Top 10 Proven Preschool Activities for Pp

Number 1: PLAY!

If you do nothing else this week, please let it be play!  Of course, almost everything I suggest is about playful learning because it is essential for children, and pretty darned important for grown-ups too.

Number 2: Pizza

See, learning about the letter P is fun AND delicious!  You already know I love to cook with children, and what's better for this week than making and eating pizza?! 

Depending upon how much time I want to spend on this, and on the age and skill level of my kiddos, I've had them help me make pizza dough (I cheat and use the bread machine), or I've used something as a pre-made crust.  Both work beautifully, are fun and fairly easy, and you end up with something delicious that your children will want to eat.  Today let's talk about letting children make their very own mini pizzas by using half an English muffin as a crust.

 I like to put out pizza toppings for the children to choose, and invite them a couple at a time to come and assemble their pizzas.  If you want to really talk about the sound of Pp, consider offering pepperoni, peppers, and pineapple along with any other toppings you want.  

It does take a few minutes for a preschooler to scoop up the ingredients they want, and to spread them on their pizza.  They're making decisions, estimating how much they want of each ingredient, and working their finger muscles as they arrange the toppings.  This is a fine motor, sensory, life-skill, healthy eating experience, and that's definitely worth the time it takes!

Make sure you know who's pizza is where on the baking sheet, because they WILL want THEIR OWN pizza!  Bake it until everything is hot and the cheese is starting to turn golden, and then.... well, your child will help you figure out what comes next!

Number 3: Pigs in a blanket

This is another fun cooking activity for your little ones, and you'll just need a can of biscuit dough and some mini sausages.

Let the children cut the pieces of biscuit dough in half, and squish each half.  Lay a sausage on the dough, then roll it up.

Lay them on a baking sheet and bake according to the directions for the dough.  YUM!

Again, if you're not sure what comes next, ask your children, they'll know it's time to eat!

Number 4: Picnic

You might be thinking a picnic takes a lot of planning and preparation, but when you're dealing with children, simply taking your meal outside to eat equals a picnic!  I like to keep a picnic blanket handy so we can make a picnic in just moments.  Have a large box from a delivery?  Instant picnic table! 

There's something magical about getting outside to eat - and of course, once they're done eating, it's time to PLAY!

Number 5: Puddle Stomping!
 

This is one of my all time favorite preschool activities, and one I think most of my former students remember well, even many years later.  I have a couple of pro-tips to help make this activity go smoothly, even with a group of children.

- Plan ahead.  Before you ever head out the door, make sure you have towels and dry clothes handy for afterwards.  Is your child wearing something that is okay to get wet, or do they need to change into play clothes first? Is the puddle in a place that's safe for bare feet? 

- Set limits.  Is splashing okay?  Are you getting full body wet, or just feet?  What space do you expect the children to stay in?  By thinking this through ahead of time you save yourself having lots of tired, wet children making a mess in your house afterwards!

I like to have the children take off their shoes and socks inside, and then head out. We run, we stomp, we splash... then we look for earthworms that have been washed out, and gently rescue them from the puddles.  We run around some more, and we notice how different everything looks when it's wet.  Take off your shoes and stomp right along with your child - I promise, it's fun!

Number 6: Penguins

Read about them (here's a post about penguin books), craft them, act like them, there are so many awesome ways to include penguins in your learning! Did you know Emperor penguin daddies keep their unhatched eggs warm on their feet? 

Penguins DO waddle, but they also like to slide on their bellies, which is called tobogganing.

They live in colonies or rookeries, and their chicks are fluffy and gray - NOT black and white.  

These are pictures of our penguin rookery - the patterns and instructions are available in my TeachersPayTeachers store here if you're interested, or for a penguin craft and games for learning letter P, check out this resource:

Number 7: Pirates

I've blogged about our pirate activities several times - check those posts out here, here and here!

Number 8: Hand prints and foot prints, of course!

As always, you can find the original inspiration for each of these, and many more ideas for similar crafts on this Pinterest board.

Number 9: Puzzles

Do you and your littles do puzzles together?  Puzzles require children to look for similarities and differences in shape and color, to rotate pieces, to work their finger muscles, to think about what the picture is supposed to look like, and much more.  Start with puzzles with 4 or 5 pieces, and work up to more complex ones.  You can usually find puzzles at resale stores or garage sales for very little money, and your local library may also have some in the play area that you can use while you're looking for books!

