Families

Dramatic Play and Blocks
What else says family week like housekeeping and chores? We have lots of them this week! I kept up the housekeeping area, although it did get rearranged to accommodate our grocery store in the block area. This is always one of my personal favorite centers! It was popular both days, and we learned a lot of patience and turn-taking, or at least tried. 1 register and 3 carts and never enough.
I love watching kids act like adults as they shop and count money and talk. The dialogue is so cute and entertaining! They love acting like us. We also had to learn responsibility as we put groceries back, over and over again, so others could keep playing. This center was constantly busy for 2 days. The housekeeping side of it only got a little bit of traffic, and we're ready for a change.

I love the grocery store for many reasons. One, it's cheap and easy! I just use garbage, and reinforce it with packing tape. I've been using many of these food boxes for 3 years of Kinder, plus 2 years of preschool, and they're in great condition. I have some "dramatic play" food boxes too, but it doesn't get played with as much, because I don't think they recognize it. They know their environmental print.
I also love how easy it is to tie in literacy and math, with the labels, counting, numbers, money, and sorting. So much learning as they play!

Art
Tuesday, was snack prep. I shared my family's favorite bread recipe and we made bread together. We took turns and counted scoops, and each got to add in and mix things. I like keeping this a free choice center, because they're not forced to help, but most of them choose to at some point. I was surprised some watched it mix the whole 10 minutes.
Their favorite part was kneading with their hands, so one we had the loaves rising, I pulled out play dough, and unlike last week, the table was busy with kids playing the whole rest of the time.

Thursday, we got the paint out, and people shaped stamps. Here's some samples:


Small Manipulatives
Tuesday, was bristle blocks

Thursday, was number peg puzzles (forgot a pic)

Writing
I added colored pens on the table and they loved them.

Outside
I got out the sensory table for the first time, and we learned about keeping things inside the table and not splashing, as it was filled with water this week. Since our dishes had done a wonderful job at making mud food, I decided the kids could help wash them. Like grocery shopping, doing dishes is one of those other menial chores families love. And they actually really loved washing these dishes, and ended up throwing in all the play food too. It was a hit, and they were excellent rule followers!


Large Group
We learned the word "relative," and also reviewed "unique" as we talked about how each family is unique. It's fun to talk about and read about families, because they all yell to me at once who is in their family, where their grandparents live, their cousins' names, etc. They get so excited to talk about their families!
We drew our family members in our journals, and also in a family tree. We "sang" (mostly danced) to "All I Really Need" by Raffi while we played instruments. It's all about only really needing love in our families. They loved getting to use the instruments.


Small Group
I introduced patterns with these Lakeshore people. We played with them last week, so they wouldn't be brand new today. I have learned to never expect learning with a toy the first time they use it. They need that chance to play first. I was pleasantly surprised how many could copy and extend my patterns, and a few kids even made their own patterns!

Miss Kim played a family matching game with her groups, and they talked about types of families and things families do together from the pictures.

Families/Robert Munsch

After a successful author/illustrator week with Jan Brett, I was excited this week to read and learn more about Robert Munsch. He's famous for writing Love You Forever, which is a great book! We focused on families, and that book, and also read many more of his funny family books.

Dramatic Play
We had the housekeeping center back out, with the kitchen, washer/dryer, baby bath and cradle. This will also be a favorite dramatic play! So simple, too. It coincided with our blocks area.

Blocks
We had our grocery store out. This is a big time favorite too. They love using the shopping cart, and the cash register most of all. I love having this giant dramatic play center out and the kids had a really fun time playing families. This center was constantly busy and buzzing, all 4 days.

Art
Day 1 we made slime. It's super fun to play with, and we also used our dried out markers to color it. I love that we have a good use to dried up markers! They loved playing with this and I loved it too. It's fun, because you can hold it and squeeze it and break it like something solid, but it also drips and flows kind of like a liquid. It's fascinating and just as much fun for adults. I hate that I forgot to get a picture!
It's super easy to make and here's the recipe:

In large bowl, mix 2 cups white glue and 1 1/2 cups water
Then, in 3 small bowls mix until dissolved 1/3 cup warm water, 1 tsp borax
Now add the contents of the small cups to the glue and water mixture. It will quickly coagulate in the bowl, you can lift it out, then add the other small cups. You can add color to the solutions, but I keep it white. 

