I keep waiting for life to get simpler. We have downsized – we have simplified. Or so I thought.
Then comes the last-minute rush to get out of the house and I realize that we really have a LONG way to go.
“Where is my (insert item here)?”
“Who has seen my (I need it now here)?”
“What do you mean you still haven’t packed your dinner or filled your water bottle?!?!”
It can become overwhelming.
One of the mantras we are working on that I have borrowed from the Birthing From Within classes that I mentor: NEXT BEST THING. It fits in with the idea of focusing on solutions instead of berating our children for not being ready…again.
What is the next best thing we can do in this situation? Our answer has been to make a checklist so that we have a clear vision of what has to happen to get out of the house without anyone having a meltdown.
Puma and I are taking turns making “Get Out Of The House” checklists on our whiteboard. This is going well when we use it. We put it up the night before or in the morning.
Putting it up the night before lets them start getting used to the idea of planning ahead. And now, when the kiddos have break in during our homeschool day, they get to start working through their checklist. And then they can get back to playing when it’s not their turn with me.
This is a Wednesday morning board – we are gone all day between their enrichment program and the dance studio; and soccer in this season!!
I am enjoying seeing Puma take charge of this project – I did the first two and she has pretty much taken over the rest. Every once in a while I get to sneak in a chart if I make it before she wakes up in the morning 🙂
It is great for each of the children to take some responsibility for their part in getting out of the house without anyone breaking down in tears, present party included. They can look at the board and figure out what they still need to do and have the pride of getting it done and checked off the list. I am a big fan of seeing them build self-esteem from personal accomplishment.
It helps me feel less overwhelmed, the “I have to do it all” feeling that I find self-defeating and pitiful. Having the markers right there on the board so each Sweet Pea can take charge of their destiny is amazing. They help, I can take care of what I need to in a timely manner, and we are leaving early which makes our time-driven children VERY happy.
And who knows…if they take after their father and design the latest and greatest in software, they better get used to using whiteboards and dry-erase markers. This is a good start!
Here are the experiments we shared with our park play group last week…building on last week’s fun and trying on some new elements for the Sweet Peas to ponder: Sink+Float, Taking Up Space, and Melting Point.
Our inspiration for these posts is this book by Usborne Books:
The mojority of the activities in the book can be done with things mosts of us keep around the house.
Experiment 1 Will ice float in water?
This is a great follow-up to last week’s sink and float experiment. When a Sweet Pea reasons it out, it would seem that something heavy like ice should sink…surprise!! It floats!
One interesting correlation to explain is perfectly demonstrated in the winter. If ice was heavier as a solid, bodies of water would freeze from the bottom up, effectively freezing out all life every winter. By floating, it creates a layer of insulation for the life below, that continues to swim freely throughout the winter months.
Experiment 2 Taking Up Space
Fill a container with water and put on the lid. Place it in the freezer and see what happens! This experiment helps to illustrate the idea in experiment above. Freezing water takes up more space because the molecules spread out, hence making it light enough to float in water.
As you can see in our experiment, it did not pop up the lid as much as we had hoped, it did however bump out the bottom of our container and created a very visible difference the Sweet Peas noticed right away.
Experiment 3 Melting Ice
Prepare three containers: one with warm water, one with cool water, and one empty container. Have your Sweet Peas guess what will happen to the ice they put into each container.
Careful with this one that the warm water isn’t too hot if they splash it onto the counter or on themselves.
Experiment 4 Melting Without Heating – Salt
Sprinkle and ice cube with salt…compare it with a plain ice cube. When the salt mixes with the ice, it lowers the freezing temperature. This salty ice will melt because it now requires a colder temperature to make it freeze.
Experiment 5 Melting Without Heating – Pressure
Press a spoon into the ice. You will see the ice melt underneath the area of pressure…if you look closely in the picture you can see the spoon-shaped divot in the ice because ice always melts when it is pressed.
Ask your sweet peas how this would affect their ability to walk on ice. If they said it would be slippery, then they are correct! When we walk on ice, a thin layer of water forms between our shoe or boot and the patch of ice. This layer of water makes it hard for the soles of our shoe to grip the ground, so in effect Mother Nature is creating her own slip and slide!
