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Whole Child Development

Preschool Math Flower Power

by Filed Under: Learning through Play and Experience, Uncategorized 4 Comments

 Here’s a quick one I’m quite sure you can take and improve on!  For your flower theme, create an interactive bulletin board or flannel board activity by creating flower centers with the written numeral and corresponding number of dots.  Then provide flower petals for the children to count out and place around the center, matching the dots in a one-to-one ratio.  This activity supports preschool math skills like numeral recognition, counting, color recognition, and even patterning if they choose to use it that way!

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The Perfect Pretzel Recipe…..Really.

by Filed Under: Building Readers, Learning through Play and Experience, Snack Time 11 Comments

I have never found a recipe for big soft pretzels that I really loved.  They were too complicated to make with kids, or didn’t taste very good, or had the wrong texture.  Well, that all changed this last Christmas when my sister-in-law, gave me this little gem as part of a collection of recipes.  (I love getting good recipes for Christmas!)  I tried it out, and it couldn’t be easier!  The kiddos can help from start to finish.  Just mix your ingredients, shape your dough (letters, hearts, geo shapes, or the traditional pretzel knot), brush, sprinkle, and bake.  They’re so fast, but so good!   Here’s the recipe so you can find out for yourself!

Big Soft Pretzels

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Book Activity: Under My Hood I Have a Hat

by Filed Under: Building Readers, Create, Get Outside, Learning through Play and Experience 3 Comments

 

Under My Hood I Have a HatIf you’re looking for a simple book about bundling up for winter weather, written with captivating rhymes,  Under My Hood I Have a Hat, by Karla Kuskin and illustrated by Fumi Kosaka, is your book!  The nameless heroine of this story goes through her layers of winter wear as she and her dog come inside for hot chocolate.  Then she names more as she piles them back on to head outside again! 

The lines in this story are at the same time simple and fun.  Here are a few favorites: “Under my hood, I have a hat, and under that, my hair is flat.  Under my coat, my sweater’s blue.  My sweater’s red.  I’m wearing two.”

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Book Activity: Big Pumpkin

by Filed Under: Building Readers, Celebrate!, Create, Get Outside, Learning through Play and Experience, Positive Guidance and Social Skills Leave a Comment

big pumpkin

Big Pumpkin by Erica Silverman is a fantastic Halloween book!  (In fact, it just might be my favorite!)   It’s written in a pattern style with consecutive characters (a witch, a ghost, a vampire, and a mummy) each larger than the first, approaching the same problem – a giant pumpkin, stuck on the vine- in the same way.  There is repetitive text and a definite pattern, which preschoolers really respond to, and which also builds pre-literacy skills.  In the end, it is not the larger characters, but a tiny bat who, through cooperation, comes up with a solution.  A great social skills lesson! [Read more…]

Book Activity: Piggy Pie

by Filed Under: Building Readers, Celebrate!, Get Outside, Learning through Play and Experience, Positive Guidance and Social Skills Leave a Comment

Piggie Pie!Piggie Pie by Margie Palatini is the perfect non-Halloween, Halloween book.  It’s not specifically Halloween themed, but it is a creative combination of a grouchy, hungry witch and some sly pigs who use costumes to avoid becoming ingredients.  As you read this story with your little ones, really play up the voices and point out the details in the pictures.  With particularly young children, you may need to explain that the pigs are dressing up in order to trick the witch.  From there, you can easily make connections with their own dress-up experiences, on Halloween or otherwise.

I would make a note of two things here.  The end of the book ties this story in with the Big Bad Wolf from the Three Little Pigs.  Very young children will have a hard time making that connection.  You can help this connection by being sure that the children are already familiar with the story of the Three Little Pigs through previous activities, or you can just glide over it.  It’s not a critical element in the story.  Secondly, the witch does get upset several times in this book and basically throws a tantrum.  Take the opportunity to teach social skills by pointing out her behavior and what is and isn’t appropriate behavior.  It’s easy to point out undesirable behavior in a witch because, afterall, she is a witch.  Don’t detract too much from the story, but if you’re seeing some similar behavior in your own children, you might give them the opportunity to be the expert and make suggestions for a better course of action for the witch.  They may later realize these suggestions work for themselves as well!

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Five Little Pumpkins

by Filed Under: Building Readers, Learning through Play and Experience, Music and Movement Leave a Comment

Five Little Pumpkins (Harper Growing Tree)This is a well-known fingerplay that in 1998 was illustrated and put in book format by Dan Yaccarino.  It’s a book little ones enjoy reading, especially once they are already familiar with the fingerplay and can essentially “read” the book independently.  Whether you use the book or not, here’s the fingerplay!

Five little pumpkins, sitting on a gate  (Five fingers on top of opposite hand.  I usually explain the word “gate” the first time through.  For the next five lines, show the number of fingers corresponding with the ordinal number and really play up the rest of the intention of the line with your facial expression.)

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Book Activity: The Apple Pie Tree

by Filed Under: Building Readers, Get Outside, Learning through Play and Experience, Uncategorized Leave a Comment

The Apple Pie TreeIf you are doing a study of apples, or  on trees in general, you should really consider using the book, The Apple Pie Tree, by Zoe Hall.  This wonderfully illustrated book follows a single apple tree, and the two girls who love it, through the seasons, until its fruit can finally be picked, chopped, and baked into a perfect apple pie.  It is a great illustration of the cycle of seasons, as well as the process of making pie! 

Understanding the cycle of seasons is a pretty obvious science objective, but learning to put things in an ordered series also builds cognitive and language skills  that lay the foundation for reading and writing (beginning, middle, end) while also contributing to preschool math  and problem-solving skills. 

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