Tag Archives: circle time

Preschool Playdate: Children’s Day

Playdate: November 17, 2016
Theme: Universal Children’s Day

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— 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.

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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 🙂

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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.

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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!

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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!!

Blessings,
Krystyna

Preschool Playdate: Chinese New Year

We used to host a great group called “Peas & Pods” that met every other week.  It was for parents (mostly moms) and Sweet Peas to get together, meet other families, and support each other on the parenting journey.  Then one of our alums started hosting a breastfeeding group at her home, and another alum started offering parenting classes…so our group seemed redundant.

After seeing Dr. Harvey Karp speak about the importance of toddlers being socially stimulated on a regular basis, I decided to offer an opportunity for our alums with toddlers to get together.  This was a need that wasn’t being met by the other groups, and after teaching childbirth classes for almost four years, there were toddlers amongst us (including our own!).

Thus, the weekly Preschool Play-date was born!  We started doing these in September 2014, but I didn’t think to start documenting with pictures until February 2015.  I am looking forward to sharing some of the themes we did last Spring with you.  My hope is that they will inspire you to get creative with your own Sweet Peas.

We started with Circle Time:
— Welcome Song where every child found their name and placed it on the Name Table
— Spanish Welcome Song that reinforced each child’s name so that the Sweet Peas could get to know each other.
— Story Time
— Squiggle Activity – something to get the wiggles out!

Every week, I planned at least four different centers:
— Letter/Writing/Literacy
— Math
— Arts & Crafts
— Discovery

Some weeks, we would have other activities as well – it would depend on how much I could find around the house to fit the theme.  I purchased very little outside of craft supplies and paper.  You can definitely do these themes on a shoe-string budget!

Story: “The Ivory Wand” from Stories From Around the World – Usborne Children’s Books

Circle Time: Talked about the Chinese Zodiac and shared that 2015 was the Year of the Sheep according to the Chinese calendar

Now for the center activities:

LETTER/LITERACY/WRITING ~ Make+Take:
One thing I remember from living in Taiwan is that people exchanged red envelopes on Chinese New Year.  I wanted to incoporate that idea with an activity that would allow children to recognize their name letters and organize them in order, because when you get an envelope, it ususally has your name on it!

So I used red card stock, and printed a good wish that I found HERE.  Then I programmed an index card with each child’s name, used punch out letters I picked up from the Tuesday Morning craft section, and put them in an envelope with the name clipped to the outside.

When the Sweet Pea participated in the center, first they had to find the right card with their name.  Then they pulled the letters out of the envelope, organized them in order, and glued them to their sentiment card.
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MATH CENTER:
This math center is one of my favorites.  The Sweet Peas get to use their motor skills as well as their ordering.  Each tee-shirt was programmed with a number and correspodinging dots.  The child could either hang them on a “laundry line” that we tied up between two chairs, or simply clip the clothepins to match the number on the shirt.

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ARTS & CRAFTS ~ Make+Take:
This craft idea came from Enchanted Learning.  I used the red paper I had on hand, plus craft sticks and a print out of a dragon’s head and tail on card stock.  I took a line drawing found in the Internet, cut off the tail and head that I wanted, and then enlarged it so it would look somewhat balanced.

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DISCOVERY TABLE: Sounds
We filled old prescription bottles with five different fillers that made distinct sounds: dry rice, dry beans, seeds, bells, and beads  We covered them with contact paper, and also made them self-correcting so that a Mother-Toddler pair could move ahead without waiting for me to check their matching.

150219 PP04 150219 PP05Thanks for taking a peek into our “Chinese New Uear” theme! Until next week when we share what we did to celebrate Black History Month.