Ready-to-Use Teaching Ideas: Observation

Materials:

• wind chimes or pictures of wind chimes
• oven
• aluminum foil
• cookie sheet
• hard-plastic drinking cups
• heavy-duty paper towels
• hammer
• nail or ball-point pen
• markers
• yarn
• interestingly shaped small branches

Goal: Children will create wind chimes using a variety of materials.

In Advance: Preheat the oven at the lowest setting, and cover the cookie sheet with aluminum foil.

Warm-Up: Talk about wind chimes. Let children make sounds by moving the chimes in the air.

Activity

1. Take children outside and go on a nature walk. Ask them to collect twisted branches they can use to create wind chimes.

2. Give each child several plastic cups. Help them turn each cup over, place a paper towel over it, and make a hole in the cup by gently tapping a nail or pen into it with a hammer. Suggest that they use markers to decorate their cups.

3. Let children place the cracked cups upside down on the cookie sheet. Put the sheet inside the oven until the plastic melts into flat disks (a few minutes).

4. Allow the tray to cool, away from children's reach, for 10 minutes. Show children how to string yarn through the holes and tie their chimes onto the branches they collected. Suggest that they tie another piece of yarn to the top of the chime to hang it.

Remember: Encourage children to decorate cups with large, solid blocks of color. Thin lines tend to disappear when the cup melts.

Closely supervise children when they are making the hole in the cup and when they are near the oven and the hot tray.

Observations: Do children have theories about what happens to the plastic in the oven?

Spin-Offs

Make chimes again, this time using materials that don't need to be melted, like pine cones, paper clips, or bells. Children might also want to bring in recycled materials from home.

Take the wind chimes outside and tie them up on a tree.

Related Books

Titles with art activity ideas that can be enjoyed out in the sun.

Small Projects for Small Hands by Lynn Brisson (Incentive Publications)
The Kids' Multicultural Art Book by Alexandra Terzian (Williamson)
Good Earth Art by MaryAnn F. Kohl and Cindy Gainer (Bright Ring Publishing)