That is it for today’s installment of Kitchen Science. Enjoy trying these out with your Sweet Pea at home. Leave me a comment and let me know how it goes for you and your crew!
Instead of doing “preschool playdates” with our SPB students, we decided to do park playdates so that more families could feel like they were welcome to join us. The home educator in me has a hard time offering no activity for the children to explore while they share time with us…so I started bringing kitchen science experiments to the park with us.
I am calling this series “Kitchen Science” because most of the activities we will be doing use household items, and all the exploring can be done on your kitchen counter. Join us over the next few weeks as we share the activities we are enjoying with SPB friends of all ages!
The inspiration for all these activities is this book:
One of the first concepts we teach children about water is “sink” and “float”. We used that vocabulary throughout all the water play.
WHICH ONE FLOATS BEST?
This activity is to help the children explore the idea that some things are going to distribute weight differently than others. When it’s dry, the basket would hold more things…this is what happened when we added water:
There are lots of ways to add skills to this activity…
Level 1: Gross motor skills ~ place the glass beads in by the handful
Level 2: Fine motor skills ~ place the glass beads one-by-one into the containers
Level 3: Count the beads as they go in
Level 4: Science Journal ~ note how much each container held, and at which point it sunk to the bottom.
We like these picture journals from Miller Pads and Paper. The Sweet Peas can draw a picture to remind them of their experiment, and also write notes or dictate notes to the parent.
You may have noticed the green lines on the side of the tub…we drew those to measure the starting and ending point of the food tray and the blue rectangular container. After we emptied the water, the children could measure the difference between the change of the containers in the water.
BLUE CONTAINER
MEAT TRAY
Here is another variation on the theme using two metal containers. I asked the children to guess which one would float. Some said neither since they were both metal…they got a surprise, and also an “aha” moment when we talked about how giant ships made of metal can sail in the ocean.
The solid container floated…the enjoyed watching the sieve gurgle bubbles and sink. You might also fill the solid container with beads to see what it’s sinking point was.
DISTRIBUTION OF WEIGHT
Next we explored what would happen if the cargo on our “ships” was evenly distributed or one-sided. We don’t buy plastic egg cartons so I had to improvise with a cardboard carton and some plastic wrap. For this activity we used 24 glass beads.
For comparison on this activity, you could draw lines to measure the change in angle of the containers, and then measure the angles with a protractor after the water was drained.
AIR PRESSURE
Blowing bubbles!! This activity demonstrated what would happen if you forced air into a submerged container. I added two glass beads to our container to better demonstrate the effect of air on an objects ability to sink or float.
We connected this experiment back to the metal containers that float. Showing how air adds buoyancy to an object, we talked about how ships and submarines use ballast to sink or float in the water.
So those are three experiments you can do at home with household objects…I would love to hear how your Sweet Pea enjoyed them!
Playdate: November 17, 2016
Theme: Universal Children’s Day
— 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: Who are the people in our family?
— Storytime: Two books today!
— Centers | Free play
— Closing
STORY TIME
We used two books this session.
“La familia”
The first one we flipped through and “read” toddler-style…basically that means showing them the pictures, summarizing the text, and asking them what they see in the page.
“World Babies”
This one was perfect for toddlers – simple text, lots of great pictures of babies around the world. We could look at their hats (refer back to Hat Day), see how they were dressed compared to how we dress in the desert, and then we also looked at the ones we saw being worn in carriers.
LITERACY CENTER
Some of the families took this home because the sticker station attracted most of the todders’ attention! This is a great “All About Me” pamphlet that I picked up to use with our children – we have so many that it was time to share!
However you find this format, it’s such a great way to capture a snapshot of your child’s interests at the time. Ideally, I would remember to do this every year; at around the same time would be even better 🙂
MATH CENTER
I got this idea from Preschool Plan-It. It was actually quite opening to go through our ads and put this activity together. The size and age bias is really clear when you look at print advertisements. We did our best to represent people of all colors and size in our activity, age was much harder.
The tag sheet by itself served as our introductory tool…we asked all the guests what names they had for the people in their family…what did they call their aunt? uncle? grandparents? Everyone had different “titles” for those people based on their heritage.
