Doctor's Office. The kids had been begging for this center all year, so we finally got it back out!
Blocks
Small wood blocks
My Job Leap Frog puzzle (you can see on the shelf above)
Magnatiles. Again, another request. When these are out, they don't play anything else. So they were out two days due to popular demand.
Art
Playdough and face mats
Body shape stamps and paint
Making bread for snack. Than glue and magazine face parts to make faces. The things they made cracked me up!
Scrub brush painting. They were pretty unsure of this one, wondering why I let them paint with scrub brushes. I had to reassure them that it was ok.
Small Manipulatives
Vegetable dot pages and flat marbles
5 Little Monkeys books and tape. They were so confused when I had to rewind it. It was pretty funny! And they enjoyed the story.
Doc McStuffins Memory game
Food lacing cards
Bunch 'ems. I recently found them on clearance at Target, and love finding more open-ended building toys. They're like a velcro ball. The kids liked the texture and playing with them, but just built a few simple things, then were easily frustrated it wasn't a big statue or something. They were asking me to build things for them, but I kept encouraging them to figure it out. Hopefully they'll get it after a few more times.
Emotion faces on the magnet board. They could change the eyes and mouths for more expressions.
Fruit and vegetable matching game in the pocket charts.
Writing
Stamp markers
People color crayons
Snack
Each day we tried new food groups and talked about how they help our bodies (giving vitamins and minerals, giving us energy, helping us grow, etc.)
Day 1, fruits. We had bananas, strawberries, blackberries, and grapes.
Day 2, vegetables. We ate cucumber, tomatoes, bell peppers, and carrots.
Day 3, we had grains and ate the wheat bread we made. Well, the bread I made the day before, then at the end of the day, they took home a slice of bread they made.
Day 4, we ate dairy and protein by having yogurt and trying different nuts.
Outside
Sensory Table: dried macaroni with toy fruit and scoops. Kinda random, but just wanted something new. They had a lot of fun with it.
Large Group
Day 1, we learned how to take care of our teeth. We read Going to the Dentist. I used the big model teeth and toothbrush and we learned to brush all sides of our teeth. Then the kids stood up, shoulder to should, like teeth, and I "brushed" them with the giant toothbrush, front, back, and on top of their heads. It was hard with all the giggling and shaking they were doing! Then I flossed them with a jump rope. After that, they got to use dry erase markers to color germs all over the laminated teeth. Then they brushed it off with toothbrushes. Some of it didn't come off well, so I improvised and squirted on a little hand sanitizer for toothpaste, and it came right off! It ended up a great object lesson.
Day 2, we learned about germs. One of our class moms who is a nurse, which by the way, I could have invited more than half the moms in our class, came and talked to us. She showed us how to wash our hands properly. Then she talked about what it's like to visit the doctors. The kids each got to listen to their hearts with a real stethoscope.
Day 3, we had run out of time last time, so we did more talking about germs. I used fingerpaint at the germs and "coughed" it into my hand, then I high fived kids, and shared pencils with them until we all had fingerpaint on our hands, to show how germs travel. Then we all washed our hands to show how to get rid of the germs, instead of passing them.
Day 4, we wrapped up talking about all the foods we'd been eating. We talked about the different food groups from our lacing cards. I spread them out on the floor, then they each got a food ad. They could cut out as many food items as they wanted, then they put them in the group they belonged to. It was great cutting practice, which they all need! Miss Kim and I were repositioning hands a lot, making sure they keep their thumbs on top, and cut away from themselves.
As we talked about food here and at snack, I never referred to it as healthy vs not healthy, or bad vs good food. It was all just food. I talked to them about the importance of eating a variety of food groups and colors of food, not just the same thing all the time since we need all the unique things each food offers. And we talked about things like sweets being a "sometimes" food, since it doesn't give us the nutrients we need and it may have ingredients not good for us. So we just eat them sometimes. But we need the other food groups each day. I was very impressed by their willingness to try new things at snack, even if they didn't like it. I just ask that they taste it.
Small Group
We read about Bones and found the different bones on my toy skeletons. They cut out a picture of a body with the outside, and the bones on the inside too. It was mostly for the straight line cutting practice.
The other group made foods out of play dough with food molds I have, and fed them to Cookie Monster, so he could have a variety of food besides cookies!
The next week, they wrote in their journals about their favorite foods, and did a counting game with Miss Kim.
