Cookies!

The theme for the day was cookies and it provided lots of fun learning experiences as well as a yummy snack.  The focus topic this month is math and there were lots of different ways of incorporating it in this lesson.

We had circle time and practiced counting the days of the month and predicting what that next picture in our calendar pattern would be the next day.  After that, I pulled out Miss M's wooden Melissa and Doug cookie set (it's actually a mixture of two sets that she got for her birthday) and we used it to sing and count along to the song of the day, a reboot of "One Potato, Two Potato".  Miss M actually made up her own version of this song using the cookies a week or so ago.

I brought out the shape manipulatives and they really had a good time with these.  We used the pattern cards in the last to see if they could duplicate the designs.  This was actually a little more difficult than I expected, so I think I will make up a few more examples and have them practice some more.  We tried a little tracing and I realized that I needed to teach them how to hold the shape with one hand use the pencil with the other.  This took a little more coordination than they have at the moment but they tried and that counts.  Mostly they wanted to stack the shapes into tall towers so we counted them and did a little sorting by color and shape.  Next time I think we will talk about how many sides they have and how they are the same and different.

We tried the cookie craft but they were not interesting in making matching pairs or even putting very many of them on the plate.  They liked adding the sticky dots and making designs with them but this activity was over pretty quickly.

I happened to have  a few unfrosted sugar cookies left over from a neighbor activity so I mixed up some quick powder sugar glaze while they decorated their paper cookies.  I gave them each a little container with the white frosting and turned it into a little lesson on color mixing.  Miss M wanted orange and Littlest's favorite color seems to be purple so we added food coloring and they got to mix to discover the new color before frosting their cookie and having snack.  This was a popular activity.  :)

At the end I brought out the play dough I made last week and we had fun adding nutmeg, cloves and cinnamon to it so it really smelled like Christmas.  All three had a great time strengthening their hands by patting out the dough and improving their fine motor with the beads.  They played for fifteen minutes, cutting out their own play dough cookies and decorating them, plus my kitchen smelled nice when they were done.

I was disappointed that my printer wasn't communicating well with my computer so we couldn't do the cookie jar activity with the online printable but I am hoping to do it another time.  It is meant for a handwriting activity but since my kids are still a little young for writing, I've got an idea to make it a shape matching game.  Print two copies, one on card stock if you can, and color them (you could have the kids color them if you wanted).  Laminate and tape a ziplock bag onto the back of the card stock jar.  Cut out the shapes from the other one and put them in the bag.  The children take turns pulling a "cookie" out of the jar and matching it to the front.  Another variation would be to print 3-5 copies of the jar.  Color the master jar and one other jar exactly the same and then color the other shapes differently from these (so the master circle is blue, there is another blue circle, a yellow one and a red one in the bag).  This way you can work on same/different (these are both circles but this one is green and the other is blue) and sorting (let's put all the green shapes together).  I hope that makes sense.

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