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.