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.

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!

 

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.

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