Tag Archives: playdate

Preschool Playdate: Have A Laugh Day

Play date: April 14, 2016
Inspiration: “International Moment of Laughter Day” Read about it HERE

This theme took a little creativity – once I latched onto the idea that clowns make most of us laugh, planning got a little easier.

— 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 kinds of things make us laugh? Why is laughing good for us? What is the difference between laughing with someone, and laughing at someone?
— Storytime: The Day the Crayons Quit, Drew Daywalt (author) + Oliver Jeffers (illustrator)
~~— Unsquiggle activity~~
~~— Poem/Song before we break for Centers~~

No time for our unsquiggle or poem since the Sweet Peas sat enthralled and listened to the whole story!!!

As a preparation for this day, we invited each of the children to prepare a joke to share with their friends. Here are some of the ones the children shared:

From Zootopia:
What do you call a three-humped camel? Pregnant.

From Home:
Knock know. Who’s ~~there?~~ Mooo. Moo ~~who?~~ Mooo. The interrupting cow.
(The teller interrupts the listener during ~~these~~ words)

One of Charger’s inventions:
What did the bat take on his trip? His bat-pack.

One of Puma’s inventions:
Why doesn’t the lollipop have any friends? Because he’s a sucker.

STORY TIME
My sister, who is an eighth grade English teacher in NYC, painstakingly selects each of us a new book every Christmas. This book and it’s sequel, The Day the Crayons Came home, are not loved just by Otter, for whom they were intended, but the whole family! If you haven’t read them yet, please check them out.

I chose this book because it is a Laugh Out Loud funny book – the parents were laughing right along with the children when I read it. Funny voices may or may not make it even funnier.

LITERACY CENTER
I had two printables for the sweet peas to enjoy at this station. One was a pre-writing activity to have them practice making different kinds of lines and move their hands across the page. We set this out with some dry-erase markers and it’s always a big hit.

The other activity was a word family sorting activity. Both of the activities are from THIS free circus printable pack via homeschoolcreations.com.

Level 1: Parent reads the words out loud and has child identify the matching rhymes.

Level 2: Child reads the words and sorts the rhyming words into the correct group.

MATH CENTER
I had two activities for this center as well. The first one is a counting activity for the parent/child to enjoy together. The other activity was a puzzle the children could complete by ordering the numbers across the top of the image. I intended to add in the number words before I laminated…and I forgot. Oops.

Print your own worksheet HERE from first-school.ws

Puzzle is from THIS free circus printable pack via homeschoolcreations.com

DISCOVERY TABLE
Years of dance classes have yielded one clown costume plus several others that were close enough. The sweet peas got to play dress-up and be silly!

ARTS & CRAFTS ~ Playtime exploration
Today’s craft activity was an opportunity for the sweet peas to get a little gross and fine motor skills practice as they explored their creativity. I printed THESE play dough playmats from the Picklebums blog, and set up four stations complete with a playmat, modeling clay, and some crafting staples: beads, feathers, wiggle eyes…and here is what happened:

The Make+Take activity was a clown coloring page this week – print your own HERE from first-school.ws

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.

Join us next Thursday when we share all the activities we do today in celebration of Earth Day. Find some good ideas HERE since Earth Day is tomorrow 🙂

Date Night Playdate

Today’s post was inspired by the answer I got when I asked a friend, “Is there anything else you want to do before your baby comes?”

Date Night Playdate

Parenting is many things. Couples who are committed to a healthy relationship know that time together to nurture that relationship is an integral part of the long-term viability of the partnership.

So what to do when time and/or finances might be tight?? Here is an idea: Date Night Playdate!!

How it works:

We probably all have 1-2 families we trust with our children. Talk to them about this and see what you can work out.

First of all, you have to make sure they are willing to trade childcare for date nights.

