Chicks and Chickens Playdate!

A math lesson for pre-K aged kiddos for those kiddos who are used to going to playdates with other kids like we do!  This lesson was inspired by a lesson plan I found in The Mailbox: Preschool edition, and then modified to meet my child's experiences. 

Materials:  2 mama chicken cutouts, various yellow pom poms to be the chickens and a deck of number cards from 1-20.  (I made mine out of green foam paper and cut them out into zig zag edges and wrote the numbers with Sharpie permanent marker)
Optional:  a quilt on the floor for that farm/country feel

My daughter giggling at the silly name she had given one of the chick mamas

Whoops, that mama has too many chicks, the card says 5!  She is counting how many to take away

An up-close view of what the first scenario looked like as we went through the activity, the bottom number is the total of all the chicks at the playdate. 

Activity/Scenario:  the chicks have just arrived at a playdate with their chick friends!  There are so many chickens at the playdate, how many chicks did each mama chicken bring to the playdate?  Pull out one mama chicken at a time and have the child give it a name and then pull a number card to find out how many chicks that mama has and place the card under the chicken mama's cutout.  Then have the child count out the correct number of chicks (pom poms) and have them run for a hug from their mama.  Then pull another card and place the number card under the mama's belly and have the child choose how many chicks for that mama.  Then have the child count how many total chicks there are at the playdate and find that number card and place it in the middle below the other two number cards.  Now have the mamas suggest a game for the chicks to play and have them run along off their mama's belly.  But just then....ding dong!  There are new mama chickens at the playdate!  And the activity continues until "Peak Fun" has been reached or child's interest wanes. 

Afterwards my daughter had a grand time cuddling the chicks and having them play together on the quilt I had laid out:

Extension and clean up:  have child lay out the cards from lowest to highest number and then stack them up, here's my daughter doing just that:

Apple Tree Farm Felt Activity

An imaginative and hands on mathematics lesson with pre-K aged kiddos!

I made apple trees all with varying amounts of apples on them.  (I got the template for the apple trees from a book called Felt Board Fun by Liz and Dick Wilmes).  The apple amounts ranged from 2 to 12.  I then counted out 12 plastic cube counters in the color red to represent the apples.  I then let my daughter go pick out a maraca from our instruments.

The materials needed for this lesson :)

 I then welcomed her to the Tree Farm where we were going to eat some fresh apples!  I asked her which tree were we going to get our apples from first?  And she pointed to her tree of choice and we counted how many apples were on it.  Then I gathered the "apples" and cupped them in my hands while she shook her maraca at the tree and we counted each apple as it fell from the tree until we got to the number of apples on the tree.  She then got to gobble up the apples and I'd ask her how many apples had worms in them and if we had to throw them away how many would we have left (subtraction)  We then moved our trees to the side of the board and lined them up by which one had the most apples and which had the least.  Then it was free time to play at the board with the apple trees and counters.  (Which turned into building gymnastics equipment for her Littlest Pet Shop friends, lol)

 This was a simplified version, a more advanced version would be to have little mini apples on each tree that we took off, but I ran out of time to make it all before I just wanted to do the lesson, ha ha. 

My daughter "spitting out" one of the apples that had a worm in it, lol
 

Strawberry Shortcake 4th Birthday Party!

As my daughter's 4th birthday approached we asked her what she wanted to do for her birthday and what kind of party.  She mentioned playing soccer, swimming, chalk drawings, riding bikes, and finally decided on a Strawberry Shortcake theme.  We decided a creek-side locale where she could swim, ride her bike and kick a soccer ball around on a field with her friends would be perfect, so we remembered a hidden gem in the CO mountains where she could have her (cup) cake and eat it too!

Below are some ideas to make your Strawberry Shortcake lovin' lady's (or dude's) birthday a blast!

1)  Tattoos for Kids!  Temporary of course.  My daughter is a huge fan of temporary tats (they even worked great as a reward to potty train back in the day) so as I did an Amazon search for Strawberry Shortcake I came across the tattoos, chopped them up so kids could easily pick the one they wanted and served them up as a station at the party which I called "Tattoos by T.N. Honey." (TN Honey is an 80's Strawberry Shortcake character discovered in a google search of character names from the series)  We have a small table made by Crayola which is only about a foot high with fold up legs so on it we placed a placard with the "Tattoos by T.N. Honey" sign along with a mug holding the tattoos, a shallow bowl full of water, and a few pink and green hand towels.  The parents helped their kids choose and apply the tattoos. 

