Adding Food-Related Items to Interest Areas

 We have started our food around the world study. Here are some of the things we added to our interest areas.

Class books we made by cutting out pictures of food from store ads. We have this in our library area. Below are some pictures of some of the pages.

This is added to the kitchen area along with the play food.  We will be setting up our own grocery store (pictured below with the open/closed sign)

To add some literacy to the area, we will have clipboards to make grocery lists, markers and paper to make signs and nametags for the workers, and coupons. For math, we will be adding a cash register with play money.

It is also good to have purses, wallets, and bags available for children to act out more realistically what they see their parents do when they go to the grocery store or supermarket.

These are cake making play dough toys which will be added to art area.

These rebus recipes are posted in the dramatic play area. Keep in mind visuals are good for all learners, but they can be especially helpful to dual language learners and children with disabilities. We will also be adding other recipes that families bring in that are traditional foods from their home countries. 

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Family Tree, Graph and Class Book

Here are a few of the things we did this week for our family study. This first activity is a very basic family tree that I made and sent home for the children to fill in with their parents' help. They were to draw each person, label them and tell what name they call mommy and daddy. We mostly used it (and will continue to use it) to talk to the kids about their family members and ask them questions about their family.

Next, we graphed the number of family members in each child's family. We glued a button on for each family member so it could be a visual representation that helps the children learn what graphs are for. At large group time, each child took a turn using the pointer to count the number of family members in their family and we compared who had the most and the least.

We also worked on our class book. Each child designed their own page with something they like about themselves. We took a photo of the each class (Morning and Afternoon) laying in a circle for the front cover and called the book "We are Special." 

We had to take 2 seperate photos (boys and girls) in the morning class since we have so many kids, they wouldn't all fit in a circle. P.S. Do not think it is easy in the least to get the kids to lay this way on the floor. It took us quite a while to get them there and all looking at the camera, but I think the final result turned out great!

I did end up binding the books. Yay, I learned a new skill, how to use the book binder: