Activities

While reading How I Became a Pirate by Melinda Long to the class, pause and ask the children to look at the characters' faces on each page and identify the characters' feelings.

Partially fill a sensory tub with water. Provide a variety of pitchers or teapots. Have the children fill them with water and practice pouring it into cups. Be available to help if needed. Provide paper towels for the children to clean up spills.

Create a Pizza Making prop box and place it in the dramatic play area. Using felt or construction paper make various shapes of items used for pizza toppings such as circle pepperoni, triangle cheeses, rectangle ham or circle cherry tomatoes.

Tell the children, “We are going to make a pizza!” Give each child a large piece of play dough. Provide pizza cutters, rolling pins and “toppings.” You can have the children create their own “toppings” with different colors of play dough.

Create a pizza parlor in the dramatic play area. Introduce new vocabulary, such as “cashier,” “server” and “order pad,” as well as the names of different pizza toppings.

Create a placemat with each child's picture on it. Before meals, have the children find their placemat and put it at their spot at the table.

Read From Seed to Plant by Gail Gibbons.  Talk to the children about how a plant grows.  Give them the opportunity to select and plant seeds to watch them grow.

Talk about how to  create a garden.  Plan whether to have an indoor or outdoor garden and what the children would like to grow.

Create a small flower garden with perennials and annuals for the children to care for during outside play. Use child-size watering cans or pitchers for watering plants. Write the children's names on craft sticks to place beside their plant.

Plant a small outdoor garden with fast growing items such as greenbeans, marigolds, pansies and morning glories during outdoor time. Remind the children to tend the garden daily and photograph growth weekly.

Bring a pineapple into the classroom and ask the children who of them has tried pineapple? Cut off the top of the pineapple and put it in a shallow tray with water.

Teach an Earth Day Song to the tune of
“Mary Had A Little Lamb”:
Plant a seed and you will see,
you will see, you will see,
plant a seed and you will see
what a beautiful world it can

Provide small cups, soil and seeds for the children to independently plant in the science center. Lima beans or pumpkin seeds grow very quickly. Place in windows for observation. Provide paper with a picture of an empty flower pot.

Make seeds, soils and containers available in the science center. Encourage the children to plant the seeds and record the sequence of events.

Create or find pictures of the lifecycle of plants. Provide a magnetic board and place small magnet dots on the back of the cards. The children in the math center can place the cards in order and dictate why they chose the order of the cards.

Show the children pictures in a book, such as Flowers by Vijaya Bodach. Add sterile potting soil, shovels and small plastic pots to a sand table or tub. Encourage the children to practice filling and emptying pots.

Discuss flowers and what they need to grow. Dictate what the children think plants need. Plant a “class plant” and ensure that the class has the opportunity to give the plant everything it needs.

You will need small flower pots, play dough, number cubes and artificial flowers. Give each child a pot with play dough to act as a base for the flowers. Give 12 flowers to each child.

Change up this game by having two children roll a die, plant that number of flowers and figure out how many flowers they have in total.

Purchase plaster of paris or make your own using two parts white glue to one part warm water. Encourage children to make hand prints, footprints or globes molded on balloons.