Tag Archives: centers

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!

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

Preschool Playdate: Ninjas

Play date: November 12, 2015
Theme: Ninjas

The inspiration for all our activities was our storytime book and these amazing little cookie cutters that were gifted to the Sweet Pea kids:

STORY TIME
We pulled from two of our favorites for today’s theme. We used the MAPS book by Aleksandra Mizielinska and Daniel Mizielinski to introduce the theme, and take a look at the country of Japan. It was perfectly suited for the theme: the pictures of the samurai and the ninja were right next to each other, and it was easy to have the children compare and contrast the two different kind of warriors.

For storytime after our songs, we read Nighttime Ninja, by Barbara DaCosta and Ed Young. It is the story of a ninja creeping into and through a home…with a delightful revelation at the end. Our guests enjoyed it as much as our children do.

LITERACY CENTER
I traced the cookie cutters and added faces to one side. On the reverse side I added the vowel letters in upper case and lower case letters. Whether the family played the Level 1 or Level 2, vowel sounds can be tied to the letter identification.

Level 1: Match vowel cases

Level 2: Play a memory game with all ten cards – face side up and have the children turn over two cards at a time in search of pairs.

MATH CENTER
“Count the katanas” was the first activity I came up with for today’s theme. Charger helped me find the right katana shape on the internet, and then he helped me decorate them once they were all cut out. I had 6 ninjas left over from the letter activity, so he added to the theme by numbering the ninjas on the back so that they could match the number on the katanas.

Level 1: Count the katanas

Level 2: Match the numbers on the katanas to the numbers on the ninjas.

Level 3: Order the numbers

DISCOVERY TABLE
Our discovery table was more of an activity for this theme. I set up an obstacle course, and the sweet peas had to do the course as quickly and as *quietly* as possible. It was so fun to see the kiddos try to sneak around the room, and have so much fun at the same time 🙂

ARTS & CRAFTS ~ Make & Take
This theme’s project was inspired by Nighttime Ninja’s illustrator, Ed Young. The story is delightfully brought to life with his 3-D paper art. I wanted to have the art activity reflect that all art is not necessarily drawn or painted.

We provided glue, black ninja cut outs, yellow and white circles, brown “katanas”, and “cloud” shapes (although there are no clouds in the book – what’s a moonlit night without a little cloud cover?). We also provided some kite string for the children to embelish with if they wanted. The cookie cutters were available for the children that wanted to trace and cut their own ninja shapes from black paper. I set out the colored construction paper so the kiddos could pick their own background, then waited to see what would be created.

Here are examples from my four sweet peas. You can see that our older children also added some drawing elements into their pictures:

Preschool Playdate: Cookies

Playdate: October 29, 2015
Theme: In honor of National Cookie 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 pulled out a book from our library, “Things People Do”, that showed all the different working parts of a bakery and ingredients used in baking.

— Storytime: “The Clever Baker”, a story from Scotland from The Lion Storyteller Bedtime Book.

— Unsquiggle activity: went along with our story this time! Four groups acted out different parts of the story

— Poem/Song before we break for Centers: Patty Cake, Patty Cake Baker’s Man was planned – so excited to get into centers we skipped this!!

STORY TIME
Discussion time: The book on the left is Thing People Do by Anne Civardi and Stphen Cartwright. We opened up to the bakery page and talked about the things the children saw in the pictures. Night Owl also thought to bring in one of his castle books from Usborne Publishing to show what a bakery looked like in medival times. It was neat to show the kids that the ingredients are pretty much the same, as is the process of baking.

Story time: We read “The Clever Baker – A Story from Scotland” from The Lion Storyteller Bedtime Book by Bob Hartma and Krisztina Kállai Nagy. In the back of the book are suggestions for group storytelling, so I applied them to our group. We divided the group into four parts: noisy bakers, dogs, cats, and babies. As their parts were read out in the story, the group made their sound – it was such a fun storytime this week!!

LITERACY CENTER
The cookie letters are from Kidsparkz.com. I looked up 3-letter words and picked a couple of pairs that started and ended with the same letters and changed vowels.

