Spangler Science Insta Snow we placed ice cubes plus frozen snowflakes/snowmen. We provided water mixed  with Colorations® Liquid WaterColors in beakers + pipettes and invited the children to paint snow+ice as well as explore, make predictions, observations, and theories of what they were experiencing through the whole process.  Developmental Benefits of this Invitation: -Science:As the ice melts they will explore a solid turning into a liquid. They will make predictions, observations, and theories throughout this whole process as well. - Color Theory & Recognition:When painting the ice they will explore color theory through mixing colors. When stating and observing what colors they are using this naturally boosts their recognition and the names of the colors. - Fine Motor:By using a pipette they will enhance their fine motor skills as well as hand-eye coordination. -Language Development:Throughout this whole process as they speak with their peers or adults describing what they are experiencing and doing their language will thrive and improve. -Sensory Play: As the children explore the feeling of the snow + ice they will enhance their senses.

T here are so many amazing celebrations during the holiday season from around the world. We have been learning all about the traditions of the holiday Hanukkah through reading books, singing songs, and having meaningful discussions during story/circle time. This helps ignite a child's curiosity and provide a base knowledge about a holiday they may already celebrate at home or never knew about. The more we learn and represent all cultures in classrooms and in our homes, the more knowledge and understanding we provide for everyone while making every child feel seen, heard, accepted, and welcomed in their community.  1. Dreidel Action Art Playing with the dreidel is a traditional Hanukkah game. A dreidel is a pointed, four-sided top which can be made to spin on its pointed base. We wanted to take a spin on art, so we invited the children to use dreidels as their "paint brushes", dip them into paint, and make some action-process art happen! 2. STEM Menorah Provocation with Playdough The Jewish Festival of Lights, is an eight-day holiday where after dinner, the family gathers to light the menorah candles - a new one each night until all 8 are lit. We set up a STEM provocation with playdough where the children looked at a real menorah and were invited to create their own with playdough and candles. 3. Invitation to Decorate Hanukkah Symbols with Loose Parts We invited the children to decorate wooden Star of Davids and Menorahs with loose parts to freely manipulate the loose parts however they want to creatively design the shapes.

We have been exploring the artist Henri Matisse  by reading books about him & looking at images of his creations. Henri Matisse was a French Visual Artist who was a master of the use of color and form to convey emotional expression. Exposing artists of the world helps children develop & become aware of the beauty in the different styles along with techniques in art from around the world. 1.Invitation to Cut Like Matisse We invited the children to cut like Matisse by providing scissors and colored construction paper with Matisse like designs. After they cut out the designs they were invited to glue and collage collaboratively on poster paper.  2.Invitation to Explore Matisse with Loose Parts We invited the children to explore the many different art works of Matisse by inviting them to explore, decorate, and design some of his famous pieces.  3.Matisse Felt Board Collaborative Collage We invited the children to create their own collaborative Matisse inspired collage with felt cut outs similar to his designs on a large felt board.