Things you might want to hash out:

Who provides the snacks? Does the host provide meals or do you pot-luck? Is it a sleepover or just an afternoon or night out? Are your parenting principles in alignment (Time-outs? Time-ins? etc.)? I am going to guess they probably are if you would leave your children in their trust – check for your own peace of mind if necessary.

Then, agree to trade at least one time. You might pot-luck for dinner and then one set of parents goes out on the town (or home for kid-free time!) while the other set of parents entertain. Then you switch next week/month/year…however it works out for your crew.

Some families may do better with a drop-n-go to minimize separation anxiety. And some trades might include 2-3 families so that four sets of eyes are watching the kiddos; and then all grown-ups get a little adult conversation, too.

Before you leave, clearly state that the adults in charge have permission to correct behavior if necessary, and that you will be back to get them at “xx:xx” time. Tell them you hope that they will have so much fun on their playdate, and then hit then hit the road. (If your children are time-driven, by all means pick them up on time, barring extenuating circumstances.)

Then go out – or go home!! Whatever suits your budget. You can make a nice meal together and rent a movie for a fraction of the cost of dinner at a restaurant and a movie at the theater. Or go for a walk…ride bikes…play at the park…those are free! Maybe you want to get some grocery shopping done without little hands to watch. Whatever works for you and that gives you time to check in and share affection with your partner – plan it and then do it!!

I would love to hear what works for you and what kind of creative date nights you come up with. Or maybe you are already doing this and have some encouragement to share. Please leave a comment with your thoughts – can’t wait to read what you have to say!!

Here are three different idea lists for “date nights in” and/or “date nights on a budget” – enjoy!!

10 ideas via mom365

10 ideas via the bump

Cheap Ideas via Valley Parents

Preschool Playdate: Butterflies

Playdate: March 31, 2016
Theme inspired by Learn About Butterflies Day

STORY TIME
Here is a sweet story that follows a caterpillar through the spring and metamorphosis. It’s a pop-up book with a puffy caterpillar that weaves through the center of the pages…and then a pretty pop-up butterfly on the last page.

by Susan Hood, Claudine Gévry

LITERACY CENTER
I found some images of butterfly gardens on the internet, and then printed up THIS butterfly life cycle. I printed up a list of position and direction words as a reference list for the parents.

My favorite way to use this is to take turns with your sweet pea. You ask them to place one of the figures around the picture, and then have them tell you where to put the figure. It helps teach them the concept of how things relate to one another…read more about that HERE. I find it an important idea for them to be able to learn things such as reading and math…it’s important to understand how letters and numbers relate to each other according to their position to each other.

MATH CENTER
I created this center using playing cards from a Hungry Caterpillar Game.

Level 1: Match the number on the card to the number on the reference picture.

Level 2: Start teaching your sweet pea about the days of the week.

DISCOVERY TABLE
This incorporated two ideas – the line of symmetry and color blending. The sweet peas put dabs of red and yellow paint on one side of the paper, then folded it in half to transfer the paint. Where the colors blended, they got to see that red+yellow=orange. I love 2-for-1 activities 🙂 This one might count as 3-for-1 since it could also be a craft!!

ARTS & CRAFTS ~ Make & Take
This was the “official” craft activity. We used water-soluble markers to draw on coffee filters. Then i let the sweet peas drop water on the filter by using water trapped in a straw by air pressure (mini-science lesson built in!). Once they dried, we attached them to the popsicile stick prepared the night before. The pipe cleaner is glued on with hot glue; it serves as the body when you twist it at the top, and then turn the ends into the antenna.

This activity works best with fresh markers that are full of ink. Ours were a little dry and not enough color transferred to the coffee filter – the butterflies were more colorful when I brought out new markers.

Next week: check out the activities we enjoyed on April 7th in honor of World Health Day.

Preschool Playdate: Ireland

Playdate: March 17, 2016
Theme: Luck o’the Irish

How perfect that this playdate was on St. Patrick’s Day!! It made for a lot of neat activities. We did not focus on the saint aspect so much since we honor that not everyone shares our belief system. We made it more about The Emerald Isle and all things green!!