Note: I am really trying to emphasize those vowel sounds this season for our pre-readers!! You can check back to see how our last few themes have incorporated the vowel concept.

Level 1: Match the letter pictures and identify sounds: A, C, P, T, U

Level 2: Match the letter pictures to the word cards

Level 3: Match letters to words and then have the child sound out the word.

MATH CENTER
This was a perfect opportunity to pull out one of our Lakeshore Learning games that our Sweet Peas have enjoyed for years!

Level 1: Roll and match the cookies to the number on the die

Level 2: Keep score! And add up the cookies on the plate until you get up to or past number 10.

DISCOVERY TABLE
We did the first activity before we started storytime. Each of the children received a card as they arrived (activity cards from Kidsparkz.com). As we talked about the ingredients or the equipment used to make bread, the child would come pick the item that matched their card.

We filled three old medicine jars with spices for the children to smell: cinnamon, clover, and nutmeg. I had thought of letting the children mix them into the playdough as they played…and then got busy with the Sweet Peas doing centers and forgot about pulling them out of the tray and moving them to the play center.

During playtime the children played with the equipment and play dough to “bake” their own cookies. Our “oven” is a banker’s box with the lid adjusted to be an opening door. It served as our supply holder for the first activity, and then as the “oven” during play time.

Our third “discovery” activity was meant to be a take-home…it kind of worked that way! Each family brought their favorite cookies to share. The children were meant to take a goody bag home for treats in the car so the sugar high would be away from playdate….little hands snuck into the “cookie jar” though, and there was snacking at playdate as well 🙂

ARTS & CRAFTS ~ Make & Take
I created a simple “cookie sheet” using shapes in a Word document, then printed them out to use as our art paper for today’s printing activity. Using watered down tempra paint and lids in different shapes and sizes, the Sweet Peas dipped into the paint and printed cookies on their cookie sheets. We invited to decorate them at home once the paint dried. You can see that Otter drew designs around her cookies instead of on them. It always warms my heart to see the Sweet Peas make an art project their own with their unique interpretation of the guidelines.

As I was poking around the internet to find cookie images, I also found THIS website with a fun cookie craft. If we had more time, I definitely would like to do this. I think we are going to save it for our year-end celebration when we have more time for play.

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. Otherwise, the kiddos and parents that don’t have to leave stay and play until the music teacher for our older Sweet Peas arrives.

I hope you and your Sweet Peas have lots of fun if you are inspired to have your own COOKIE DAY. Have a great week!

Preschool Playdate: Buttons

Preschool Playdate: October 22, 2015
Inspiration: Count Your Buttons 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: Shared five different articles of clothing and the different kinds of buttons they had. Talked about how once upon a time, the kind of buttons someone wore could tell you about their lifestyle or place of origin.
— Storytime: Corduroy

STORY TIME
Of course we had to share Corduroy by Don Freeman, the story of the little bear with the lost button!!

LITERACY CENTER
My intention was to reinforce vowel sounds, along with using words that start with “B” like “button”. B and G lent themselves well to this little activity, so I created little word cards with the idea that the Sweet Peas would use the buttons to cover the letters, working fine motor skills as well as reinforcing vowels and phonics.

I tried this activity on two days…I had my doubts about the image for “big”. Rightly so – many of the non-reading Sweet Peas said “dog” when they saw that card. For the littles it ended up being more of a word identification game. Only my elementary school kiddos were interested in forming the letters out of buttons on the word cards.

The most fun at this center for our preschool guests was playing with the buttons. Everyone played in the button box. Very few played with the cards as I had envisioned.

I think on it’s own this center might work. The biggest attraction was the Arts & Crafts center, so the Literacy and Math centers fell by the wayside this particular day.

MATH CENTER
This was a button sorting bonanza. I had originally designed these activities for our Sweet Peas’ “Busy Books”. One card was designed to sort by color, the other size, and the third was a “free play”. There were six different outlines so the child could follow through with their own idea of how to sort.