Birthday girl with guest applying their Strawberry Shortcake tattoos

2) Alliteration Antics!  I love alliteration and I love linking the food served at a party to the theme, and with a Strawberry Shortcake party there are so many options, because there are a zillion characters in the series.  I found an exhaustive list of characters from the series going all the way to the 80s and used it to come up with some fun names for the foods served at the party: 

Strawberries- "Strawberry Shortcake Fresh Berries"
Blueberry Yogurt Tubes- "Blueberry Muffin's Yogurt"
Watermelon- "Lemon Meringue's Melons" (this got a chuckle from the adults!)
Juice Pouches- "Cherry Jam's Juice Jubilee"
Raspberries- "Raspberry Torte's Razzy Berries"
Water Bottles- "Huckleberry Pie's Hydration Station"
Celery- "Cola Chameleon's Celery"
Carrots- "Custard's Kitty Carrots"
Bagel Bites- "Buttercups Bagel Bites"

3) Treats aren't just for Trickin'
Birthdays in our family have sweets, and lots of them, so we served up those chewy Strawberry flavored candies that come wrapped as a Strawberry.  At Shmalshmart as we call it, I found "decorate your own" white mugs and using the Strawberry Shortcake stickers I found I decorated the paper in the mugs and used them to serve up candy at the party.  My daughter had a blast scooping up the Strawberry candies and serving them to her friends. 

Birthday girl scooping up the strawberry candies to serve to her birthday guests

The "decorate your own" cups where I just added stickers in our Strawberry Shortcake theme all around the exterior

Candy delivery equals a happy customer!

4) Creek Fun!  Bear Creek in the CO mountains offered us a nice shallow section where the kids could play, so a few buckets and cups was all they needed for fun in the sun!

Birthday girl splashing in Bear Creek with her gal pals

5) Pupcake's Cupcakes!  My good friend Amber with Blissfully Sweet Cupcakes makes some amazing cupcakes and jumped at the chance to tackle some sweets with a girly Strawberry Shortcake theme.

Blisfully Sweet Cupcakes and favor labels altered from apple cutouts into strawberry shapes 

Birthday girl before chowing down on her strawberry Blissfully Sweet Cupcake

6) Parting is such "sweet" sorrow!  Guests also went home with party favors with a berrylicious message such as "Hope you had a berry good time" "You are a berry good friend" "Your friendship is so berry sweet!"  I printed these messages on Apple cutouts from the Dollar Tree which I altered by snipping a bit from the bottom so it would look more narrow like a Strawberry instead of the rounded wide bottom of an apple.  Party favors for our guests (aged 2-5)included age appropriate bubbles, pink/red/green bouncy balls, red and white suckers, and stickers (I bought a pack of 5 sheets of Strawberry Shortcake stickers and then cut the sheets into strips so that each guest gets 3-4 stickers)

7) Pinata!  My daughter preferred a Cupcake piñata we found at Target over the Strawberry Shortcake one at Party City, maybe smacking your fave character seems mean? Lol, but it fit with the theme so we went for it.  We were happy with the quality of it as well, we had 23 children at the party and the piñata lasted long enough for every kid to have a turn to swing it four times (since our daughter was turning 4 we did 4 swings per kiddo) and then half the kids got another turn before it broke open,  We used a foam bat also for safety in case a kid ran in the way and to make the piñata last longer. 

The kids jumped out of the creek and headed straight to the pinata

8) Décor, less is more!  When you are outside that is!  CO mountains can be windy, so I didn't go overboard with things that may pop, blow away, etc.  I got some Strawberry Shortcake pink balloons and paired them with some solid red and white balloons we had left over from little bro's superhero party and hung them sporadically in the trees over the food table.  I also got red and green solid colored plates from Dollar Tree and then got Strawberry Shortcake napkins, I think just a touch of the image of Strawberry Shortcake paired with colors in the theme is more than enough (and cheaper!)

Little bro playing with the balloons during party cleanup

9) Don't balk at my chalk!  My daughter loves chalk drawing, so we got a Strawberry Shortcake plastic bucket from Party City, filled it with some dessert shaped chalk I found many months previous at Target and put it out for kids, especially the younger set to color with. 

10)  Bikes, Scooters, Push Toys, Oh My!  We instructed guests in the invite to bring their wheeled toys such as bikes or scooters to ride on as this locale had a ~1/4 mile or so loop around it where we could see the kids as they rode around together. 

Birthday girl and guest getting ready for their bike ride

Birthday girl riding her new Strawberry Shortcake bike while Dad runs alongside