Day 2, we used the art table for snack prep, and made yummy homemade bread. We used this recipe for miracle bread, that can be done in an hour. It took just over that for us. We then brought out the slime again to play with the last half of our self-select time.

Day 3 we just used the classic water colors.

Day 4 we had elmer's glue with googly eyes and wavy hair. Their imaginations went wild and we had some fun, mostly monsterish, creations!

Manips
We played an ABC bingo game, with beginning sound pictures.
We played with magnetic counting books.
We did a puzzle that makes a game board for an ABC safari game. It was super popular and we'll have to do it again.
We played with the giant 123 foam puzzles.

Fun snacks
Nothing says family and home to me like homemade bread, so we did that one day, like I mentioned above. It was delicious and they begged for more!

I also helped them make another one of my favorites snacks from growing up, no bake chocolate oatmeal cookies. We were able to make them in an electric frying pan so they could all help. They LOVE cooking and helping and taking turns with all the ingredients and mixing. Here's my family's recipe:

Melt 1 stick butter, 1 cup sugar, 1 cup chocolate chips, 1/2 cup and 1 TB evaporated milk. Mix in 3 cups of oatmeal. Drop onto cookie sheet with wax paper or saran wrap, and let sit in the fridge. Easypeasy.

Large Group
I decided to review our vocabulary word from friendship week, Cooperation, since it's so important.
Day 1, I read Love You Forever, and thought I could be all tough, but just cried. It sure got the kids quiet as they just stared at me :) It led to a great discussion about how much our moms love us, and always will! We then drew pictures of our families in our journals.
Day 2, we read Alligator Baby, then graphed our family members. We knew everyone would have parents, but it was fun to see how many brothers, sisters, and pets we have. We also graphed if we had grandparents who live close, or far away. They wrote their names on the post it notes before bringing them up, for more name writing practice.
 
Day 3, we read The Sand Castle Contest and each child shared their favorite family vacation. I had planned to have them write about it in their journals, but we were short on time and just shared instead.
Day 4, we talked about cooperation in families, and did role playing on how we can cooperate with our families. I explained to them how moms and dads work so hard, but just can't do everything at home themselves. We headed over to dramatic play, assigned a few kids to be parents, and they recruited kids to help them do dishes, make dinner, do laundry, grocery shop,  and take care of pets (the dog role-playing was excellent). So if your kids came home amazingly helpful, you're welcome. If they were just the same, like mine, then we'll keep trying :)

Small Group
I started working with the kids on some number books. We're doing a book for each number 1-10. They learn how to write the number (they look pretty good because I'm helping them write them, hand over hand), and also how to count to that number. They will come home when they're all done. They have to count out that number of crayons to color the number, we write the number, then they also draw that many items on the back. When you go over them, you will see some mistakes, but I am working with each of them, one by one, and call it good as they count their items and we fix our mistakes. They're doing great work!

Our first mom volunteers helped the kids sort pictures by babies, children, and adults, and they also played a family memory game with pictures of different types of families.

Our second mom volunteers helped the children color their family trees, drawing themselves, their moms and dads, and their grandparents.

