Playdate: September 29, 2016
Theme: inspired by Johnny Appleseed’s birthday on September 26th
— 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
— Storytime
— Unsquiggle activity: “A” sound box
— Centers | Free play
— Closing
This is actually the second time we have done this theme – what’s not to love about apples?! We brought back some of the activities that the children loved last time and added new ones that better fit the age of the children attending last Thursday. Click HERE to see last year’s event.
STORY TIME
This is actually a narrative biography of Johnny Appleseed’s life that is WAY to long for a preschooler to listen to all in one sitting. We broke it up over five days for our big kids!! However, the book boasts one-page and two-page illustration spreads, so I searched the internet to come up with the high points of his life, made up two sentences to summarize those points, and showed 7 pictures to go along with the summaries. It all worked out!
Johnny Appleseed: The Story of a Legend; Written and Illustrated by Will Moses
LITERACY CENTER
Fun with magnet letters!
Level 1: Match the letters to the corresponding letter in the word “apple”
Level 2: Sort the letters into Uppercase/Lowercase or sort by specific letter
Level 3: Turn over the “apple” word card and have the child spell out the word; then check for accuracy.
MATH CENTERS
Number recognition/spatial recall
The apple cards are programmed with numbers and the Spanish words for the numbers. We had two levels of play:
1) jumble one set of cards and put them in order/
2) use two sets and place them apple-side up to play a memory match game.
Counting
Modifying the “Cookies on a Plate” game from Lakeshore Learning to fit our theme…
Here is “Apples in the Bowl”. Roll the die, count out that number and place the apples in the bowl. The first player to reach the number ten wins.
This game is great for teaching one-to-one correspondence as well as addition; and for older children you could introduce the idea of “greater than” and “less than”.
There is also a sensory interaction with the apple shape and noticing the differences in color. Another level of play would be to sort by color into the separate bowls.
DISCOVERY TABLE
Tasting apples and apple products!
We showed the different colors of the outer skin, as well as the different tastes of each apple (sweet, sour, tart)
We also did a texture and flavor comparisons between fruit, sauce, and juice.
We always enjoy a good tasting center!!
ARTS & CRAFTS ~ Make & Take
Fun fact about apples: there is a star hidden in the core!!
My intention was to use the core to stamp….
The sweet peas decided to use them as painting implements instead!!
I love how they adapted to materials at hand to suit themselves and create their own art.
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 poem where children are welcome to give hugs; then we sing our closing song and say a final good-bye. 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. The rest of us stay and visit for a few more minutes and watch our Bradley babies enjoy their extended playtime 🙂