Today seemed to be particularly suited to dress-up, so after we moved our calendar tag to the last day of April and finished our last April circle time fingerplays, we moved right along and suited up!
First, the children picked the perfect dress-up outfit. One was a mermaid...
...one was a princess...
...one wore a cape (and did lots of spinning around)...
... and one was a mix of a few dress-up items!
The children and I came up with a story sort of like The LIttle Mermaid in which the mermaid fell in love with a caped prince and despite the spell of a wicked sorceress princess who stole her voice, the mermaid was able to marry the prince and live happily ever after with her cupcake kitten. It's so much fun to have the children add in their own ideas to traditional stories, and it's great for their language development, too.
After putting away the dress-up clothes, the children and I enjoyed lots of playtime outside. FIrst, we picked as many dandelions as possible (much to my dismay, the pictured dandelions are all part of our lawn!), then I braided them together to make a crown of sorts. It was fun for the children to try to balance it on their heads and wear it.
After our dandelion plucking escapades, the children and I decided to play some movement games. We started with Duck, Duck, Goose. It was fun to try to include the littles in this game, and the big kids were great sports despite having to bend the rules a bit.
Next, I organized some rolling races with the children. They laughed just as much as they rolled, and in the end they collapsed in a laughing, dizzy pile. It seems they were all winners!
Last, while the littles dug around in the sandbox, the big kids ran lots of races.
Later in the day, we read Are You My Mother and talked about what makes it easy for us to know who our mommy is.
See you tomorrow!