It's fifteen more days before it's Thanksgiving, so I decided to let the kids make a mini advent countdown to Thanksgiving.
We counted today's date (12th) to (27th), and there are 15 days. So I visually showed them that we are going to make five rows of three hearts using whiteboard and marker. Can you tell I'm trying to introduce multiplication to the kids? :X
Then I gave them a canvas board each and let tell them to print the hearts using their thumbprints. Two out of five kids made hearts by themselves with no help, one of them made five rows of three. :D
The same two who made hearts sat down long enough to finish up their names on the board.
It was still fun, to be working on canvas. I could let them paint more freely on a different day. Some kids are more patient with art than others. So they would finish up the work carefully and taking their time to perfect it. Others accept theirs as abstract.
This is PK's masterpiece.
And I love it.
Next up was fairy tale theme play. We are doing the little red riding hood today. We had a little story then we proceed to play a game learning six sight words today.
I had a dice that has a word on each side. Each kid has a game board with the six different words randomly written on each space. Taking turns to roll the dice, the kids raced Little Red Riding Hood to Grandma's house! You can find the game board here.
Then we read about Hansel & Gretel. And I let the kids decorate a gingerbread house each. Each kids were given different numbers of stickers. After they are done decorating, we did a graph together to see which type of candy has the most number, which one is the least, are there any with the same number, etc. This simple activity introduces the kids to graphing. And there were a lot of counting and comprehension too.
The original activity was to use fruit loop but I had these stickers leftover from Valentine's Day so stickers it is! And it was just as interesting for the kids. You can find these free printables here.
I enjoyed getting the kids to learn through playing. They have no idea how much they learned today - sight words, counting, multiplication, graphing, comprehension, ... It was once again another awesome APG play date!