The Importance of Everyday Dress Up Play

Dress up as a part of imaginative play is an vital part of early childhood education. Every preschool classroom and child's home should be well stocked with quality costumes and props for pretend play! 

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Candy Shop: A Pretend Play Prompt

A kid in a candy shop is a simile for a reason. What could be more motivating and fun than a pretend play candy store with real candy? 

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Bird Nest Weaving: A Pretend Play Prompt

Imaginative pretend play is not one of my strong points yet the other day something magical happened. I gave my preschooler a pretend play prompt to introduce our new homeschool preschool science unit of bird watching. We spent the afternoon weaving a birds' nest!

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Road Construction Pretend Play: The Importance of Stop and Go Games for Kids

Our preschool theme this week is community helpers. We took the opportunity to play a Stop & Go Game as we pretended to be road construction workers. An added bonus is that learning to stop through pretend play games benefits children in many ways.

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Small Worlds from A to Z

Small worlds are one of our favorite ways to play! From dinosaur land to construction zones to a small world beach vacation, you can tailor the play to any theme your child is interested in! We've created this small world pretend play series to inspire you with play ideas for each letter of the alphabet!

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Green Tea Scented Play Dough

Mmm, we love the smell of this green tea play dough! Incorporating the use of all of the senses is a benefit of sensory play. This recipe is even taste safe for little ones and involves plenty of fine motor work through pretend play!

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Ice Cream Play Dough

Ice cream play dough is irresistibly realistic yet it won't melt while you play! We set up a pretend ice cream shop. Check out the recipe for ice cream play dough to make your own with your kids!

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Beekeeping: A Pretend Play Prompt

After visiting our friends' bee hive we created our own pretend play beekeeping prompt with costumes and tools. We even made the honeycomb ourselves! 

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Elsa Gloves for Frozen Inspired Pretend Play

The Frozen obsession continues at our house so we created DIY Elsa gloves for Frozen inspired gross motor and fine motor pretend play!

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Kid Made Neighborhood Building Blocks

Our kids love small world play! We set out an invitation for them to create their own buildings since we've been learning to identify places in our community. This creative project also showed just how much they've noticed about our neighborhood!

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Toothpaste Slime for Dental Health Month

We created slime that looks just like toothpaste for Dental Health Month. It is the perfect material to invite kids to explore for fine motor, sensory, and pretend play!

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Frosty the Melted Snowman Sensory Play for Kids

Have you ever touched oobleck? If you have then you know how utterly irresistible it is and if you haven't I insist you whip up a batch right now! Or at least at some point this winter you have to try oobleck for the perfect pretend play melted snowman. Let us show you how this non-Newtonian fluid creates the coolest Frosty the Snowman you'll ever meet.

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Vet Office: A Pretend Play Prompt

We explored the work that happens at a vet office using real x-rays on a light panel for our latest pretend play prompt. The kids loved this invitation to imagine as they came up with creative diagnoses and treatments for their animals!

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Math with KORXX: Sorting Cork Blocks by Attributes

We've loved KORXX blocks since we first played with the natural cork toys! These sensory toys are durable, quiet, inspiring, and aesthetically pleasing! We've told you how they are different than typical cork. Now we're back to share a whole series of posts about how to play and learn with KORXX!

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Pretend Play Apple Picking

Fall is in the air and we are learning all about apples! Our preschooler set up this invitation to pick, sort, and explore these baked cotton ball apples for her toddler brother in our pretend play apple orchard.

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Thanksgiving Sensory Bin

Who's hungry? Our kids would love to serve you from their Thanksgiving Sensory Bin! This invitation to explore provided lots of tactile input as well as opportunities for pretend play!

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Favorite Fine Motor Toys

Kids work on their fine motor skills while playing with their favorite toys! They don't even realize they are strengthening their hands for writing while they play. Here are our recommendations of the best fine motor toys available. 

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Baked Cotton Ball Snowman Craft for Kids

These baked cotton ball snowman crafts are perfect for Winter creative play! We loved making them together and they look so cute in a window, as a fridge magnet, or in small world play!

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Homeschool Preschool Plans - A Month In

Since August is almost over (!!!) we are finishing our trial month of homeschool preschool.  I am going to use this post to think aloud, make notes about what worked and what didn't, and talk about our plans moving forward.

I've found this great link about homeschool lesson planning and even though they seem to be working with older children, it really helped me get organized.  If you have any other links for lesson planning, please send them my way!

What went well in August:
- E LOVES school.  I do, too.
- She has our calendar routine down.
- A flexible schedule works well.  I'd like to have a few daily activities and some weekly ones and try to get to a certain number of tasks per day.
- Mixing preschool with scheduled social outings and activities varies our day.  This will continue in the fall as more of our activities start up again (library story time, dance class, our moms/kids group, Play & Learn classes).
- I found space in our house for school areas without feeling like it is taking over our home.  (More on these nooks later).
- The predictable text book I made with her name/pictures was a huge hit!  Maybe I can make one per theme so she has a whole library and we have a record of all we've studied.

What we need to work on/add for the fall:
- E asks for more work then I have planned, so I need to add in some non-themed activities that I can pull out any time. This will be especially helpful when D arrives.  Things she can do independently are even better.  Any ideas?  I love this quiet book and busy bag tasks like this.
- Make a visual schedule of our daily activities, maybe using magnets and incorporating it into our calendar board?
- We need more afternoon activities.  I was planning on doing most of our work in the morning, but if it is a day we are out and about, we could work after nap before dinner time since I am always looking for things to do then anyway.
- These monthly and weekly planning sheets provide a great framework.  I will probably continue to use the monthly sheets for blog and preschool planning and use the weekly one for our larger projects that I plan to blog about.  I need to create a system for daily planning
- Work on more organization and planning ideas!  I'd love to find some Pinterest boards all about homeschool planning, but I can't find quite what I'm looking for there.
- Finish gathering, buying, and prepping supplies.

Daily work:
calendar time
Handwriting without Tears (I need to order these wood pieces but I'll also be creating a lot of HWT materials myself.)
fine motor work (writing, coloring, scissors, tweezers, clothespins, play dough, scoop & pour)
invitations to play

Weekly/Per Theme:
felt board
journal writing (at least 2x a week)
letter identification 

uppercase and lowercase matching

letter sounds

pre-reading skills

patterns

matching/sorting

shapes

number identification

counting

science inquiry

real life discovery

pretend play

sensory play

art

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Scoop and Pour Serving Practice on the Light Table

We set up a fun practical life invitation to play on the light table. Our kids loved practicing self serving skills such as scooping and pouring!

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