— 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)
— Discussion of theme
— Storytime: Great Irish Legends
— Welcome song in Spanish (reinforces names as Sweet Peas sing to their peers) to welcome any latecomers to our playtime and sing one more time to the other children

STORY TIME
I found this book on Amazon. We chose the story about the king with the donkey’s ears. It was a great story that taught about tolerance and acceptance – very poignant during this turbulent political season.

LITERACY CENTER
I found this idea on the B-Inspired Mama blog. I adjusted it to focus on uppercase and lowercase vowels since there are too many children and too little time (and too few foam shamrocks from the Dollar Store!) to make them all their own individual game. We turned the shamrocks upside down in the containers for an element of surprise. I also set out fishing poles with blue and yellow strings since blue + yellow = green 🙂

Level 1: Name the letter and match the letter case to the corresponding game card.

Level 2:Name the letter and mix the case and the card so that they have to match uppercase to lowercase.

MATH CENTER
This was a printable from the B-Inspired Mama blog that I modified in order to add more print elements. I wrote in the word names for the numbers in both English and Spanish before laminating the puzzle.

Once the sweet peas put the puzzle together, you could also have them count the elements in the picture: how many children, shamrocks, rain drops, etc.

DISCOVERY TABLE
We had two activities for the children to explore…

Sensory Bin
We made green rice via the recipe on the Mama Miss blog. It is so easy to do – it literally takes five minutes to make. The only caveat is that you have to leave enough time for it to dry. When we remember, we will make it the night before we need to use it. If not, luckily our AZ sun is hot enough to dry it out in a couple of hours, or spread it out and dry it on cookie sheets under a ceiling fan…we have done all these to get rice ready for playdates!!

We added pom-poms, buttons, and foam for different textures for the children to find under the rice. Of course, scoopers and kitchen utensils completed this area.

Green Food Taste Test
This is an idea that I have seen across Pinterest as a way to engage picky eaters…sorry that I don’t have exactly one blog I can credit here. Our sweet peas and I brainstormed green foods and made a mad dash to the local Sprouts to get some green!

We prepared a tray for each child individually in the kitchen. The parents got a tally sheet so that they could write down the food and circle a happy face or a sad face after the child tasted the particular food. If my memory serves me, I think that the idea for the tally sheet was from B-Inspired Mama…we simply made our own instead of using her printable.

Spinach, green pepper, grape, green apple, lime, cucumber, celery, kiwi, pear, broccoli

ARTS & CRAFTS ~ Make & Take
These Wee Little Men are from the Sweet and Lovely Crafts blog – you can find the instructions HERE. As a preschool teacher, I tend to save toilet paper rolls – it was nice to finally put some of them to use!

Check in next week when I share the activities we enjoyed for our Green Thumb playdate from yesterday.

Preschool Playdate: Hungry Caterpillar

Theme: The Very Hungry Caterpillar
Play date: February 4, 2016

— Welcome song in Spanish (reinforces names as Sweet Peas sing to their peers)
— Discussion of theme: intro to 5 signs the sweet peas could use during storytime
— Storytime: The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
— Unsquiggle activity: butterfly life cycle

STORY TIME
One of our students knows ASL and she and her daughter were kind enough to lead story time. Before we started, they taught the group 5 signs that we used throughout the story. We’ll check in to see if they remember what they learned when we start this week’s story time.

Our “unsquiggle” activity today had the children act out the life cycle of the butterfly. I used three different instruments to represent different segments:

Knocked on a rhythm stick: caterpillar breaking out of it’s egg
Scraped the rhythm stick: caterpillar crawling around looking for food and making it’s pupa
Silence: caterpillar undergoing metamorphosis to transform and change shapes.
Tambourine: Butterfly breaking out of the pupa and flying out in the garden

To add to the activity, we asked the parents to bring a pillowcase and a scarf. The Sweet Peas climbed into their pillowcases (scarf tucked in at the bottom) and were very still inside their “pupa”. As they came out, they used their scarves as their wings, and then fluttered around the room.