Number 10: Letter crafts

Make the letter-sound connection by creating letters that go along with some of the letter Pp activities you're doing this week.  We added penguins to pink or purple lower case letter p, and turned the upper case P into a pepperoni and peppers pizza pie. 

Have a great week friends - peace!

8 Outstanding Options for Over-the-top O Activities

What's so outstanding about letter Oo?  The variety of options for learning activities!  From oceans to outside time, baking oatmeal muffins to sorting ovals to lovely hand print art, there's so much to do!

Let's start with oceans and octopi... octopuses...the octopus.  You probably have some favorite ocean themed books - and of course so do I!

If you're wanting to learn octopus facts, I love Gentle Giant Octopus by Karen Wallace, and so do my students.  Just for fun?  Octopus's Garden, by Ringo Starr.  Bonus points, it includes a sing-a-long CD, so you and your littles can learn (or relearn) the song.  While you're at it, check out the gorgeous illustrations in Inky's Amazing Escape by Sy Montgomery and Over in the Ocean by Mariann Berkes.  

I haven't get read Manfish A Story of Jacques Cousteau by Jennifer Berne, but a study of the ocean is incomplete without learning about him, and again, the illustrations look awesome!

Many years ago I made an ocean tent to go over a card table - super easy to do - and my students have had a lot of use out of it!  I found a couple of panels of ocean fabric that measured the same size as my card table, and added some plain blue fabric for the other 2 sides.  I put a cord through the top hem, and tied it onto the card table.  It takes about 2 minutes to put up or take down, and folds quite small for storage. (I was inspired by tents from https://www.etsy.com/shop/missprettypretty ).  Just add ocean stuffed animals or other toys for some fantastic pretend play!

 Your littles might also enjoy working on patterns with ocean animals - here's a fun way to do that:

and early readers will enjoy this FREE reading center - click here to download it!

If you're in the mood to do some cooking with your little ones, AND you want them to eat healthy foods, try the oatmeal muffin recipe I wrote about here. Look at all the delicious ingredients: 

Remember to let your little ones help you cook - they're spending quality time with you, learning life skills, and if they help you cook something, they're more likely to try eating it.  Want more?  They're also developing fine motor skills, counting scoops, measuring ingredients and learning vocabulary - they are learning.

If you've been reading my blog for long, you know I also love to do hand print art with my kiddos, and letter O is no exception!  Here are 3 fun ideas: otter, owl and ostrich!  

The ostrich came from CreativityTakesFlight.com, the otter was uploaded to Pinterst without credit, and I'm not sure about the owl either.  As always, you can find more hand print and foot print art ideas on this Pinterest board:

Don't forget to add outside time to your letter Oo activities!  This is so open ended, you're sure to have some favorite outdoor ideas - or brainstorm with your children and try something new!

It's always a good time to revisit shapes and other math concepts; we broke out some magnetic shapes that include ovals.  As you can see they're fun for sorting, or making patterns, or simply look for ovals and other shapes in your environment. 

Finally, here are two great picture book characters for the letter O: the giant squid from I'm The Biggest Thing in the Ocean (by Kevin Sherry) and Olivia (from the series by Ian Falconer).  I came up with both of these crafts, which encourage lots of fine motor skills (cutting, gluing, even painting).  I hope you and your little ones enjoy them!
 

Click here for a quick tutorial on how to make the squid from  I'm the Biggest Thing in the Ocean, or get everything ready made for labeling, graphing, measurement AND this activity in my TeachersPayTeachers store.

Here are the shapes your child will need to cut out and assemble to create Olivia...

... we think she's pretty adorable!  

Have an over the top outstanding week of O activities, and come back next week for penguins, polar bears and positively perfect ideas for letter Pp!  See you then, Paula

M might look like a mess

M might look like a mess... but then, we're talking about young children and learning, so there's a probably a lot of getting messy!  Not to worry, I have ideas for varying degrees of mess and mud, and you can always modify or skip things that don't appeal to you.

Let's start with mixing and measuring to make muffins - which combines math, life skills, motor skills and everyone's favorite - eating! My preschool kiddos and their parents love my pumpkin gingerbread muffins, and you'll love that they're moist, tasty and full to the brim with healthy pumpkin!  You can find the recipe here, along with a couple of other recipes that my students always asked for.

If your child wants to continue exploring the muffin theme, consider making a sensory bin.  For mine I put dried beans in a tub, added some empty spice and vanilla containers (they still smell marvellous!) and some plastic cookware and food, and the children had a fine old time!