DISCOVERY TABLE
Buttoning buttons!
Another activity was taken directly from the Busy Books I made. In order to have enough for all the children that attend, I made enough of these for all the Sweet Peas to be able to play at once if that’s how the group moved. I sewed a big button on to one end of the ribbon; on the other side I sewed to a square piece of felt that would act as the “stopper” for the other felt squares being buttoned on to the ribbon.

Level 1: Motor skill development as children “button” the fabric and then slide it down the ribbon.

Level 2: Patterning – the children could create a pattern with the felt shapes as they buttoned the fabric onto the ribbon.

The other center was playing with the different kinds of buttons found on clothing: plastic, wood, metal, shell, and fancy 🙂 I left the clothes out that we introduced at the beginning of the playdate so that the Sweet Peas could take a closer look at the buttons and try to button and unbutton the clothing.

ARTS & CRAFTS ~ Make & Take
This was an adaptation of a “Love Bug” Valentine’s Day Craft. I called these “Cute as a Button” Bugs. This was the big hit for the day!

Preschool Playdate: Oktoberfest

Play date: October 1, 2015

Fun little side-note…as I searched the internet for ideas for this playdate, I discovered that apparently some preschool teacher decided to serve apple juice in child-sized beer steins to celebrate Oktoberfest in her classroom…LOL. That is a direction we definitely did NOT go.

Anyway, my inspiration for our playdate came from a beautiful map book Charger was gifted this summer. The book is called “MAPS” by Aleksandra Mizielinska and Daniel Mizielinski. HERE is an image I found of the page online:

I went through and created categories from the images on the map to start brainstorming. I also explored Enchanted Learning to see what kind of ideas they had, and voila! Our playdate was pulled together overnight.

— 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 part last week since our group was so big and the discussion of the theme was a little longer.

— Discussion of theme: Used the MAPS book to point out different parts of Germany and German heritage/contributions to our modern culture.

Stories: Brothers Grimm, Hansel & Gretel, Snow White, Musicians of Bremen
Composers: Bach, Beethoven (I guess Handel not included since he is considered a British composer?)
Inventions: Printing Press – Johannes Gutenberg, Beach chairs, Aspirin – Felix Hoffman, Cuckoo Clock
Dogs: German Shepherd, Dachsund
Food: Gherkins, Pumpernickel, Roast pork, Dumplings, Breads (including rye, pretzels), Sauerkraut (pickled cabbage), Weisswurst (white sausage)

— Storytime – worked some unsquiggle in by handing out felt figures before story time and having the Sweet Peas listen for their piece to be named. When they heard it, they brought their piece up and put it on the felt background.

~~— Unsquiggle activity~~ Also skipped – it was time to get the Sweet Peas moving!!

— Poem/Song before we break for Centers: “Oh where, oh where has my little dog gone?” since we had talked about German Shepherds and Dachshunds during the theme discussion.

While the families arrived and during center time, I played classical music written by German composers in the background.

STORY TIME
I had the story of The Musicians of Bremen in one of our schoolbooks from last year. There are more words than pictures, so I created images and felt pieces to use as I read. I held up the cards to show the contribution of each animal to the band: “lute”, “drum”, “night music” and “music”. Before we started storytime, we handed out the felt pieces for the children to bring up and place on the felt background as they heard their piece named in the story.

Look under the “Discovery Table” for image source list.

LITERACY CENTER
This was an edible center – yum! Always fun for preschool playdates 🙂
I cut out the capital letter of all the preschool age guests and their younger siblings. The Sweet Peas would then find the letter of their first name (or a friend or sibling), and then cover the letter in pretzels. Eating happened all along the way!

Find the original idea HERE on “The Educators’ Spin On It”

MATH CENTER
Counting With The Dogs: This is a center of my own creation that incorporated German dogs, dice, and patterning.

Level 1: Place correct amount of items onto a numbered plate
Level 1a: Roll 1 die and count out the items to match the face of the die

Level 2: Create a pattern and continue the sequence. When we play this, I create the first two patterns, and then invite the Sweet Pea to make one for me to figure out.

