Nursery Rhyme week

What a fun follow-up to Fairy Tales!

Dramatic Play
We had a puppet theater here. It included the stick puppets and masks from Fairy Tale stories we read, plus their books to help the kids remember the stories. I also had a variety of animal puppets that were a huge hit both days!

Art
On the first day, we also made puppets in art. We made paper sack puppets and stick puppets. The kids loved cutting and gluing. I hadn't realized how much help we needed with scissors because I hadn't realized how little we'd used them. They've always been available in the Writing Center, but having them in art brought more attention to them. I had to offer a lot of help, but it was great cutting practice and small motor skill building!
It was fun seeing the kids take their puppets to the theater and play with them. They were all so creative.
 Day 2, we painted with cotton balls for all the Nursery Rhymes with sheep and wool in them. They could use their fingers to hold it, and some chose to use a clothes pin. I told them the different rhymes with sheep in them as they painted.

Small and Large Manips
I have 4 nursery rhyme puzzles which were all a hit. The kids learned to work together and we did all 4 puzzles several times, with different groups of kids. Puzzles are such a good small motor skill, and also good for logic and reasoning!
We used the rhyming puzzles too, after using them on Monday for large group.
We also played with some awesome flannel boards. It seems old-fashioned, but they don't know it! I have about 30 different Nursery Rhyme flannel board stories, so I had different ones out on different days, plus every rhyme we told in large group, we also told on the flannel board. They really enjoyed telling the Nursery Rhymes on the boards during self-select time. They'd often point out one of the Nursery Rhyme posters, and I helped them find the stories for the board.

Here are some other activities we did, and rhymes we read:

Little Miss Muffet
We ate curds and whey for snack (cottage cheese). It wasn't as big of a hit as the porridge, but they all tried it. They liked dipping crackers in it the best. This was a favorite rhyme to retell on the flannel board all week.

Georgie Porgie
We had pudding for snack and this was definitely a hit, and we even dipped graham crackers in it. We'll have to do this one again!

Hickory Dickory Dock
We sang the Barney version, shown here and practiced counting, and what number comes next. We also used this to introduce our vocabulary word, rhyme, and find rhyming words. We found the rhyming words in all the Nursery Rhymes we read after starting with this one in large group.

Humpty Dumpty
We colored boiled eggs. I couldn't believe how much they liked this! They counted food coloring drops with me and were just mesmerized by this activity. I tried to do large group after dying the eggs (thinking they could listen and sing while the eggs just sat there), but we had to keep checking the eggs over and over! They really just loved to stare at the cups. They loved hos bright they turned out and were so excited to take them home.


And, the highlight, we got to go outside! The inversion cleared, and we had a new layer of snow! I know you all got to see your kids out there when you picked them up, and I hope they had fun. They sure were acting like it! They all took turns tubing down our little hill. They sprayed the snow with spray bottles, ate some snow, and made great snow angels. They even dug out our slide. I hope we get to enjoy more outside time soon! They really do need that chance to get outside and move.