Thanksgiving Dinner Dramatic Play

Using play food, REAL cornucopias, plates, and utensils, we made our very own Thanksgiving Feast!
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We wore Pilgrim hats, and used our words to talk about all things Thanksgiving!
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This gave your little ones one a chance to act out and mimic the things we have been reading about all week!
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Our dramatic play also encouraged cooperation with each other, perception of meaning, and increased language skills.
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Fruit Turkeys

Using fruit, toothpicks, and their tummies, your little ones made a colorful array of turkeys!

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Young children enjoy manipulating real-life materials in their learning environments, and found much satisfaction in creating turkeys out of kiwi, strawberries, pineapple and blueberries.

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Children at this age learn more from three-dimensional items, objects they can see and understand firsthand, rather than simply drawing concepts on a piece of paper.

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Drum Circle

Indians used music as a means to celebrate, mourn, and communicate. Young children love to play music, and even more so, together!
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Using drums, our hands, and our creativity, we performed a variety of rhythms, using a popular call and response game. Performing as a group fosters a child’s sense of community, increases self-esteem, and encourages listening skills.
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Static Electricity Bats

Static electricity is the result of an imbalance between negative and positive charges in an object.

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These charges can build up on the surface of an object until they find a way to be released or discharged.

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For this activity, we experimented with static electricity to create moving bats!

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We first rubbed the balloon on a piece of felt to create an electric charge.

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We then moved the balloon over our bats, which were made out of tissue paper.

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The static electricity enabled the bats to fly!

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Pumpkin Play Dough

We have been learning all about pumpkins, so we made our very own!

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Using play dough as a medium and colored pasta, we created our favorite Halloween plant!

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This activity also revisited and reinforced such vocabulary as “stem”, “pumpkin patch”, “top” and, and “bottom”.

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Using play dough helps a child practice using certain physical skills with the hands when they manipulate the dough with their fingers.

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Children can practice skills such as pinching, squeezing or poking while they play with the dough.

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Lastly, using play dough helps a child practice using imagination and other cognitive abilities such imitation, symbolism and problem solving.

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This helps our little ones learn more about their environment as they make and mimics everyday objects with the play dough.

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Pumpkin Pounding

Using golf tees and wooden hammers, we practiced hammering golf tees into styrofoam pumpkins.
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This encouraged motor development, hand-eye coordination, creativity, and math and science skills!
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As young children explore with age-appropriate tools, they use small and large muscles.
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As they make decisions about the orientation of the golf tees, they participate in problem solving skills.
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Lastly, as they complete their project, they experience a feeling of accomplishment.
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Most importantly, they had fun while doing it!

Bat Caves

Most bats are nocturnal. They fly and forage for their food (bugs) at night.

This means that they need safe places to sleep during the day.
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Caves provide the kind of protected shelter in which bats can thrive.

Hanging from the ceiling of a cave, bats are out of reach of most of their enemies.
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Some of the most successful species of bats live in large cave colonies. Some of these colonies have millions of members, even up to 20 million!

Using dirt, rocks, toy bats, and our imaginations, we created our own caves!

Sensory play is an integral part of how your child examines, discovers, categorizes, and makes sense of their world.

As they create their caves, they are taking in new information through their senses, acquiring language skills, and collaborating with their peers.

Spider Web Habitats

Your little one participated in yet another fun sensory activity!

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Using styrofoam as our base, white web material, sticks, and plastic bugs, your little one created their very own spider habitat!

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We began this activity with a discussion and review of the spiders and other bugs that we have been learning about. We then talked about where these creatures lived.

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Our discussion concluded with a review of the new vocabulary that we have been learning, such as insect, web, arachnid, antenna, web, and silk.  

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Your little arachnid enthusiast then happily constructed the perfect living space for his spider friends.

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Witch Potions

Young children love to pour and dump, and derive much joy from engaging their senses to investigate their surroundings.

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As they manipulate various substances, they are observing the physical properties of the world around them.

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By transferring materials and exploring how they interact, they are learning about density, weight, and volume, which form the foundation for critical thought.

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For this particular activity, we combined baking soda and vinegar to create witch’s potions.

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Each child enjoyed watching their potions foam and come to life!

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Frankenstein Foam

Preschoolers are constantly doing math, even when they are not aware of it. It enables them to problem solve, and make sense of the world around them. Because young children learn best by doing, opportunities that enable them to participate at a hands-on level yield the most promising results.

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When they participate in their own learning experiences, they construct meaning as they communicate and represent their understanding of complicated concepts. To help improve our counting skills, we created “Frankensteins” out of flower foam.

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Using golf tees as the mouth, nose, and eyes, we counted how many golf tees were needed to construct the “faces”, and then recorded our results.

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As they assembled their creations, they were encouraged, not only to count, but to write down what they were counting. This enabled them to observe the relationship between the object in their hands and the symbol that represented what they were seeing.

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