This unsquiggle activity was a combination of an activity suggested in The Mailbox
Superbook, and one from THIS blog that offered Hungry Caterpillar lesson ideas.

LITERACY CENTER
Sound Box: We used the letter “C” this week. It’s a tough letter since it doesn’t always have the soft sound. In the future, we will use the letter “K” next to it reinforce the sound we are looking for. Most of the things on the tray had the hard “c” sound, the others were placed on there to be the “no” items.

Our “C” items: Can, Card, Cat, Car, Clip,Clothespin, Comb, Cow, Crown

MATH CENTER
Level 1: Taking inspiration from all the food mentioned in the story, we had the children roll the dice and then “feed” the caterpillar with the number of items that matched the number they rolled.

Level 2: Have the children sort the food into groups. We did fruits, vegetables, breads, desserts, and dairy.

DISCOVERY TABLE
This week we had an activity that provided an opportunity to work on motor skills.
Gross motor skills: hole punching
Fine motor skills: stringing the leaves they punched on a string.

Once the sweet peas were done with their leaves, they could glue them on the “tree’.

ARTS & CRAFTS ~ Make & Take
This was a craft idea I picked up at a story time at the mall. Other ways to celebrate this story are to make thumbprint caterpillars with red and green ink. We also printed out an activity sheet from The Mailbox Superbook for the Sweet Peas to add to the story. The page asks them to draw other food the caterpillar tried to eat into the caterpillar’s tummy.

Preschool Playdate: A.A. Milne

Play date: January 21, 2016
Theme inspired by A.A. Milne’s birthday (January 18, 1882)

— 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: talked about the characters in the series
— Storytime: Tigger’s breakfast
— Unsquiggle activity: “take the ants out of your pants”
— Poem/Song before we break for Centers

Thank goodness for all our dollar store flash cards! I had purchased these when Puma was a preschooler because she adored Winnie-the-Pooh. They came in handy today, after a good dusting off!

Today’s craft and discovery table were inspired by the Sugar Aunts blog. The take-home mask craft was printed from the Surburban Mom blog.

STORY TIME
We got these little books for Puma’s first birthday party so that guests could share a little story time with their Sweet Peas. I selected a story that recounts Tigger’s search for the perfect breakfast. I emphasized that he tasted everything until he found the food that tasted just right to him. We also had our stuffed animal friends help us tell the story!

LITERACY CENTER
We had two options here – both games created out of the cards.

Activity 1: Word Match
It could be played as a memory game, or very simply as a “show and find the match” for the younger children. If they were playing the “show-match” version, I encouraged the parents to emphasize the first letter/sound as their child searched for the matching card.

The second activity was for word correlation. It was a self checking game – if they matched the words correctly, they would form a picture on the reverse side that incorporated the two words that they had matched. This is a great game to reinforce the “go-together” concept, and also to do visual recognition once the items were shown on an illustration.

MATH CENTER
We had two card games for this center as well…

Activity one: Shape or Color Match
This could be played as a “show and find” or a memory game. We added the same shapes in orange if the Sweet Peas wanted to play memory. Otherwise, we stuck to the primary colors to reinforce the colors as well as the shapes for the younger Sweet Peas.

Activity 2: Number Match
The Sweet Peas matched the number to the card with the corresponding number of pots. To further emphasize 1-to-1 correlation, they could pin the “honey bee” clothespins to the card to match the number of pots.

DISCOVERY TABLE
Another use for the “honey bee” clothespins! There are several ways to play:
Level 1: fine motor skills only – celebrate picking up a flower with the clothespin!
Level 2: Pick up flowers of a certain color
Level 3: Name a number to pick up of a certain color. This could be done progressively: take out 1 pink, 2 yellow, 3 blue, etc.,
Level 3a: Name a size of flower to take out…you could also request a certain amount here, too.

