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!

Penguin Fun

 Do your students love penguins?  Winter is a great time to learn about penguins - and other polar animals!  Last week I shared some ideas for learning about polar bears, so this week I thought I'd blog about penguins.

A couple of years ago we were lucky enough to have a penguin exhibit at our local museum (Fort Worth Museum of Science and History.)  Most of the exhibition was photographs, but there was also a docent with this beautiful taxidermied penguin, so we were able to get up close and check it out.  It amazed us all to see how tiny its feathers were!

After walking through the photo exhibition and seeing pictures of penguins doing all the things penguins do, we noticed a lovely, long bench.  The children decided to practice tobboganing, which is just sliding on our bellies.  This is one of the ways penguins move across the ice!

Back at home we tried holding "eggs" on our feet, just like daddy penguins do all winter. We were inspired by the book Without You, by Sarah Weeks, pictured here along with some other fun penguin books:

Standing still was pretty easy, but when we tried to waddle with our "eggs" on our feet, they went rolling.  We decided we would not make good penguin daddies, that's a hard job!

We had fun making our own penguin rookery, complete with chicks sitting snug on the father penguins' feet.  I displayed them on a large sheet of polystyrene foam, and the mottled white background looked icy.  (I've recently updated this activity and added a non-fiction book, and made it available here.)

We also watched some awesome youtube.com videos about penguins.  These links will take you to some of our favorites!
Jack Hartman, penguin dance
Happy Feet brain break
The Learning Station, Penguin Song

We learned about the letter P the same week we learned about penguins, so we made some pink or purple lower case letters, and added some penguins to it.  The children got to choose how many little penguins they made for their letter, so we added a little math by making a graph about how many penguins we used.  Super simple, and totally relevant to the children - oh yeah, and it was a good reason to practice writing their names!

Here's another fun penguin activity that ties back into penguins sliding on the ice.  Freeze a tray of water a couple of days ahead of time (you want it frozen completely solid).  Sit a toy penguin on it, and see if it starts sliding.  If you have it laid flat, the penguin won't move unless you scoot it along.  Then slowly raise one end - I used stacks of dice - until your penguin goes sliding on the ice.  Experiment with the ramp you've created - what else slides?  How high do you need to prop the end?

You probably already know I love to use hand print art with the children each week too, so one of our choices was a hand print penguin - with a textured "snowy" background.  I mixed approximately half shaving cream and half white paint, and let the children finger paint that onto their paper (fun!), then we made the penguin separately, and glued it on once the background was dry.  The shaving cream/paint dried with texture and a lovely silky feel to it.  If you haven't tried this yet, you'll be amazed by the results!

For even more penguin ideas, check out this post and this post here on my blog.  If you're looking for resources you can download and print to help you teach your children about penguins, you can see what I've created here.

What are your favorite penguin activities?  I'd love to know!

Polar learning fun

This week at the library we read and learned about polar animals.  We talked about how some arctic animals change from brown fur to white fur in the winter - for camouflage.  We learned that polar bears have black skin and that the hairs in their fur are hollow to help keep them warm on land.  We learned that they have a layer of blubber to keep them warm in the water.  We even pretended to be daddy emperor penguins with eggs and then chicks on our feet! (Check out the cute chicks we all got to use - no, they're not penguin chicks for real, but we sure had fun pretending to waddle with one balanced on our feet.)

After all our singing and dancing and reading was done, we had some awesome follow up activities to learn from play with!

You may have seen the "blubber" glove experiment: the one where a child puts their hand inside a rubber glove that has been covered with a layer of lard to insulate it.  They put their gloved hand in ice water, and the blubber glove stops them from feeling the cold, much as many polar animals have a thick layer of fat to insulate them.  We have big groups come to story time, 45-50 children, so we needed a quick and easy (and not too messy) way to do this activity.  Here's the solution:

I put one zippered plastic baggy inside of another, then spooned in a thick layer of lard between the baggies.  I taped the bags together, so little hands wouldn't end up in the lard (ew!).  The result was a clean, dry plastic bag nested inside a bag of lard, and it worked beautifully!