Another fun cooking activity for letter M is to make "mud" for a treat.  Simply mix up chocolate pudding, crush chocolate cookies, then serve the pudding topped with the crushed cookies.  Mmmmm-mmmmm!

I like to have the children make this as a special treat on International Mud Day - yes, there really is such a thing - in June.  It's warm enough then (in the Northern Hemisphere anyway) to get in the mud and get thoroughly messy.  (We literally hose off outside afterwards.)

 

A much less messy way to enjoy Mm is with painted hand prints.  These are the ones we use, most of which I found via Pinterest, and have pinned to my Handprint and Footprint pinterest board.  The monkey was inspired by a post from Craftymorning.com, the mermaid from education.com, the mouse idea is from puttisworld.com and the mask from funhandprintart.blogspot.com .

 

If you haven't started talking to your children about money yet, this is a great time to introduce it!  (You know your child best, if they are likely to put coins in their mouth, don't offer them yet.)  I start by having children sort the coins - in the USA that means pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters.  This is a simple fine motor task that introduces children to the names of the coins and if you talk more about it, to their values. 

Here are a couple of other things you might want to add to your letter M studies:

- Take a trip to a museum (I've taken children as young as 3 to the science museum and as young as 4 to art museums.  Make sure you practice appropriate behavior ahead of time, and make your first visits short and sweet, build on them over time as your child develops the self control each situation requires.)

- Paint on mustaches.  We did this for pirate week, letter M, and circus themes, and these are some funny pictures you'll look back on years from now!

- Learn about mandalas, collect natural materials, and create symmetrical patterns - fun for math, exploring nature, and fine motor skills too.

What other activities for the letter M do you like to do?  Let me know in the comments! 

Until next week,

Paula

Feeling Fabulous About Ff!

Are you feeling fabulous about Ff - and all the other letters so far?  Preschool learning (and teaching!) is so much fun!  Let's jump in and get started!

Make Friendship Fruit Salad

This is the easiest cooking activity EVER!  Each year for the letter Ff I would ask each family to send in 1 piece of fruit.  No need to assign apples here and bananas there - it truly doesn't matter which fruits you have, or what quantities!  This is friendship fruit salad after all - we get to share the making and the eating with our friends.

Since fruit salad also doesn't need any actual cooking, the children can do all the steps!  The first part of cooking is ALWAYS washing our hands.  The children also washed their fruit, and then used butter knives to cut it up into small pieces. (I do core the apples and pears, and quarter them).  Most fruit is soft enough that it is easy to cut with a butter knife, and this is a good time to teach children how to hold the fruit with one hand, and hold the knife with the other.  Have a look at these little hands - they all have their index fingers pointed along the knife to help apply pressure, and their fingers safely back from the knife.  This is a great early introduction to cutting, and lays the foundation for bigger cooking projects down the road.

Did I mention the eating part?  Fruit salad is a healthy snack, and if you and your friends made it together, you know they all want to try it!  There's seldom any left over either - this tasty treat gets gobbled right up!

Finding things that start with Ff in our feely box

I'm going to start with the classroom version of a feely box, but I also have a super easy at home version.  If you're going to be teaching the letter Ff to a big group of children year after year you might prefer something more sturdy and more educational than if you're teaching your own child only.

My feely box for Ff was a shoe box in a previous life... until I covered it with flower photos, and lined it with fake fur, and filled it with fences, fires, flies, frogs and everything else I could find that starts with Ff.

Here we are taking turns reaching in and finding things that start with Ff to put next to our letter F, all the while making the f sound.

The at home super easy version of the feely box is just that - super easy!

Field trips

I've said it innumerable times, but I'll keep on saying it: children learn best through hands on experiences.  If you can get out and explore the world, do.  Talk about everything you're seeing, smelling, tasting, touching, hearing and thinking!  Your child will learn the big words and big ideas you share with them, and you'll both have fun.  

For the letter F some of my favorite suggestions are to go to a farm, see flamingos at the zoo, look for fish and frogs (at an aquarium or zoo, or at the pond), find a fountain and flowers at the botanical gardens.  No botanical garden near you?  Find a flower shop or just a pretty park! What other field trip ideas can you think of? 

Fun on the farm from home

Even if you can't get to a real farm, you can bring out farm themed learning!  Do you have a toy farm, or toy farm animals?  Let your child sort them, or order them in height.  Count how many horses - and find out if there are more sheep or cows.  