ARTS & CRAFTS ~ Make & Take
We made a couple of adjustments to the craft as suggested by Sugar Aunts. We have lots of younger siblings that come to play date, so wiggly eyes were definitely out, and, there was absolutely no way we were going to plug in a hot glue gun for the wings…so we put out markers for the Sweet Peas to draw faces on their “bees”, and we used tacky glue for the wax paper wings. They ones we made as samples and for the centers all held up pretty well; here’s wishing that they survived once the Sweet Peas took them home!

Join us next week when we share all the fun we had today for our Australia theme!

Preschool Playdate: Dragons

Playdate: January 14, 2016
Inspiration: Appreciate A Dragon 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)~~ Skipped this week since we got a late start…everybody had to get back in the habit of getting out of the house on Thursdays 🙂
— Discussion of theme: Other animals with scales
— Storytime: Puff the Magic Dragon
— Unsquiggle activity: not necessary since they squiggled through storytime!!
— ~~Poem/Song before we break for Centers~~

STORY TIME

I read selections from this book to the Sweet Peas. Everyone was so excited to see friends they hadn’t seen since December (the Peas+Pods – lol) that it was hard to get everyone settled. Instead of reading the whole book, which is an illustrated version of the song (repetition of chorus every other page!), I read the pages that told the story of Puff’s friendship with Jackie Piper, Jack growing up, and Puff making a new friend. I used the finger puppets to add interest to the storytelling.

I also shared the book pictured below with the moms in attendance as a suggestion for bedtime reading. “My Father’s Dragon” by Ruth Stiles Gannet is the delightful story of an ingenious little boy, an old cat, and the quest to find a dragon. The little boy follows the cat’s instructions to rescue a dragon, that then carries the boy off to new adventures. Jungle animals are introduced in each chapter, and the boy applies creative problem solving to get him one step closer to rescuing the dragon, chapter by chapter. There is a hilarious rescue scene at the end. All of our children have enjoyed this book.

LITERACY CENTER
My favorite part of this center was finding a dragon font HERE. It’s a free download…since we are a preschool group I kept it simple. I am guessing we will find many more applications for this font going forward!

Activity 1: Unscramble
I had both upper-case and lower-case magnets available for the Sweet Peas. They had to organize the letters to spell out, “dragon”. Since the print-out is tucked into a page protector, they could also use a dry-erase marker to trace the upper-case letters on the page.

Activity Two: Trace or Outline
I used puffy sticker letters for a sensory experience. The Sweet Peas could start by tracing the uppercase letters with their finger tips. I added the beans to the table so that they could work on their fine-motor skills, so helpful to help them hold a pencil or other writing/drawing instruments.

MATH CENTER
Can you tell I was puffy-sticker inspired today?? The cards were printed with dragons that alternated designs between the odd and even numbers. I also added green dots to each card so that they children can start seeing the odd/even concept. Finally, we added the puffy foam sticker numbers to the back of the cards so the kiddos could do more tracing. I also added the “dragon’s treasure” for the Sweet Peas to use as counters. Lots of ways to enjoy this Math Center today!

Activity 1: Identify the numbers

Activity 2: Order the number cards

Activity 3: Explore odd and even: point out the cards that show each set and ask the child to tell you what is different about the dots on the odd cards (always one dot left over) and the even cards (all dots are matched).

Activity 4: Trace the foam numbers

Activity 5: Use the “dragon treasure” to count out the amount to match the number on a card

DISCOVERY TABLE
Activity 1: Scale match
This built on the discussion of the theme. I printed out images of animals with scales. It let us talk about familiar animals (crocodile, snake, fish, chameleon) and introduce a couple of new ones (pangolin, tuatara). I printed a matching set of cards with the scales magnified. The Sweet Peas had to match the animal with it’s scales.

Activity 2:
Sensory Play: These are dragons we have collected through the years, plus Toob knights. These could be buried and found, sorted, counted, arranged into epic battles…lots of ways to play with these.

