When children learn about artists the more well rounded and creative they become. Art is a fundamental component of early childhood. Through exposing children to art work it leads to seeing the beauty around them and in others. Learning about artists is a catalyst to empower children to be creative. Before setting this invitation you can read anyone of these books about Claude Monet. The Magical Garden of Claude Monet , Linnea in Monet's Garden , Katie and the Water Lily Pond , Claude Monet , and A Picnic with Monet . Print images or create a slide show of the famous Japanese Bridge Painting to provoke the children's creations. Provide flat marbles, cups, craft sticks, water lilies, and a sensory bin filled with water. Next invite the children to create their own rendition of the paintings created by Monet. Opportunities for hands-on play with different materials will allow children to learn and extend their knowledge and creative thinking skills. STEM preschool activities are designed to engage and stretch their thinking. Introducing the engineering and design process is a natural fit due to the fact that children already like to build and problem solve. This invitation is a perfect opportunity to change a simple building activity to challenge them to think and create in new ways and enhancing their interpretation and perception of Monet's painting. There was no wrong or right way to do this invitation and the possibilities are truly endless. By providing these open ended material the children are truly left to explore and build!

The book In My Mosque by M. O. Yuksel is a great conversation starter in the home or classroom to discover all the rituals and wonders of a mosque. This is a great book to read throughout the year to tell the stories of how mosques are centers for friendship, community, and love. It can also be great to explore during Ramadan as it celebrates mosques around the world while providing information about many historical and significant mosques. After reading this story you can set an invitation to build a Mosque that is inspired by the images of the book. You can provide blocks ( window blocks , kaleidoscope , rock blocks ), wood bits , and mosaic tiles loose parts in order to ignite their inspiration to create. STEM activities are designed to engage and stretch a child's thinking. Introducing the engineering and design process is a natural fit due to the fact that children already like to build and problem solve. This invitation is a perfect opportunity to change a simple building activity to challenge them to think and create in new ways and enhancing their awareness of the different types of ways structures are built. Through all these trials, the child is able to analyze the situation more critically and come up with solutions in their own way. STEM subliminally provides awesome real life lessons that are so valuable and enriching to a child.

The artist Robert Bradford creates life-size and larger-than-life sculptures from discarded plastic items. Some of the sculptures contain pieces from up to 3,000 recycled items. This makes for a great recycling art project during earth day. To set this invitation you will need to print images of Robert Bradford's art to provoke the children's creations. Gather as many recycled items as possible and place them in tinker trays. Draw and cut out images like Robert Bradford's creations on recycled cardboard. Provide ample amounts of glue and let them create! Collaborative collages are such a great way for children to learn how to work together. They are able to communicate and show each other what they are creating. The mix media materials also provide for tactile exploration and enhancing their fine motor development as they grasp the different textures to strategically place them. Open-ended process driven art experiences aide children to express their creativity and expand their mind. The children truly collaborate with one another to make a masterpiece come to life together.

The beauty of thoughtfully curated children's books from a company such as Brownish Books is that they introduce you to books such as The Old Truck. Brownish Books does the research to bring up-to-date inclusive children's books and delivering them to your door. The Old Truck by Jarret and Jerome Pumphrey is a beautiful book about a young girl who turns her imagination into action. The beautifully illustrated book depicts resilience, diligence, and strength through a timeless journey of truck and a family carrying on its legacy of making dreams come true. After reading the story you can set up a small world play sensory bin to extend the literacy experience. Small world play is simply when children explore figurines, loose parts, and sensory materials that reenact scenes from nature, books, fairytales, or a subject matter of interest. When small world play is accompanied with sensory materials it enhances comprehension, language, imaginary play, and tactile play. Through play they can reenact what they see and hear in the story and feel even more empowered to have the ability to make imagination come to life just as the young girl did in the story.

Dramatic play, imaginative play, creative play, role-playing, make-believe or just plain pretending…is a foundation of childhood development. Dramatic play, gives children the opportunity to imitate what they often see adults doing. Dramatic play allows children to imagine themselves in new roles, gain exposure to new ones, and act out different scenarios. This invitation explores explaining fasting for Ramadan. During Ramadan when a child is old enough or ready they are able to fast. At times it can be challenging for a child to explain to their friends why they are not eating lunch at school. Providing an invitation to learn about fasting through dramatic play is a great way to bring awareness to the tradition. The book Lailah's Lunchbox written by Reem Faruqi & illustrate by Lea Lyon as well as Tell me! What is the Ramadan? by Maza-Muslim are great books to read before inviting the children to explore the invitation. After reading the book you can set up a platter of foods typically eaten during Ramadan. You can place a sun and moon to explain Sehri and Iftar. Sehri is the meal eaten before sunrise to start the fast, and Iftar is eaten at sunset to open the day's fast. Place an empty lunch box to show that some friends or family may not eat lunch. Next invite the children to pretend they are eating together during Sehri and Iftar as they celebrate Ramadan. Children learn through play and are always exploring and experimenting – a Ramadan dramatic play invitation allows children to perform, gain exposure, and test their own understandings of the world around them. They learn many things through trial and error, processing information, and their surroundings through pretending they are in them through play. The more we are inclusive about all cultures in classrooms or our homes, the more understanding we provide for everyone within our communities.

