Activities

Play Greg & Steve's "Number Rock." Encourage the children to sing and clap along. Have the children count during other times of the day, walking to the playground, for example. Encourage the children to echo your words.

Here's a fun echo song. When you sing this song, try varying the pitch of your voice with each verse, getting higher as you move from toe to middle to head.

Collect lots of egg cartons.  The children can use the cartons as building blocks in the block center.

Spraypaint cardboard egg cartons. Provide pom- poms in the same colors and child-sized tongs.

Use cardboard egg cartons to make an alphabet matching game. Keep one carton whole and cut several others into sections. Write letters on the whole carton, perhaps starting with the letters in the child's name.

Give each child an empty egg carton and several small wooden blocks. Have the children pick up the blocks and place one block in each cup of the egg carton.

Create a variety of plastic eggs with different facial expressions for the children to interchange and place them in the math center.

Place plastic eggs around the room. Have the children crawl and/or walk around the room to find the eggs. Place the eggs in easy-to-see locations. You could try this activity with many different types of objects.

Provide a variety of plastic eggs in a basket. Demonstrate for the children how to put the eggs together and pull them apart. Encourage the children to continue to practice putting the eggs together and taking them apart.

Have an egg/spoon relay using plastic eggs during outdoor time. Make it more challenging by having the children walk backwards or close their eyes.

During small group time read the book Eleanor, Ellatony, Ellencake, and Me by Cathy Rubin. Graph the number of letters in Eleanor, Ellatony, Ellencake, and Me's names and then have the children graph the number of letters in their own names.

Sing “The Elephant Dance” to the tune of “Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush”:
This is the way the elephants dance,

Elephants dance, elephants dance.

Discuss with the children different situations when they may need to call 911. Provide phones for the children to practice calling 911.

Create two large dice from wooden blocks. One die is for animals and one die is for emotions. The child rolls both dice and acts out what they roll, for example, “Sad” and “Dog.

Include lots of books about emotions in the reading center: Percy Gets Upset by Stuart J. Murphy; Today I Feel Silly by Jamie Lee Curtis; My Many Colored Days by Dr.

Have mats with diff erent face shapes and hair styles printed on them. Give children play dough and let them create expressions. Ask what emotion their face represents. Take pictures of their creations and print them out for a feelings book.

Make up a song to the tune of "If You're Happy and You Know It" using various emotions. For example, "When your friend is sad, give a hug. When your friend is happy, give a high five.

Make a large cube with a different emotion drawn on each side. Make another cube with a variety of animals. Have the children roll both cubes and act out the animal with the feeling (such as a sad dog or a silly mouse).

Using tissue boxes, create two “die” cubes to roll. Label one cube with different animal names. Label the other with different feelings words. During circle, have the children roll the “dice” and act out what they see.

During outdoor time, use hula-hoops to make a feelings game. Place various emotion cards in each hula-hoop. Provide scenarios and have the children hop to the various hoops to illustrate how they would feel in each scenario.