What always fascinates me about the sensory table is that Sweet Peas of all ages enjoy digging in and playing with the rice and whatever is buried in it that week. The toddler guests and my upper elementary helpers are equally entertained whenever we do a sensory activity like this!!

ARTS & CRAFTS ~ Make & Take
Taking inspiration from the Ed Emberley fingerprint books, here are some of the dragons the Sweet Peas and their imaginative Mama Pods created:

I also laid out this Melissa & Doug dragon vs. knight puzzle for the children to enjoy as they waited their turn or they were finished with all the activities:

Join us again next week when we share the activities we use to celebrate the birthday of A.A. Milne, author of the Winnie-the-Pooh stories.

Preschool Playdate: Winter

Theme: Winter
Playdate: December 3, 2015

— 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: I had a bucket full of winter clothes that we pulled out for the children to explore, and we talked about the characteristics of the winter season.
— Storytime: Secrets of Winter
— Poem/Song before we break for Centers: Snowman song

Today’s songs and center ideas were from The Mailbox Superbook

STORY TIME
You can see my review for today’s book HERE. All the kiddos enjoyed this creative look through the forest during wintertime.

If you would like to order your own copy of this fantastic book, you can order one HERE. Orders placed by December 10, 2015 will arrive for holiday gifting at the end of the month.

LITERACY CENTER
This was a print center today. It also offered a fun opportunity for the children to explore negative space. We put out different circle shapes for the children to create a snowy winter scene complete with a snowman. Along with the white chalk for the snow, I also put out wax crayons that show up well on the dark paper.

Level 1: Free expression with the chalk

Level 2: Parents hold the circle and the child traces

Level 3: The child holds the shape and traces the figure onto the paper

MATH CENTER
This is a favorite from when our children were learning numbers. This printable is also from The Mailbox Superbook. We added the numbers for more reinforcement of the written number and 1-to-1 correspondence.

DISCOVERY CENTER
We have accumulated various winter outerwear through the years. We put all of it out for the children to try on. The first part of the center was a gross motor skill: shoveling the “snow” (cotton balls) into the bucket while they were dressed in the winter clothing.

After all the children finished the centers, we had an indoor snowball fight. I had bought the larger snowballs from Hallmark a couple of years ago, and we added all the cotton balls to the center of the floor. The kids were split into two groups and they had fun tossing the “snow” back and forth.

ARTS & CRAFTS ~ Make & Take
We kept this one simple since our group has so many different ages. We used the doily, glue, and silver glitter. The original idea called for gluing different craft items onto a doily, spraying the whole creation with glue, and then covering the whole craft with glitter.

Today’s favorite activity was definitely the indoor snowball fight!!

Book Review: Secrets of Winter

Secrets of Winter
Written by Carron Brown
Illustrated by Bee Johnson
by Kane Miller EDC Publishing

We didn’t have a playdate to post yesterday since we took the week off for Thanksgiving last Thursday. So today, I’m sharing a sneak-peek into yesterday’s WINTER playdate.

My inspiration for this playdate was the changing of season this month. I had the perfect book to share, Secrets of Winter by Carron Brown & Georgina Tee. This book was new in our library this school year – I purchased it from my friend Tina, who is a rep for Usborne Books.

The story introduces the idea of exploring through a winter evening. The pictures alternate between full color and black&white, which seemed to keep the children’s attention. There is the added intrigue of seeing an additional image revealed when you shine a light through the page!

There is no need to trim the story as the storyteller. The story moves along with 2-3 sentences and/or statements per page. It also shows a large variety of animals and how they manage through the winter weather, so there are fun animal facts being acquired along with the visual enjoyment of the book.

Our guests and my own Sweet Peas thoroughly enjoyed the book! Their ages ranged from 2 years to 11 years old. From the endpaper printed with delightful animal prints, to the hidden surprises revealed with a flashlight on every page, there are endless ways to enjoy this book.