Level 3: Roll 2 dice, count out, and add

Image sources: links to image online
Bone ~ Dachshund ~ German Shepherd

DISCOVERY TABLE
Part 1 of the Discovery Table disappeared before I got a picture of it. We cooked some Weisswurst (white sausage) and served it with sauerkraut (pickled cabbage) so that the Sweet Peas (and the mamas!) could enjoy some German food.

Part 2 of the table was having the Sweet Peas play with the felt figures and retell the story if they are advanced communicators. If they are still acquiring verbal skills, you could ask them the order that the animals were introduced in the story, and then “what happened next” to prompt them.

Image sources: links to image online
Donkey ~ Hound ~ Cat ~ Rooster ~ House ~ Robber ~ Witch Hat

ARTS & CRAFTS ~ Make & Take
This idea came from Enchanted Learning, an online teaching resource with *a ton* of ideas and activities. HERE are the instructions, and here are the samples I made for the Sweet Peas:

I prepared the eyes and cut out the ears and noses ahead of time. The Sweet Peas could place them however they wanted to on the paper bags. Ears up was a German Shepherd, ears down was a Dachshund; and the Sweet Peas pasted them every which way to come up with their own creations!

Come back next Thursday to read all about the FIRE SAFETY play date that we had today since it is Fire Prevention Week in the USA this week.

Preschool Playdate: Pirate Adventure

We held a pirate-themed playdate last week in honor of “Talk like a Pirate Day” that was celebrated on September 19th.

Getting the morning started:
— 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; peers learn each other’s names)
— Welcome song in Spanish (reinforces names as Sweet Peas sing to their peers)
— Discussion of theme
— Storytime
— Unsquiggle activity
— Poem/Song before we break for Centers

I was so excited for the Sweet Peas to get into the activities that we had planned for the morning that we completely skipped over the story, the unsquiggle *and* the song last week.

We did use some bunting flags I had printed for Charger’s birthday party two years ago to introduce pirate vernacular – it was fun to hear a roomful of toddlers making their best imitation of pirate-speak!

Pirate Playdate Download

STORY TIME
How I became a Pirate is the story of a little boy who is captured by pirates and returned home as a hero. Our family also enjoys the rhyming prose in Portside Pirates that relates a “day in the life” of a pirate crew.

Even though we skipped the read-aloud by accident in my excitement to start the centers, I did play the audiobook version of Portside Pirates that is set to music during play time.

LITERACY CENTER
Level 1: Pre-writing activity: connecting the dotted lines to practice lines and curves

Level 2: Letter identification with the letter cards

Level 3: Identify the beginning sounds and/or reading three-letter words

GAME: “Memory” with pirate vocabulary picture cards

Sources:
Advanced Tracing; Beginning/Ending letter sounds worksheet
http://www.homeschoolcreations.net/2014/06/pirate-theme-early-learning-printables/

Basic Tracing; Word/Letter Match
http://learncreatelove.com/pirate-week-recap/

MATH CENTER
Level 1: Add jewels to the treasure chests or count out parrots flying over the pirates

Level 2: Order the treasure cards first (1-6) and then count out the “jewels”.

Level 3: Order the parrot activity cards first (1-15) and then count out the parrots.

Sources:
Treasure Chest Clip Art
http://www.clipartlord.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/treasure-chest4.png

Parrot Counting Game
http://www.homeschoolcreations.net/2014/06/pirate-theme-early-learning-printables/

DISCOVERY TABLE
This was a prep-ahead activity. The night before the playdate, the girls and I made these in the kitchen. There are only four ingredients: baking soda, water, gelatin, and food coloring.

We used ice cube trays that lend themselves nicely to a treasure chest shape. Fill them half-way up with the mixture, add a treasure to the middle, and then fill to the top.

They popped out easily, and the Sweet Peas really enjoyed the experiment. There was the initial sight and sound stimulation as the application of vinegar reacted with the baking soda. There was a smell component with the vinegar, and then a kinesthetic component as the children dug into the goo to retrieve their treasure.

