Tag Archives: flowers

Preschool Playdate: Flowers

Playdate: March 24, 2016
Theme: Spring Flowers

— 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: passed around seeds and plants for children to observe
— Storytime: Book from Enchanted Learning.com
— Unsquiggle activity: growing plants

Unsquiggle: after the children got to see the seed, roots growing, first leaves, and flowers, we invite them to act out the growth cycle.  They ball themselves up into little seeds, start shooting roots, then stem, leaves and flowers. A parent or another child can be the sun shining and the water falling from the sky or a watering can.  Whoever is the water can visit each child individually and water them to grow. (Idea from Mailbox Superbook)

STORY TIME
We used a book we made when Puma was a preschooler. It shows all the stages of growing from seed to plant, and you can print your own copy HERE at Enchanted Learning.com.

We passed around these samples for the children to look at and get to experience the live version of what they were seeing on the page.

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LITERACY CENTER
This was a fun activity to put together. I was trying to incorporate uppercase and lowercase letters, and then it occurred to me that each letter could also be a color of the rainbow.  I decided to add a little Spanish into the color identification games.

Level 1: Match the colors

Level 2: Match the letters in the same case (Uppercase to uppercase)

Level 3: Match the letters to the opposite case (Uppercase to lowercase)

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MATH CENTER
This was a number correspondence game. The children would place the correct number of buttons in the corresponding basket. The game could be played with random placement, or with instructions like, “same color”, “same size”, or, “make a pattern”.

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DISCOVERY TABLE
This is a felt activity where children could play with the arrangement of the flower parts and also identify the print words. A parent can ask a younger preschool to turn the letters the correct way. If the child is already sounding out, they could start to read the words.

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ARTS & CRAFTS ~ Make & Take

This is a print activity.  You could use paint or ink – we opted for paint this time.  I didn’t lay out any “sample” with this activity…simply put out the sponge shapes and plates of color and waited to see what would happen. As you can see, there were lots of ideas on how to make flowers.

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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.

Stop in next week to see all the fun we have exploring caterpillars and butterflies today.

 

Preschool Playdate: Wildflowers

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

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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
— Storytime
— Unsquiggle activity
— Poem/Song before we break for Centers

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.

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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 🙂

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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.

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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.

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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.