The book We Are Water Protectors is a perfect book to read for Earth Day. In the story written by Carole Lindstrom and illustrated by Michaela Goade is about indigenous led movements to safeguard the Earth's water. While reading this story or after the story asking questions to a child or children really can deepen their understanding of the importance of water. You can ask questions like: How is water used daily? Where does water come from? What can poison water? What can we do to save water and the environment? How can we do better to help planet earth? Why is water so important? These types of of discussions teaches children about community, how we can take action to help, and empowering them to do better. Since the book is full of images of nature you can integrate the literacy experience by inviting the children to paint water through resist art. On paper you can draw images of the book with a white crayon , oil pastel , or tempera paint stick . Then provide liquid water colors and invite the to paint the water. Integrating art to deepen the connection with the literacy experience is a great way to continue to the discussion of the book as well as giving the child the freedom to be creative. Creativity is as important as literacy so when the two come together it sure makes for beautiful art.

With earth day approaching, an all time favorite is painting recycled mix media earth. After reading the story Dear Earth...From Your Friends in Room 5 you can invite the child or children in your classroom to create & paint the planet earth with recycled materials. To create the recycled planet earth you can used cardboard or poster board as the base of the earth. You will need to cut it out in a circle. Gather recycled materials such as bottle caps, egg cartons, styrofoam, bubble wrap, paper rolls, popsicle sticks, coffee filters, or whatever you want to. Draw an outline of the continents and invite the children to glue the materials. Next provide tempera paint and invite the children to paint the earth. When children paint on surfaces with a variety of textures it provides for sensory exploration, experimenting with materials, and being more observant of their technique. All the bumps, lines, textures, groves, had their paintbrushes creating so much beauty. The beauty of this invitation is that it is collaborative. Therefore when creating together it boosts their ability to analyze and open discussion. Endless amounts of language bursts as they discuss the connections between the book and what they are creating. They talk about the difference between land and water, varying ecosystems, where they live or have traveled to, and how to recycle to save the planet.

Ramadan always begins with the crescent of a new moon. Since the Islamic calendar measures the months by moon cycles the date of Ramadan changes every year. This invitation to paint the Ramadan moon is great way to learn about the culture and expose children to some of the traditions. First read the story Under the Ramadan Moon written by Sylvia Whitman and Illustrated by Sue Williams. This book is a great introduction to Ramadan, where it explores how this a time for reflection and ritual with family and friends. The lyrical story beautiful honors the meaning of the moon. To set this invitation you will need coffee filters in different sizes. First cut them into crescents. Then provide the child with liquid water colors and pipettes . Let the children paint and explore color mixing and creating. Exposure to other cultures brings personal meaning and awareness to the classroom or home. While children’s books open children’s eyes to differences, actual experiences such as creating art have the most profound influence on what children think and believe. By helping children understand, respect similarities and differences they understand who they are in context of race, ethnic group, culture, religion, language and familial history. This provides your child with personally meaningful information and also introduce concepts from anthropology, history, religion, geography, etc.

Children have a natural desire to make sense of their world, to create order. For that reason, 'sorting activities often attract children. In fact, many children will start sorting things without even being taught. Sorting is a beginning math skill. It may seem that a big chunk early math is about learning numbers and quantity, but there's much more to it. By sorting, children understand that things are alike and different as well as that they can belong and be organized into certain groups. Getting practice with sorting at an early age is important for numerical concepts and grouping numbers and sets when they're older. This type of thinking starts them on the path of applying logical thinking to objects, mathematical concepts and every day life in general. While this invitation focuses on colors, through exploring all the loose parts ( colored wood bits , translucent shapes , pom poms , colored paddles ) it can also be a way build their recognition/language and as mentioned previously enhance their math skills. Learning shapes, numbers, letters, and colors is a skill a child will learn when they are developmentally ready. Whatever age your child is (infants-six), take a deep breath if they don't know how to say or recognize everything. Susie from Busy Toddler has a great article about the pressure we put on children knowing their colors, letters, shapes, and numbers. Invitations such as this provoke the child's thinking by building their recognition through modeling language and engaging intentionally with the child as they play. To enhance a child's fine motor skills you can provide tongs , tweezers , or scoopers to pick up the loose parts as they transfer it from the tinker tray to the colored compartment bins #gifted. When the children use their finger muscles to squeeze or scoop the tools in order to pick up the materials and place it in bins it helps strengthen the children’s fine motor skills which in turns gets their hands ready for pencil grasp. This teaches the child to sequence a multi-step activity as well as challenge their memory by progressively increasing the demands of the activity.