In order to add a little element of observation, we put vinegar in an empty glue container for more of a pouring effect, and also in a spray bottle. We had two square pans; one child would use the glue bottle in one pan, the other would use the spray bottle in the other one. Then they would switch so that they could each experience the “fast” and “slow” disolvement of the treasure chests.

Source:
http://fun-a-day.com/pirate-science-fun-exploding-treasure-chests/

ARTS & CRAFTS ~ Make & Take
We did this in the kitchen so that any Sweet Peas who don’t like getting their hands dirty could head straight to the sink to wash up afterwards.

Set up: poured paint into a divided plate with red, tan, and black.
First, I painted the tan section in the middle so that I wouldn’t have to be neat with the center portion. The red went on next, and the black went on last. Several of the children commented that it tickled…I learned to warn them about that as we went along 🙂

Pictured below is the progression of the craft:
Top L: handprint from hand painted with three colors

Top R: finished sample pirate print

Bottom: Puma & Charger’s interpretation of the craft – they didn’t like the separated beard so they each took the pen we used to add detail to make the craft original and attractive to them.

Source:
http://www.makinglearningfun.com/PirateFromHandPrint.htm

FREE PLAY:
I like to leave some time for the Sweet Peas to interact with everything we have set out without structure. Sometimes they go back to a favorite game or activity; today it was full on pirate battle!! I set out the mats to be the “water’ and pulled in some big boxes to serve as ships. Everyone quickly abandoned ship and used the “water” as the battlefield for an epic encounter between the green and the blue team!

As always, we had a fun playdate – we are blessed with an amazing SPB community to spend time with. Stay tuned: my boys have requested a knight-themed playdate for next month!!

Preschool Playdate: Wildflowers

Playdate: May 15, 2015
Theme was chosen in honor of Wildflower Week

Most of the activities this week were inspired by print-outs or songs in The Mailbox Superbook.

STORY TIME
In lieu of a book, we used a song and a discovery activity for the children to explore the growing cycle of a flower.

We talked about the vocabulary first, and then introduced the song. The third time through, each Sweet Pea got to play a part of the song. One was the sun, one was the gardener watering, and the remaining children got to be flowers growing in the garden. We took turns so that each child got to play each part.

LITERACY CENTER
This is another printout from The Mailbox Superbook – the main point was to develop some motor skills through tracing. I added a print element to the activity by printing out word strips for the children to cut and paste on their worksheet after tracing the flower shapes. Crayons, scissors, glue, plus some vocabulary…WIN 🙂

MATH CENTER
Sorting and counting…always a good math center! The children could sort by color, type of leaf, whether the edge was smooth or rippled…and probably more ways than we tried that morning!

An advanced version of this center could be done by making tally marks to track results, and/or plotting a line graph with the results.

DISCOVERY TABLE
This activity is the only one that came from The Toddler Calendar. Felt sticks to itself, so the only thing I had to do was go buy it. Aside from cutting their pattern out, I also added a print element by creating labels for all the parts of the flower.

ARTS & CRAFTS ~ Make & Take
This activity has been bookmarked in The Mailbox Superbook since I first started using it when Puma was 3 years old. I finally made the time to execute it! Better late than never 🙂

I used sponges from the dollar store, and cut each color into a different part of the flower. This was again, a reinforcement of the vocabulary words of the day that centered around the theme: flower, leaf, and stem…no “roots” this time!

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. This morning, the discovery table activity and the arts & crafts activity were the big winners.

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 that have somewhere to be afterwards have a clear reason to insist that it’s time to go – school is over!! Otherwise, the kiddos and parents that don’t have to leave will stay and play until the music teacher for our older Sweet Peas arrives at noon.

Preschool Playdate: Johnny Appleseed

We hosted a playdate in honor of Johnny Appleseed (née John Chapman) close to one of two “Johnny Appleseed Days” recognized in the calendar year. One day is observed on his birthday (September 26, 1774), the other on the anniverary of his death (March 18, 1845).

