All In A Day's Play In Pre-K

I am frequently asked by parents "What do y'all do all day?". Yes, we play. It's play, but it is so much more! My friend and blogger buddy, Alec from Child's Play Music, posted a wonderful article just this week called "The Future Of Education Is Play". ( I highly encourage you to pop on over and give it a read--you'll be glad you did!) While a large majority of my posts here are about the planned activities that we do, much of our school day is unstructured free time, where students choose for themselves where and what to play. Today, I want to share a glimpse into some of what goes on in our classroom on any given day during these times.

Our morning started by preparing apples for our crockpot applesauce. (More on that and our visit from Johnny Appleseed coming soon!)

While we were preparing apples, some of the friends were working hard on putting together some large floor puzzles.

Center time was a bustle of activity today. Our "Fruit Stand" in our dramatic play was full of activity (I'm saving those pictures for a post later on our apple unit). In our math center, some of the friends made a "tower with a parking lot" with pegs, peg boards and transportation manipulatives.

Building a "cabin".

There was some farming going on in one area....

And some dollhouse play nearby.

How about this little "tv room with a wide screen tv" ?

Science Center was also quite busy today. 

I noticed all the dinosaurs seemed to be carefully placed. When I asked about them, I was told they were all lining up to go see the new baby whale. Anything is possible in the mind of a preschooler!

Some friends took time to enjoy a good book.

Our classroom neighbors found this gigantic caterpillar on the playground today and shared it with us, so we stopped for a few minutes to observe him. He was several inches long and about as thick as a fat cigar. I've never seen a caterpillar this big!

This block structure was built over the course of the morning. 

It started off fairly simple, and became more and more intricate as time went on. 

 Different parts of the structure had different purposes.

 These small blocks are "ice cream for the people". 

 This is a "cave for the people".

These girls are using sanding blocks to make all the blocks "feel soft". 

A bedroom.

A "secret hiding place".

I watched as the friend playing with these table blocks arranged each block with precision. I asked about the arrangement and what he was making and was told, "I don't know yet. I'm just building it first!"

It struck me funny that seemingly random arrangements were actually items carefully arranged, while the small table blocks were so carefully placed without an end purpose. Some of the most important learning going on today can't quite be captured in photographs. There was sharing, cooperation, leadership, turn taking, compromise, critical thinking, problem solving and a host of other social skills going on throughout their play today. They are learning so much more through this play than I could ever begin to teach through direct instruction. So when I'm asked, "What do y'all do all day? Do you do any 'real' work?". My answer? YES, we work. Our work is play. And play IS important! 


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Christmas in Pre-K

We celebrate all the winter holidays in my Pre-K class.  I believe it's a great time to promote multiculturalism. Be sure to hop on over to Pre-K and K Sharing for more on what we do for other holidays and to read my post: "Using Holiday Celebrations to Promote Multiculturalism in Early Childhood Settings." 


Christmas is such a magical time, and I definitely take advantage of it! We had so much fun making giant gingerbread people, that we made a few giant candy cane decorations for the classroom.

 

 

We made a couple of ornaments for presents for the parents. We made cute snowflakes from foam die cuts and added a picture of each child on one side and let the kids decorate with winter foam stickers, glitter and sequins on the other side. They turned out beautifully, but somehow managed to miss getting photographed before being wrapped.(Had the kids not wrapped the gifts themselves, I would have definitely unwrapped for a few shots and rewrapped! ) We also made these cute snowman handprint ornaments for the tree in our preschool lobby. On the last day of school, parents were invited to take their ornament with them to use at home.

 I put seasonal items in our centers to make things fun.

And added a few props to change our scenery.

 


I saw this CUTE snowball toss game on Teaching Heart Blog in the post: Winter Party Planning Printables. It took me about 15 minutes to make and about $2 in supplies.  I simply cut a few simple shapes from construction paper and stuck them onto clear contact paper and applied the whole thing to the front of the pop-up hamper. I ended up stapling the contact paper to the front of my hamper, as it didn't stick well to the fabric for long. We played this all week and will probably use it in January for our winter/snow and polar pal units, as well! 

We made Santa Claus decorations from paper plates, cotton and a little red construction paper.

And these reindeer handprint puppets from paper bags and brown paper:

We did a lot of singing and dancing. Our favorite songs were The Tractors': "Santa Claus Is Coming On a Boogie Woogie Choo Choo Train" and Raffi's: "Must Be Santa".

The morning of our party, we made these reindeer cupcakes from chocolate frosted cupcakes, pretzels and a few candies. We saved them for our party later that day. 

My absolute FAVORITE holiday idea this year came from The SEEDS Network. I found these adorable (and very yummy) melted snowman s'mores over there and immediately knew they would be perfect to include in my gifts to my students this year. I have shared this idea with every teacher I know! I am also making a batch to take to all of my nieces and nephews on Christmas Eve. 

I never know exactly what to get my little friends. I usually try to get them a coloring book, because we don't do any coloring "inside the lines" in Pre-K (to find out why, read here). These are the goodies I finally decided upon.

Our final day before the holiday was celebrated in true Pre-K style! We wore our jammies and had a Polar Express movie party while drinking very cool hot cocoa. A nice way to end a very hectic season!

My holiday wish for you, whatever holiday you celebrate,  is that your days are Merry and Bright!