Super Easy Puppet Theater

I decided we needed a puppet theater for the classroom this year since we have so many puppets. I made a whole space for it!  Found this easy design on Pinterest (https://pin.it/q4amyzj2dt5275) using a tri-fold board and here are the results. I'm pretty happy with it. Now, let's see if it lasts!

Doctor Study in Preschool

Here are some photos of the unit we are currently working on in Head Start, "What do doctors do?" We changed our block area into a doctor's office. We added doctor's dress-up coats, doctor's kits, tongue depressors, clipboards with paper and pencil, bandages made out of cut up fabric, real bandaids (I found a box of brightly colored ones at Family Dollar for a dollar), a doctor's table (our play couch turned upside down), and chiars for the waiting patients.

Oh, and don't forget our Doc McStuffins sign!

Then, we made out sensory table into the pharmacy. Here is an empty box we happened to have that was the perfect size to put medicine bottles in for pickup.

In the sensory table, I added some old medicine bottles (thoroughly washed out of course) and some other bottles of similar size, with labels covered with tape that simply say "Name," so that they can be written on with dry erase markers.

Also, I added small paper cups, medicine spoons, funnels, test tubes, magnifiers, wooden sticks, and paper bags to the "pharmacy." I put in some flour and salt for the children to mix up their own "medicine."

Here are the books and DVDs we used:

Please feel free to comment with your ideas about a doctor study.

Playdough Cupcakes with Sprinkles

This week, we are beginning our study on pets. We are reading this great book, If you Give a Cat a Cupcake by Laura Numeroff. I love this series of books. They are so great for sequencing and retelling. Then, since my class has been so into playdough recently, I decided to put a little twist on that. 

We made cupcakes with playdough and then added "sprinkles" on the top using glitter. The children had so much fun with this activity. To add a little more literacy to this, I had them choose a friend to make their cupcake for and write the friend's name on a card. If they couldn't write the letters on their own, I made the letters with dotted lines for them to trace.

What have you done with this book or any of the "If you Give a..." books?

Chronicles of Summertime: Day 12

Day 12:
Today, we did a lot of indoor play. Snugglepuppy helped me put together an Elmo floor puzzle that was almost as big as him!

Snugglepuppy and I engaged in some dramatic play with food. We cooked some burgers and hot dogs and even baked a cake. All pretend of course. Being the cashier, he rang me up and gave me a total which, of course, I paid for with coins (or sometimes pickles, they look almost the same in our set, lol.)

Then I suggested we get out his little animals and some blocks to make a zoo as we haven't had the animals out in a while. We sorted the animals by water, insects, animals that fly, and all the rest we classified as animals with 4 legs. We also made a tree for the monkeys and gorillas with Megabloks. The snake didn't really have a home, so he kinda roamed free.

(Yes, he is sitting on a potty chair, lol)

After a while, the lion got a little naughty and started attacking other animals and biting them. They had to go to the doctor and rest for a while. Some of them needed bandages or surgery. But in the end, we just had to separate the lion into his own enclosure. 

We checked our seeds that we planted a few days ago, but they haven't started growing yet.

Barber Shop

One of the topics we talked about when studying community helpers was barber shop/beauty salon. So we decided to build our own.

Here is the barber shop we set up in dramatic play area. As you can see, there are several customers waiting in the waiting area. 

You can't see it in this photo, but we have a large sign for the barber shop in English and Spanish which the students helped decorate.

Giving the baby a new do.

Here are all our supplies.

Happy Styling!

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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Thinky Linky Thursday: A Day in Preschool

Here are some of the things we did since being back from winter break. (only 1 day) It was so nice to be back with my kiddos! Love them :)

Floating sailboats. Matching colors and shapes. One of my little girls made up her own song "I'm sailing, we're sailing together."

Love the way this little boy set up the dramatic play area with our new baby dolls! Setting the table shows understanding of 1:1 correspondence.

Isn't this snow angel adorable?!

For small groups, we sat at the discovery area by the window and looked out at the snow. We talked about winter and what happens to the weather when winter comes. Then we drew pictures of things we can do with snow.

My car-obsessed student decided to build this ramp/street/track to run his cars on. A bunch of other kids joined in. Just look at how he matched up the blocks to make them fit together. Excellent!

And lastly, we used these gear blocks (not sure what they're really called) to make letters. 

What have you been doing with your kids?

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