For the center, we put out the other pieces and the children had to match the picture to the correct category on the tag board.
DISCOVERY TABLE
This happened after playdate at the park!! We took out sand toys and bubbles for the children to enjoy at the park.
ARTS & CRAFTS ~ Make & Take
This was a bigger hit than I ever could have imagined. Leave it to the sweet peas to make it amazing!! The kiddos had such a great time creating “faces” out of the plates, stickers, yarn, and googley eyes that I set out on the floor.
Here are their creations…and the “heart” ears…all the credit goes to a very clever three-year-old!
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 concludes our playdate series for 2016. Thank you for joining us to see our weekly preschool themes!! You can click back through the archives to see other play ideas we have shared since September, and there are more many themes on the blog if you click under “Toddlers”. As I was typing this, I realized that we are in our third year of hosting playdates for our students! Fun times. I started keeping track in the Spring of 2014, so I hope that you will find some fun ideas on the blog to share with your Sweet Peas.
We have a fun idea in the works for the blog in 2017…I hope you will check back with us to see our new series that we are preparing for you!!
Play date: November 10, 2016
Theme inspired by the USA recognition of Native American Month
— 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: homes of different tribes http://www.native-languages.org/houses.htm
— Storytime
— Unsquiggle activity
— Poem/Song before we break for Centers
— Centers | Free play
— Closing
STORY TIME
My favorite thing about these two books is that they point out to the reader that there was no “discovery” of “America”. There was already a vibrant, rich and long-standing cultural traditions alive and well when Europeans landed on these shores. One of the books has a great map that shows the regions in the United States and how the cultural traditions developed to suit their climate.
The other book has images that are better suited for adaptation for toddlers. By that I mean that it is easier for me to make up an abbreviated version of the page to suit their attention span!
Since we were not focusing on Thanksgiving this year, I decided to use an image of a buffalo since that animal played such an integral part of Plains Indian culture. The letters on the plate are the first letters of names of the children who attended playdate this day. I have found that associating the letter with a person they know really helps them to remember the letter name other times, so I wanted to use letters that were familiar to them from our weekly circle time.
Get your own “Bison Clip Art” to adapt it any way you like for your group.
MATH CENTER
As it turns out, we had a blue box from Costco that was just the right size for the sweet peas to sit in and play “going fishing”. The fish are numbered, so there are lots of ways to play as they “caught” fish:
Level 1: Count how many fish they caught – there were up to 20 that could be snagged with the magnetic fishing poles.
Level 2: Separate the fish into groups – they are numbered 1-5, so potentially five different groups to make
Level 3: Add up the numbers on the back of the fish. This makes the game challenging for the older children since the total sum could reach 50.
DISCOVERY TABLE
Weaving was a skill used across the country to create everything from baskets to blankets. I thought that the sweet peas would enjoy trying it. To make it easier for little hands, I used shoelaces. They have a nice tip for chubby fingers to grab on to, and they are a little slicker than yarn. The slickness makes it easier to pass the string up and over since it’s not snagging on itself like yarn does.
ARTS & CRAFTS ~ Make & Take
One of the art forms that our toddlers could attempt is drawing their own totem pole. These were illustrated in the book I shared with the group. HERE is the pattern that we shared on the craft table. I also printed out THIS inspiration picture. I asked the sweet peas to think about which animal they liked or related to, and they came up with their own totem pole creations.
This craft can be taken a step further by cutting out the finished drawing and pasting it to an empty paper towel tube so that it can be free-standing. Since we are out of the habit of using paper towels, I could only share this idea with the parents for them to do at home.
IMAGINATIVE PLAY
Very organically, our children transformed our schoolroom into their own Indian Village. They created a longhouse out of some pillows we have in our bedroom. They also used blankets to create other home structures. They had their fishing area set up complete with boat storage. Other things they incorporated into their playtime: left-over buffalo plates without letters on them, and “eggs” from our kitchen play area.
Charger set up a hunt for buffalo by setting up buffalo plates around the house. He had the kiddos throw a bean bag at the plates to knock them over (clever little man also had them count their yield!). Someone else was tasked with fishing. And then they grabbed the eggs from the “prairie chicken nests” and brought everything back to our craft table to make a feast.
It also let us talk about sustainability. The Native American tradition is one of living in harmony with the environment, taking only what was needed and leaving the rest alone. We could have the conversation about how many buffalo a group of six would need, and how practically every single piece of meat, bone and tissue was put to use. We took out one of the “First Americans” books again and read that page in detail.
It was really neat to see the sweet peas enjoy the elements of the different activities in their own way. Watching them assimilate the lessons through play once again validated why this kind of time to be creative and play is so important for children.
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. Playtime was definitely the crowd favorite today, as was the fishing game.
To close out our time together we sing 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.
Thank you for checking out our Native American Playdate. We have one more to share with you this season. Today we are doing Children’s Day in honor of the Universal Children’s Day on November 20th….all the details will be up in next week’s post.
One more thing in case you are interested…Here are some Thanksgiving ideas to share with your Sweet Pea at home. Check out this link: http://www.pre-kpages.com/thanksgiving/
Play date: November 3, 3016
Theme: King Tut Day – celebrated on November 4th, the anniversary of the discovery of King Tutankhamun’s tomb in Egypt
FYI: All links are informational only. I do not make any revenue from any content in this post…simply sharing for you to enjoy and recreate this play date at home for your sweet peas!
Most of the materials for this playdate are from the “Geography Jumper: Egypt” packet created by Wise Little Owls
Get your packet here: https://goo.gl/uPIOI7
The packet costs $6.00 – well worth it for 53 printable pages. There are lots of activities to print and enjoy with your Sweet Peas!
I printed out the full-color Cover Page (pictured above), the “Fact Sheet”, the “Country Poster” and the “Flag Poster” to laminate and display in our classroom. They were all bright, welcoming our guests to the day’s theme and hanging in the background to set the scene for our play date.
— 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: Showed pictures from a “Step into Reading” book called “Tut’s Mummy: Lost…and Found“, plus used the Ancient Egypt TOOB figures to introduce the day’s topic
— Storytime
— Poem/Song before we break for Centers: Alice the Camel
— Centers | Free play
— Closing
STORY TIME
The Geography Jumper included a handy little informational book about Egypt which included a map of the country, where it was located in Africa and the world, a picture of the flag, topography (desert and the Nile River), and some of Egypt’s ancient history (Pyramids of Giza, the Sphinx, mummy, sarcophagus, hieroglyphs). To tie in with education, it also talked about how long the required schooling was for Egyptian children (8 years).
LITERACY CENTER
There were two activities in this center, both from the Geography Jumper packet. One was vocabulary cards and the second was an emergent reader book.
Vocabulary Cards
Level 1: review cards for vocabulary retention
Level 2: Sort the cards into “geography” and “history” sets
Level 3: alphabetize the cards
Emergent Reader
This book reinforced all the vocabulary introduced in the “All About Egypt” book and the vocabulary cards. It is in black and white so the student could color it as well as read it. Every page starts with “Do you see” and then includes the vocabulary word that corresponds to the picture on the page.
MATH CENTER
This center was one of my own creation, using clip art from Classroom Clipart, a free on-line resource. I printed 6 camel images and mounted them onto card-stock paper. The center also included foam numbers and counting sticks.
Level 1: Count the camels out loud
Level 2: Count the camels and match the correct foam number
Level 3: Place out a foam number and have the child place the correct number of camel cards on the table
Level 4: Add in the counting sticks to Level 1-2-3 activities
Level 5: Introduce the concept of odd and even
Using the counting sticks to introduce the concept of 5 tally counting
Odd numbers have a middle
Even numbers have equal sets
Another way to visually demonstrate odd and even numbers: odd numbers have one left over, even numbers are always matched.
DISCOVERY TABLE
We hid the TOOB figures in sand and had the Sweet Peas play archeologist to unearth the treasure.
The pyramids and the sphinx we left out of the sand to give a clue on where to dig. Again, these figures could be sorted into the items discovered in King Tut’s tomb and other Egyptian figures.