In fact, the children liked it so much, I sat with my legs out in front of me in order to keep the circle wide enough for everyone to see! That is definitely a first, and always a welcome sight to see children enjoying a book so much that they are piling on top of each other to get closer.

You can purchase your own copy of Secrets of Winter, other books in the “Secrets of” series, or anything else Usborne has to offer by following THIS link to Tina’s online store. Any orders placed before 12/10/2015 will arrive in time for Christmas gifting.

Happy reading!! Stay tuned for next Thursday’s installment of “Preschool Playdate” when I share all the activites we did to celebrate winter (hint: we had a snowball fight in Arizona!!).

Preschool Playdate: Thanksgiving

Preschool Playdate: November 19, 2015
Theme to introduce the concepts of Thanksgiving + 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: We used the two Native American books pictured below to show the children how the continent of North America was populated before the arrival of European settlers, and to show them visually the rich culture that already existed here.
— Storytime: The Sweet Pea Kids presented a Thanksgiving Story play

STORY TIME

Here are the books we used to introduse the topic, and I am also sharing pictures of the pages that state the concept I was trying to get across to the children: the Europeans did not “discover” the Americas. There was already a rich, vibrant, and established culture that existed here. If one child will remember that and speak up when American colonization is taught in public school, then today’s mission will be accomplished.

I read the pages shown below, and then turned through the pages of The Very First Americans so the children could compare and contrast the ways of the Native Americans to the things we do today.

LITERACY CENTER
Today’s activity reincorced fine motor skills as well as letter recognition. You can print your own copy of this activity page HERE. The only modification I am going to make is to print the letters along the bottom row upside down on the clothespin so that they are “right side up” when the page is completer.

Level 1: pull out letters from child’s name or vowels

Level 2: all the letters of the alphabet

http://www.pre-kpages.com/thanksgiving/

MATH CENTER

Using corn kernels and fall/holiday shapes – more fine motor skills on this activity!

Level 1: parent orders the numbers and helps child count out the correct number of corn kernels for each card

Level 2: child orders the cards and counts the kernels. Parent can choose how many numbers 1-3, 1-5, etc. numbers 1-10 available

DISCOVERY TABLE

My mom sent me these “popcorns” from their community garden project in Illinois called the Manhattan Friendship Garden. One of the Thanksgiving stories we have read this school year talked about the Native Americans sharing popcorn with the European settlers, so this was a perfect share for playdate!

The corn is about 6-7 inches long, and it makes about the same amount of popcorn as 1/3 cup conventional kernels that we use in our Whirly-Pop.

ARTS & CRAFTS ~ Make & Take

We used craft paper and stickers that I bought on sale last year for this craft. The idea is that the Sweet Peas can write one thing they are thankful for on a daily basis: one gratitude per branch until Thanksgiving. On the holiday, they can share all their thankful statements with the family.

Thankful Tree – I modified THIS line drawing

We finish this Preschool Playdate with a play prepared by all of the children. Puma and Busy Bee wrote the play; Puma did the costuming, and as time ran short, they told me what they wanted for props and I helped out. They did a great job of modifying the Thanksgiving Story Book for our guests – it ended up being an 8-minute play.

All in all, it was a fun playdate with a little more emphasis on history than we usually do. I hope that you will have time to share some of these ideas with your family either before or after your Thanksgiving feast today.

Happy Thanksgiving from our family to yours <3

Sweet Pea Families

Life beyond the Birth-Day

Tag Archives: playdate

Preschool Playdate: Have A Laugh Day

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Date Night Playdate

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Preschool Playdate: Butterflies

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Preschool Playdate: Ireland

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Preschool Playdate: Hungry Caterpillar

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Preschool Playdate: A.A. Milne

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Preschool Playdate: Dragons

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Preschool Playdate: Winter

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Book Review: Secrets of Winter

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Preschool Playdate: Thanksgiving

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