How we start our playdates:
— 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
— Poem/Song before we break for Centers

STORY TIME
We have a wonderful book about Johnny Appleseed from our Sonlight readers. Unfortunately, the text is too advanced for our preschools. So I improvised! I pulled together some highlights about Johnny Appleseed that went along with the beautiful two-page illustrations that are in this book. A toddler version of Johnny Appleseed’s life was born! Puma helped by reading out the text while I turned to the marked pages.

Johnny Appleseed: The Story of a Legend; Written and Illustrated by Will Moses

LITERACY CENTER
This was another week where I came up with my own idea for our letter center. Since “apple” is a common vocabulary word, I decided to work in the word and the letters that comprise the word, in addition to working in the colors of the apples the children would be tasting at the Discovery Table. This also had a tactile sensory component – the letters were different shapes, sizes and textures. I purposely made the two vowels with a red background to set them apart from the consonants. (Microsoft Word for Mac; Century Gothic Font; Outline option in the Font menu)

Level 1: Sorting and Sound Identification
If the child is still working on letter recognition, they can play at this center by sorting the letters into the correct bowl. As the letters are sorted, parents can reinforce the sound that the letter makes: “A says aah”; “E says eeh”; etc.

Level 2: Identifying Uppercase and Lowercase
The next step in this center would be to add in the concept of “uppercase” and “lowercase”, and identify them as they are sorted into the bowls.

Level 3: Spelling
For our advanced toddlers and the older siblings: the third option was to find the letters and place them in order to spell the word “apple”. The older siblings could look at the word for 30 seconds; then turn over the card; find the right letters and place them on the table; and then check their spelling by turning the card right side up for self-correction or confirmation that they spelled the word “apple” correctly.

MATH CENTER
This center reinforced counting concepts in English and in Spanish. The front of the card was printed with an apple. On the back side, I wrote out the number and the word in Spanish. I made these with an apple image I found online; fit them onto a “table” in a Word document, and printed them on cardstock. Final step was to cover them with clear contact paper so they would be more durable.

Level 1: Counting
A parent could simply take as many apples as the child could count, maybe add one more; and place the apples out on the table as they counted. Aside from teaching the order of the numbers, it reinforces 1-to-1 correspondence (more about that HERE).

Level 2: Ordering
A parent could use the reverse side, scramble the order, and have the child place them in the correct order. Younger toddlers might need the parent to call the number out for them; more advanced kiddos could order them independently.

Level 3: Memory Game
Using two sets of cards, parents could lay them out and play a memory game with their child. You could use as many cards as your child can remember placements. For a toddler just learning the concept of “Memory”, maybe you would play with six cards, finding the pairs for 1-3. With an older child, you might use the whole set of 1-6 pairs; or anything in between according the child’s interest and attention span.

DISCOVERY TABLE
This idea was pulled from The Toddler Calendar. Their activity included tasting raw apples, and apples cooked with cinnamon and sugar. Since we wanted to keep it simple and avoid any possible allergies, we stuck to raw and dehydrated apples. We offered red, yellow, and green varieties. There were not many pieces left on the plates at the end of our playdate; and I think we even refilled the yellow and the green!

ARTS & CRAFTS ~ Make & Take
I always enjoy using natural objects in art. For today’s craft, I cut off the end of a carrot and pared opposite ends to form the shape of an apple. Children could dip it in red paint or green ink to print apples on their paper.

The other neat thing to show the children was how the center of an apple has a star shape. Some of the apples even had a six-point shape at the core! I learned something new, too! Lastly, we pulled out the seeds, and the children had the option to glue the seeds to their art projects.

As we showd them the seeds, we talked about how those same seeds could be planted to grow into big trees, that in turn could grow more yummy apples for them to eat.

Here is the letter on cardstock; children printed and pasted on the letter “A” to reinforce the beginning letter sound.

I hope you enjoyed our tour through our Johnny Appleseed Day! I think the most fun for me was watching the kiddos explore all the tastes of the different apples, and seeing them enjoy food they had never tried before.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Sweet Pea Families

Life beyond the Birth-Day

Tag Archives: centers

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