Playdate: April 7, 2016
Theme Inspired by World Health Day

Print your own posters HERE

— Welcome song in English (emphasizes printed name recognition as Sweet Peas find their card in a line-up and place it on our Name Ledge)
— Welcome song in Spanish (reinforces names as Sweet Peas sing to their peers)
— Discussion of theme: used the posters from WHO to introduce the two aspects of diabetes prevention: eating well and staying active. Also used some food pictures to introduce the idea of “sometime” and “anytime” foods.
— Storytime
— Unsquiggle activity – part of storytime!! You have to download the book 🙂
— Poem/Song before we break for Centers – ^^^ 🙂

The story and the activities were all from THIS great health website, offered in conjunction with Sesame Street.

STORYTIME:
This is a downloadable book from the above link.  The sweet peas had fun playing along with Elmo as we talked about Sometime and Anytime foods, and activities that are good for a healthy lifestyle.

Print your own book HERE – look for the link on the right side for the “Get Healthy Now Show”

LITERACY:
I chose the literacy activity to reinforce the “eat healthy” concept.  We emphasized letter recognition in this sorting game. Sweet Peas would look at the food card, then name the item and tell the first letter of that word. Then they would sort the food into the correct cup. I prints the food group names in bold letters. Next time we do this I will be sure to underline the starting letter.

This was a good reinforcement of the position concept we worked on last week.
Find and print your own sorting activity HERE

MATH:
I chose the math activity to reinforce the “be active” concept. This was a fun way to do math and get the sweet peas moving. First they rolled the die that showed the physical activity. Then they rolled the number die to find out how many times to do that action.

Find and print your own cubes HERE

DISCOVERY:
We used our Touch+Feel box for today’s activity. I chose bumpy and smooth produce so that we could also do some sorting. The activity was to reach into the box and see if they could figure out what they were holding without looking inside. These kind of sensory activities are so beneficial for little ones!! Plus, they all had fun sorting! We also talked about all the heart healthy “anytime” foods and the “sometimes” snack in the box.
Find the instructions for the “Mystery Food Box” HERE

ARTS+CRAFTS:
This activity emphasized the sometime/anytime concept introduced in the book.  I thought it made a great distinction that we will continue using with our sweet peas so that there is less of a struggle when we say “no” – it’s okay to say no because we all agree it is a “sometime” food. Sometime foods are fatty, sugary, or salty…so we only eat them sometimes. Isn’t that great?

For today’s craft, we made good use of all the circulars that come in the mail!! We had some pre-cut food pictures ready, plus some complete circulars and scissors for the older Sweet Peas that wanted to cut out their own pictures. Once they picked out some pictures, they sorted their foods into “sometime” (fatty, sugary, salty) and “anytime” groups and made a collage to take home.

We finish our Preschool Playdate with a sharing time: each child that wants to share gets to say what (s)he enjoyed the most about the morning.  We close with a good-bye song where children are welcome to give hugs.  It helps to set a formal end to the time together so that parents have a clear reason to insist that it’s time to go if they have somewhere to be afterwards

This week the fun activity was making the anytime/sometime food chart. I even got a picture of a sweet pea enjoying her chart in her play kitchen after playdate…so glad that these ideas resonated!!