The children were fascinated, many of them coming back to this experience over and again, amazed that they couldn't feel the ice water.  Of course, there were also friends who wanted to stick their hands in the ice water and just enjoy that sensation - and that's okay too.

Another fun activity we offered this week was ice painting.  Ms. Kathleen made frozen paintsicles (yes, I can too make up words) and the children ran them over their papers to create beautiful masterpieces.  I noticed that a lot of the children looked off into space as they rubbed the paintsicles around, apparently enjoying the movement and the smooth feeling of the frozen paint gliding over their papers.  This little guy painted two handed!

 

... and some of our friends painted their two hands!

Watching this, we know that it's important for us to continue to provide sensory play experiences!

We also had out some shallow trays of water, which were mostly frozen.  Some of the children enjoyed the sensory experience of the ice and ice water, while others used them as we had envisioned, by propping one end, and seeing which objects would slide down the ice.  The children are constantly showing us that there are indeed many "right" ways to do things in this world!

Cutting shapes for crafts - making it simple

If you work with small children, you probably spend a good amount of time working on crafts with them.  Somehow, all those craft projects seem to need an abundance of cutting!  Sure, the children can do a lot of it, especially if there's a printable pattern they can work from, but what about the other times?  Dark colored paper, and especially black paper, are hard to work with!  What to do?

Here are two tricks that work for me.  I hope they help you and your small ones keep sane and keep crafting!


The first trick is tracing the shapes onto black paper, using a regular pencil.  If you work in good light, the pencil lines show up beautifully - so you can hand those scissors and paper to the children and let them work on their fine motor skills as they do the cutting.  Isn't that a big part of why we do crafts in the first place?

Another trick that works well, and requires even less work from you, is using a printed paper to guide the children's cutting.  I think we've all tried holding a stack of papers and cutting them all at once, and unless you have an incredible grip, the papers all end up turning just a little bit... and the shapes end up skewed.  Here's the solution: staples.

Yes, simply staple the pattern on top of the papers you need to cut out.  The trick is to make sure you staple around the outside of the pattern you want, preferably in several places.  Here I stapled the corners of my white pattern on top of black construction paper, so I could make a black penguin shape for this Penguin rookery craft.  Sure, we could have colored it black, but that wasn't the look I wanted on this project, and practicing scissor skills is so important.

Now it's easy to cut both pieces of paper, and they aren't going anywhere.

Make sure you end close to a stapled area, to keep your papers together until the last possible moment.

Ta-da!

Not only do you have the desired piece cut from construction paper, but there's also a lovely white pattern piece.  I'm seeing another art project here, with positive and negative images.... but that's for another day!

Do you have any teacher tricks or life-hacks you'd like to share?  I'd love to hear them!

Five Little Penguins, a counting story

Do you love penguins?  These clip art penguins from Sonya Dehart Design were so darned cute, I had to make something fun with them!

Here's what I put together:

Five little penguins went out to play
On a snowy winter day.
The ice was cold and the clouds were gray,
So one little penguin waddled away.

Four little penguins...
Three little penguins...
Two little penguins...
One little penguin...

No little penguins went out to play
On a snowy winter day.
The sun came out and the clouds blew away,
So five little penguins came back to play!

I made a read aloud book of the poem, with numerals and number words on each page, so young kiddos learning their numbers will really benefit from the book.  The count down poem format really lends itself to flannel board or chalk board display, so there are five little penguin manipulatives to act it out.  Way back when I taught first grade, I used a count down poem and manipulatives like these to introduce subtraction: I displayed the pictures, and wrote the subtraction sentences next to them as we reread the rhyme.  This method really helped children see that counting down is the same thing as subtracting 1.

My favorite part of this set though is the finger puppets I made to act it out as a finger play!

I can't wait to use these with the kiddos!