IMAGINATIVE PLAY
I had our children bring out their Lego building blocks. They actually had a couple of Egyptian-ish mini-figures, and then we picked out the 2x building blocks for the Sweet Peas to play around with and build their own pyramids and palm trees. Unfortunately, I didn’t get any pictures of this activity!! I will see if they can get the parts out again soon and I will add some pictures.
ARTS & CRAFTS ~ Make & Take
This idea was also from the Geography Jumper packet by Wise Little Owls. The packet included a pattern to trace plus the instructions to create this cute little mummies.
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. Making the mummy and digging in the sand were the two popular activities today. We also sang one more round of “Alice the Camel” since every one had so much fun singing the song the first time around!
We close with a good-bye poem and then 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.
Today, each guest took home an enrichment packet of four print outs from the Geography Jumper. We gave everyone the following worksheets to take home and enjoy later.
“Glue the Pictures” – outline of the country of Egypt plus four pictures. Three of them are from the images used in the “All about Egypt” book. The activity is for the child to cut and paste the three “Egypt” images into the Egypt outline.
“Let’s Travel” – shows a world map with a highlighted Egypt. The child finds where they live in the world and draws a line from their area on the map to the country of Egypt.
“Egyptian Flag” – coloring page in black+white for the child to complete
“Puppets” – coloring and cut-out page in black+white
Finished puppets glued to oversize popsicle sticks
Thanks for checking out our King Tut play date!! Check back with us next week when we share all our activities and centers for our “Native American” theme that we are going to do today.
Play date: October 20, 2016
Theme inspired by National Cookie Month (October)
— 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: we took the time to talk about the ingredients that go into making dough. — Storytime
— Unsquiggle activity
— Poem/Song before we break for Centers
— Centers | Free play
— Closing
STORY TIME
This was a fun book to tie-in – lots of “C” words in Spanish to reinforce the hard “c” phonetic sound in the word, “cookie”. This is our second week using a Stella Blackstone book.
LITERACY CENTER
The letters are from Kidzpark.com ~ the activity is from our first cookies playdate last year (link HERE). Since we have a younger crew this season, I only put out the five letters for the children to match on the correct card.
MATH CENTER
This is a favorite game in our home, whether or not it is Cookie Day! The sweet peas will take any opportunity to play with cookies. This is played by choosing a color plate (also programed with a shape to continue the learning…). The dice are rolled, that number cookie is added to the plate, and the turns pass until one player reaches the number 10.
DISCOVERY TABLE
We had two different activities…tasting of course!!! And we also brought back the cookie baking station from last year. This year we added some cinnamon to the play dough to add an extra sensory aspect to the imaginary play.
The imaginative play lets the sweet peas use the kitchen tools, their motor skills to roll and cut out the cookies, use their creativity and fine motor skills to decorate, and lots of opportunity to acquire and/or use vocabulary words that pertain to baking and the kitchen.
ARTS & CRAFTS ~ Make & Take
This was a printing activity today – keeping it simple since our guests are younger this season. Puma used markers to embellish hers. After I took this picture, Otter took a paint brush to her project and painted inside the lines.
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.
PLAY TIME
Here are some more images from our cookie play time…it provides so much opportunity to do sensory exploration, vocabulary acquisition and also some safety rules for the kitchen.
— 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: This week we did a Teddy Bear “Show and Tell”
— Storytime: Bear on a Bike by Stella Blackstone
— Unsquiggle activity “Teddy Bear” Rhyme
— Poem/Song before we break for Centers “Teddy Bear” Counting
— Centers | Free play
— Closing
STORY TIME
I fell in love with Stella Blackstone’s books the very first time we ever checked them out from the library. As you can see this copy is well-loved…and it was great to share her wonderful rhymes and bright illustrations with our Sweet Pea friends.
Image source: “Come and Share Our” on Blogspot
Image found on Totally Tots on Blogspot – click on image for their source and a clear printable page.
LITERACY CENTER
Here is our “T” sound box ~ I chose to use all hard “t” sounds and avoid the confusion of the “th” combination. The sweet peas had a turtle, truck, triceratops, twig, train, train track, tomato, trooper, turmeric, and tuna fish.
MATH CENTER
I combined two ideas – the cute bear image came from the Nuttin But Preschool blog and a color match set from Lakeshore Learning. I tossed all the items into a basket, put the plates on the table, and had the sweet peas match by color. For more advanced sweet peas, you could also sort all these into categories: crayons, foods, animals, and balls.