Family and Friends

We had a fun 2 weeks talking about our families and friends. I really can't emphasize enough how much these kids love talking about their families! They go on and on, all at the same time, and don't even realize 7 other kids are talking at the same time. And they only say good things too. :)
We had fun talking about family trees. The one I sent home was found here for anyone interested in printing another one. It's a great family lesson at home. We made one in our classroom tree too. As we talked about the word, relative, we added other relatives besides grandparents like aunts, uncles, cousins, and siblings. They were all talking and talking about their uncles, cousins, brothers, etc. and really excited about it all. We talked about how some kids in our class have step parents too, and they're so lucky to have more moms and dads and siblings in their family trees, so some kids have a really full tree. I really tried to celebrate our great families because it's important that all kids love the family they come from, even if it seems different from others.
We also read the story The Turnip. I have a Russian nesting doll (matryoshka) that tells this story and they had a lot of fun retelling the story with that. We also had it out to play with the next 2 days.  Their reading comprehension is impressive and I'm so proud at how well they listen to, and remember the books we read.
We read The Relatives Came the second day and we talked more about their relatives, especially cousins. It was pretty much a repeat of the above-mentioned chaotic sharing of family stories.
We had our grocery store and kitchen back for dramatic play. It's amazing how much better they are at playing together, compared to when I had it out at the beginning of the year. Instead of fighting over the register, they actually took turns on it without much prompting by me and were content to do something else, like shop for groceries or play in the kitchen, until someone was done with the register.
 
Other fun things we did:
Wiki stix. We started making numbers, and ended with a table of spiders.
Play dough. Each day we cleaned up art early to have some play dough time. They ask for it almost every day. We did the lowercase alphabet stamps again and it's a challenge to find the letters they want since they know their uppercase letters better. It's great letter practice mixed with play.
Puzzles. Today I had 6 of the 8 kids help with an ABC floor puzzle and that's rare. I usually only have 1 or 2 who have been interested in puzzles all year.
ABC lacing beads. How did I not get these out sooner? Huge hit. They were naming letters as they practiced the fine motor skill of lacing. Win win.
 
Pattern block magnets. I loved pattern blocks as a kid, and they're even better as magnets. We had some way cool designs made and I grabbed my camera to snap some pictures, and the battery was dead. Boo. We'll have to do it again.
Played outside. They love it and miss it! Glad we got out again!
Growing paint. Found the idea on pinterest here. And here are the directions.
Ours looked even better, I thought. At least they looked like a 3 year old did them. :)
 
They were so amazed by this process, and enjoyed the stickiness and messiness of the painting. They loved seeing and touching them after they were microwaved too. It was pretty much like cooking a pancake in the microwave, and they all wanted to eat them. I told them no, although it was all edible ingredients. Just flavorless I guess. I'm only disappointed in how the paper folded as they dried and cooled.

 As I was racking my brain with what else we did, I remembered we celebrated Valentine's Day! We started the group celebrations with conversation heart graphing. I was super impressed by their graphing skills and self-control! 2 of the older kids got it right off the bat, and the other kids just checked theirs, had a little prompting from me, and they all figured it out. I asked super hard math questions like, which color did you have the most or least or same? And they knew the right answers! May not seem super hard, but this is a Kindergarten-level skill, so be impressed that your 3-year-olds can do it!
We then used our hearts we hadn't eaten yet to play Don't Eat Pete and they thought it was so funny!
We handed out Valentines and it was a bit of a challenge because we weren't all excited about handing out the treats we brought, but with some prodding (and pointing out treats received), we all shared with our friends. We even fit in show and tell that day. I got the graphing page here and game here.

We worked really hard on sharing when we talked about friends. My daughter's new favorite show is Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood, and I have to admit that I love it too! We watched a 1 minute clip with a song about taking turns. Find it here. (You can take a turn, and then I get it back!) We then role played taking turns, and watched it again. We played Memory and practiced taking turns some more, then watched it again. I was really trying to drill that song into their heads! I think it worked because they were singing it when they came back the next week. I'm singing it with them as I help them take turns in real play, because that's when it counts. It's one thing to role play and practice, but one of the most important skills children learn in preschool is socializing, and that includes sharing. We will be using this song lots the rest of the year!