I'm a huge fan of tangram puzzles, and have an adorable farm set that makes practicing shapes fun.

Make the letter F for your home-made alphabet.

Want to know a secret?  It's not SO secret... but I had no idea what I was doing on a lot of my letter crafts when I first decided to do it.  I'd seen a few ideas for some letters, and decided to go for the whole alphabet, but....  what to do?  That's why the lower case letter f looks like I got into my craft supplies and found everything I could that starts with f: flowers, flamingos and feathers.  The bits and bobs  you have on hand, left over from long ago craft projects are GOLD to your child.  Please don't feel like you have to reproduce someone else's ideas exactly, just do what works for you and your child.  :-)  

My upper case letter F started with a die cut frog years ago, and that was it - until I saw some plastic flies one Halloween, and bought up a teacher life time supply of them.  The frog tongue has been a strip of paper, or a piece of ribbon - either way, our froggy is catching a fly, and it works.  For more frog learning activities, hop over to my TeachersPayTeachers store here.
 

Sing songs

Have you caught on that this is an every week activity?  There are always songs to sing, you can do it anywhere, it's free, and it makes you feel good.  Let's sing!

That's enough to keep you and your little one super busy for about a month - but I have more letter Ff ideas, so come back on Wednesday for hand prints, a sensory bin, and some very silly fish hats!  Until then, enjoy, and remember to tag me if you post about doing any of these activities on social media! 

@paulabeckerman2399 on Instagram and Paula's Primary Classroom on FaceBook.

We're digging Dd!

Happy Wednesday friends!  I hope you're enjoying learning about the letter D with all our activities this week - and I'm here to share even more!

Have you ever made play dough with your children? It's a great sensory experience - this dough is even scented with sugar free Kool-Aid - and it is cheaper than buying, and lasts a LONG time! Making dough is this week's cooking activity!

While we're talking about sensory activities, I have some adorable hand print ideas for you this week! 

I found the idea for the dinosaur here, and the duck inspiration here.  You can also find a lot more great ideas on my Hand print and Foot print Pinterest board.

If your child is a junior paleontologist - a dinosaur scientist - I have an abundance of dinosaur themed learning activities, including this free counting and adding activity!

It includes 2 sets of dino number cards 1 - 20, the addition mat pictured at top, and a worksheet. (Sorry, the plastic dinos and number tiles don't come with it.)
 

My students also had a blast making these dragons! I taped bubble wrap to the table (or to boxes), let the children paint all over the bubble wrap, and then we laid paper over the painted bubble wrap, pressed down to take a print, carefully lifted the paper, and ta-da! Scales!  When its dry cut out your dragon, and provide paper scraps to add details!

For dog lovers (please tell me you're ALL dog lovers!) I have this cute letter counting activity.  

Children choose a dog name card, count how many letters are in the name, and count out a matching number of doggy bones OR if they're working on letter recognition, they can match the letters in each doggy name with 1" letter tiles.  

While we're focusing on letters, here's a fun initial sound activity for Dd!  Go on a scavenger hunt for things that start with Dd (think duck, dragon, deer, donuts, dogs, etc.), a few things that do NOT start with D, and a non-breakable dish.  Children go through the items one at a time, placing only those that start with D on the dish.  As they do, they sing this song (to the tune of there's a spider on the floor):

"There's a d___ on the dish, on the dish.  There's a d___ on the dish on the dish.  If I had a wish, I'd put a d____ on a dish, there's a d____ on a dish, on a dish."  (Click here to hear me sing it on my YouTube channel.)

Finally, you and your kiddos can make letter D crafts!  There are a couple of ways to make the dotty D.  For the one pictured below I offered wine bottle corks to dip in paint and stamp onto our D.  They're a great size for small hands to hold, and make a lovely circular dot.  Another way to do it is to use a circle punch and work finger muscles to make lots and lots of polka dots to glue on.  

The lowercase d is a dinosaur - we added a head with mouth and eyes, and triangles for the tail.  I had the children glue a piece of white paper behind the hole in the d, and in that space I wrote "First the dinosaur, then its tail."  If you made the lowercase b craft, you can see that these two letter crafts complement each other, and help children remember the difference between the two letters.

Are YOU digging the letter Dd yet?  Subscribe or come back next week for hands on ideas for the letter E - it's exciting!