Add glimmer and shine to your every day watercolor designs! Colorations® Glitter Liquid Watercolor #gifted combined the ease of watercolor with the amazing vibrancy of color and glitter! Each bottle not only contains rich color but also matching colored glitter that is specially formulated. Liquid Water Color Resist Art, Water and Oil Solubility, and Lemon + Water Color Art are just some of the invitations you can do. Liquid Water Color Resist Art consists of letting the child or adult draw anything before hand with a white crayon , oil pastel or tempera stick . Next simply let the child paint over it with wafer colors. Once it dries the beautiful images drawn before appear. Oil + Water Solubility makes for a simple science set up. You need oil, liquid water colors, droppers / pipette , and a clear baking dish. Pour a thin layer of oil and incite the child to drop the liquid water colors. Lemon + water colors, makes for a STEAM invitation. First you let the child paint with the liquid water colors, let it dry for a couple minutes. Next have the child squeeze lemons onto the paper which will make a beautiful bleaching technique. Whether it’s for art or science it is one of the most versatile products out there. Now that there is glitter it just got better!

The beauty of thoughtfully curated children's books from a company such as Brownish Books is that they introduce you to books such as Southwest Sunrise. Brownish Books does the research to bring up-to-date inclusive children's books and delivering them to your door. Southwest Sunrise written by Nikki Grimes & illustrated by Wendell Minor is a story about a young boy who moves from New York City to New Mexico. Filled with uncertainty in finding this new place as a home, he discovers the beauty of the natural world by taking a walk outside. One of the pages that struck me was when Jayden first started his walk and he spotted bright shades of flowers he didn't expect to find. Wine-cups, yellow-bells, red-firewheels, and calypso flowers surrounded him. When reading this book at home or in a classroom, you can extend the literacy experience with a process-art invitation that deepens the connection. This invitation is to create sunset flowers. You will need yellow, orange, red, pink and purple liquid water colors. Droppers or pipettes as the tool to paint. Coffee filters that you will glue on cardboard or poster paper together. Simply ask the child to drop liquid water colors onto the coffee filters to create beautiful sunset flowers just like the story.

Playing outdoors is absolutely vital to a young child's development. Many of the developmental tasks that children must achieve - exploring, risk-taking, fine and gross motor development and the absorption of vast amounts of basic knowledge- can be most effectively learned through outdoor play. It provides a chance for children become aware of the environment around them and provide endless amounts of uninterrupted intellectual stimulation. An area that is often overlooked within outdoor play is integrating loose parts. If you think about it loose parts play essentially has always been an integral part of outdoor play since nature (rocks, pine cones, sticks, flowers, logs, etc.) provides so many open ended materials. For this post specifically I will shed light on out of the ordinary loose parts versus natural. Open ended materials on the playground such as gutters, pool noodles, cans, bottles, tires, crates, boxes, buckets, cones, pipes, and more provide children with never ending ways to transform things into whatever they can imagine. They allow the freedom to be messy, make noise, move, tote and construct. When loose parts are added, children can create or change a structure to manipulate it in order to meet their play needs. Complexity holds children’s interest and adds to their development as well as their enjoyment. Therefore outdoor loose parts serve as springboards for play and provide essential elements for intense, child-centered play. There is endless imaginative play that occurs with outdoor loose parts. When children are role playing by creating a car to drive or building a skyscraper cities, they are acting out various experiences they may have had or something that is of some interest to them. They are experimenting with decision making on how to behave and are also practicing their social skills. Children learn from experience: from what happens around them, from what they see, hear, smell, taste and touch. To absorb those experiences and make sense of the world, they need to be engaged in play. These cars, robots, ramps, spaceships created with loose parts provide limitless imaginative play while building their brains. One of the outdoor loose parts play workshops I attended at a past CAEYC conference called Playing It Up: With Loose Parts, Playpods, and Adventure Playgrounds by Joan Almon was the inspiration behind all of this.