Grocery Store

I think the grocery store is my favorite dramatic play to set up. Probably because it's my favorite to watch! I did it in Kindergarten every year when we learned about money, and I loved looking over to see the kids pushing a full cart, purse on their shoulder, talking on a cell phone and complaining that the baby in the cart wouldn't stop crying. They love to imitate real life! That's one of the reasons to have dramatic play in any early-childhood classroom. They need the opportunity for real-play, where they imitate the things they see each day. Here are some things we learned today at the grocery store:

• How to take turns. I did spend much of the day sitting next to the register, helping the kids share it and take turns and that's fine with me. When I wasn't there, I heard them reminding each other to take turns. They did pretty well. The only meltdown was my own child. I'm so proud.
• Counting. They counted how many items they had, and how much money they had (at least how many bills, not the right $ amount of course).
• Sorting. As the shelves emptied after most of the food was purchased, I helped them sort it out to what type of food it was, and find the sign that showed where the food went.
• Literacy. The store is full of labels. Since they can't read yet, the labels also have a picture. But I made it a point to show and read the word to them, so they knew what it said as they were putting the food away. This is a pre-reading skill, where they are learning that words have meaning. It's the reason we have words everywhere in our room! I try to add literacy like this in every dramatic play center. And did you know that reading environmental print (labels on food boxes or signs) is also reading? It's often the first things kids learn to read. It makes them feel smart when you point out that they read it too. And confidence makes for a better reader!
• Writing. They took their grocery list writing very seriously! I could hear them asking each other what they wanted from the store when they were in the kitchen area, then write it down, and run over to the store to buy it. We ended up with some great lists at the end of today. It may look like scribbles, but it's words to a 3-year-old and one step closer to learning how to write.
 

• Responsibility and cleaning up. When clean up time rolls around, kids mysteriously disappear to other centers to play more. I gathered up the group who had played here the most today and they did a great job cleaning up in time for snack. We're getting quicker at this each day!

How to make your own grocery store:

• Save your garbage. Yep, I'm cheap. So I make my own groceries, using my groceries. I wrapped my boxes in packing tape and have used them through 3 years of Kinder, and now preschool and they're still in great shape. I have probably thrown some away, but it was just garbage anyway! A co-worker of mine bought the Lakeshore set of grocery food and one year I combined it with mine in my store. The kids never touched it. I think because they couldn't read what it was, and since it wasn't the "real" stuff, they didn't recognize the environmental print they can read. So, the garbage was better.
• This is what I'd like to do someday with it. Modge Podge my food boxes onto wood blocks. I love Pinterest!
•  Make shelves. Use shelves you have, use storage boxes like I did-I also had extra shelves from my bookshelf to put across the boxes.  Just use your resources and lay out your food somehow. In Kinder, I'd use the overhead cart and all sorts of things. You can see it doesn't look exactly like a store, but their imaginations fill in our gaps!
• Labels. Add literacy! I got my grocery store labels, plus shopping lists, years ago at a conference. It's not hard to make your own, though. Google image. Favorite resource. Shopping lists and pencils also add literacy.
• Buy fake money. Dollar Tree. 1 pack is plenty, or money is all over!
• Save fake credit cards from junk mail. Chase Bank and American Express use their money to provide my students with fake credit cards and I'm very grateful!
• Save old purses and wallets. I even save my broken or torn ones and they get used. I save old cell phones and sunglasses and other things to put in the purses too, just anything adults would carry around!
• Buy a cash register. Mine was only about $15 at Target a few years ago and has been used and abused and is still in great shape. It even has a belt that moves the food along. Fancy Shmancy. This is a great purchase because it can be used in many different dramatic play areas!
• Buy a shopping cart and baskets. This was another Target purchase and it came with some food too. The hand baskets came from Dollar Tree and I use them for many things, so another great purchase!
• Stock with play food too. Food boxes are great, but I also add my produce, meat, and bakery items. Just like a real store!

The grocery store and housekeeping area were set up today because we are learning about families. After getting turns to stand in front of the class last week and talk about themselves on both days, they were so excited to get up today! They each shared their pictures and named the people in their family. We also talked about the word sibling and watched a short clip from a Sesame Street podcast about the word sibling. As they drew pictures of their families in their journals, a few of them pointed out their siblings to me and used our new vocabulary word!

Wednesday, we'll be making people patterns (boy, girl, boy, etc.). Explore patterns at home by making and having your child finish a pattern. We'll be doing lots of this at preschool over the next few weeks and it's a great math skill!