DISCOVERY TABLE
This idea came from Preschool Plan-It – berry tasting!! We chose different berries from the grocery store that bears would forage for in the wild. It allowed for lots of opportunity for discussion: where do the berries grow? How do the bears reach the berries? How does their fur protect them from the berries that grow on spiny branches? Which berries grow on spiny branches?
With more time, we totally could have printed up pictures of all the plants/vines/bushes that these berries grown on and do a little biology lesson as well as a sensory lesson – my favorite ways to teach!!
ARTS & CRAFTS ~ Make & Take
This project was inspired by Cutting Tiny Bites.
Shaving cream paint is always a big hit with our crowd!! We make our “paint” by mixing the shaving cream with school glue (half cream, half glue, enough paint or food coloring to make the desired color for the project). The finished craft has a puffy, smooth texture that the Sweet Peas like to run their fingers over when it’s dry.
I used my Creative Memories Circle Punch for the ears and eyes, and we free-cut the snout and nose. Because there is school glue in the paint, the sweet peas just had to push the pieces into place – nothing extra required. In order to do the snout, we dipped the back of the nose into the paint and had the sweet peas place them where they wanted them. Then they drew the mouth, and lastly they put them on the plate.
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
Play date: October 6, 2016
Theme: Kindness (in honor of World Smile Day on October 7, 2016)
— 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: what are actions that show kindness?
— Storytime: Knuffle Bunny
— Unsquiggle activity: Kindness Spider Web
— Poem/Song before we break for Centers: The More We Get Together
— Centers | Free play
— Closing
“Have your group sit in a circle on the floor. Take a large ball of yarn and give the end of the yarn to the first child. Have this child roll the ball to another child and say one nice thing to that child. Then, this child rolls the ball of yarn to the next child and gives praise.
Now, make sure all children hold onto the yarn when it comes to them. After the game is finished, show the children how they are entwined in a spider web of yarn – everyone is connected to one another and has shown kindness.”
STORY TIME
Mo Willems is one of our favorite authors. This series is set in Brooklyn, NY, one of the Burroughs in one of our favorite cities.
This is the story of a preschool-age Trixie learning and her favorite bunny toy. It lends itself well to the theme of kindness and what kind actions are, as opposed to unkind. Both are evident through the course of the story.
LITERACY CENTER
“K” sound box – the “K” sounds in our box were kangaroo, key, killer whale, kitty, and koala. The other items were thrown is as decoys so the children could say yes or no to the beginning sounds and decide whether or not they went in the sound box.
I really debated using the “killer” whale since our theme was “kindness” last week. Thankfully the kiddos (and parents!) gave me a pass and none of them voiced an objection.
This was an activity for the older children from Enchanted Learning. The older siblings of the preschoolers enjoyed this reading/match activity, and the preschoolers just like writing with the dry-erase markers even if they can’t read.
MATH CENTER
There were lots of different ways to play at this center last week…
Level 1: Identify the numbers and put them in order using the cards, foam numbers or magnet numbers.
Level 2: Match the cards ~ numbered cards to picture cards or cards to number manipulatives
Level 3: Memory game ~ turn the cards over and have the children find the matching cards.
These are cards that I printed with pictures from the Internet. I specifically chose images that represented children of different ages and skin tones. I feel as if normalizing variety in shape, size and color is part of teaching kindness.
DISCOVERY TABLE
This was another activity that leant itself to the idea, “we are all the same and we are all different”. Some of the children put their thumbprints on our card, so they could see everyone has finger prints. Then we could point out how although each print is different, every human can benefit from kindness.
ARTS & CRAFTS ~ Make & Take
We took paper chain dolls to the next level with markers and stickers. Although each doll was the same shape, the children had the opportunity to personalize each cut-out. The lesson here was, “we are all the same and we are all different”.
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.
Come back next week to see the “Teddy Bear” Playdate we are having today in honor of Take Your Teddy Bear to Work Day. We are modifying it to “Take Your Teddy Bear to Playdate Day”.
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 🙂
— Storytime
