fspecialdays

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SPECIAL DAYS:

Pancakes in Pajamas Day (for the Letter P)

Have a Special Pancakes In Pajamas Day: Everyone wears pajamas to school and eats a pancake breakfast together. Follow your regular routine by opening up your learning centers and letting children play while taking turns helping you mix pancake batter, set the tables, etc. To make the morning's play special to go along with the special breakfast, here are some ideas:

Place a toy skillet and pancake-turner-type spatula in the play kitchen and let children flip cardboard pancakes that have the letter P and p on them.

Hang Pp's near the fine motor area and hint for children to practice making playdoh Pp's.

Place only water and pitchers in the water table for children to practice pouring.

If the following ideas sound familiar, it's because they are the same ones listed in the "Letter Pp" section of my website. There are so many words beginning with the letter Pp that "Pancakes in Pajamas" day can actually be a fun kind of "review day" at the end of a Letter Pp unit, so rather than forcing you to link back to that page where most of my Pp ideas are, I decided to just repeat them below:

Creative Art:

1. Children do polka-dot painting on paper plates. Hang polka-dot fabirc squares around the area as "suggestions."

2. Children do potato printing

Pre-Math: Children sort polka-dot fabric squares or colored pom-poms.

Fine Motor: Play with Parquetry Shapes and Pegs & Pegboards. Introduce the names of these games to the class. Also play with puzzles.

Gross Motor:Parachute play

Language: How about practicing the old familiar tongue twister: "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers" or make up new ones like "Patsy Pauley picked purple petunias." Get the children involved. The words they come up with may not be real words but the important thing for this activity is that the beginning Pp sound is used (or so I was taught).

Have a Peanut Hunt: Hide peanuts as you would Easter eggs and let the children find them.

Instead of the pancake breakfast, you could make Peanut Butter Playdoh with the children (1 cup each of peanut butter, honey, oatmeal, and powdered milk). Children then mold it on paper plates before eating.

Other P Snack Options:Pineapple, pizza, or mashed potatoes

Read the book "If You Give a Pig a Pancake" by Laura Numeroff; illustrated by Felicia Bond: This is about a pig who's always wanting something. What a perfect story to go with "Pancakes in Pajamas" day.

Take-Home Textured P: Children glue popped popcorn on a pink or purple paper P cutout, or let them tear pieces of pink paper and glue them on a purple P cutout.

Other Favorite P Books:

*Curious George and the Pizza, by Margaret Rey: In this Curious George story, George gets into trouble at the pizza shop.

*Pete's A Pizza, by William Steig: Pete's parents pretend he's a pizza. (This book has won a "Caldecott Artist" award.)
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Here's some humor shared with me from Linda Y:
One of the best days I have experienced with my Head Start classroom is when we had Pajama Day! The children AND staff wore their favorite pajamas. It was a blast! The children keep asking to do it again and again. I remember one little boy that was so shy, but those spiderman pajamas brought him right out. The only bad thing that happened is that it was my turn to be bus monitor and I did have to take a child in a store to use the bathroom while in route to go home. He had to go like right now, and of course, I couldn't let him go in by himself, so there we went. I will never forget! It was a motorcycle shop to beat all! Although we got a few strange looks, the children and the staff shared a lot of laughs. It was definitely a day to remember. We are having it again this year!

Valentine's Day Party:
From Stormie:

Although I'm posting ideas below as soon as I can, my very favorite activities for Valentine's Day (many of which make great party ideas) have been reserved for my "VALENTINE'S DAY" booklet (see the "Stormie's Stuff for Teachers" section of my website).

Spin the Bottle: Place a Coke-shaped bottle in the center of Group Time. Choose a child to spin it gently (this can be tricky so it's a good challenge). When the bottle stops spinning, the child the open end is pointing to gets to pick out a candy from a variety of them you have placed in a special container, then that child spins the bottle. Continue the game until everyone gets to spin the bottle and choose a candy.

Fun snack that children can help make in advance: Party Pink Applesauce: Steam 12 apples (peeled and cored) in 1/3 cup of water. When apples are tender near the end of the cooking time, add 2 Tablespoons of cinnamon Red-Hots.

Classroom Party Decor: Hang from the ceiling: Red, pink, gray, white, and purple heart-shaped rings and paper doily hearts.

Beanbag Toss: What would a Valentine's Day party be without the game of tossing beanbags into a heart-shaped opening of a cardboard box? Cut several different sizes of openings into the box making sure that the smallest one is still large enough for a beanbag to go through.

Cooking Project: Krispy Peanut Butter Hearts: These are wickedly sweet, but after all, it is for party day (make the day before):
Children help combine these ingredients: 4 cups marshmallows, 1/4 cup margarine, 1/2 cup peanut butter and 1/8 teaspoon salt. Melt in a heavy saucepan over low heat, stirring occasionally until smooth (give each child a carefully guided turn at stirring). Then pour this over a mixture of 4 cups rice krispy type cereal and 1 1/2 cups M&M Chocolate Mini Baking Bits and thoroughly toss and coat with a spoon (with children's help). With greased fingers, have children then take turns creating heart-shaped cookies by pressing the mixture into a greased heart-shaped cookie cutter (or other Valentine related shape). Lift the heart with a spatula and place it on waxed paper. Place them in the frig until party day tomorrow.

Here's a super-simple gross motor singing game I created:
Won't You Be My Valentine?
(Tune: Mary Had a Little Lamb)
Won't you be my valentine, valentine, my valentine?
Won't you be my valentine and ______ along with me?
During Group Time, one child (standing inside the circle) chooses a partner as the others sing the song up to _____. At this point, that child decides how s/he and partner will move around the circle (walk, run, skip, etc). Then the song is repeated as the two partners skip (or whatever action was chosen) around inside the circle and the blank is orally filled in with the appropriate word (skip). Then the chosen partner takes a turn.choosing someone. This game can get a little too long in order to give everyone in the class a turn, so I suggest you divide the children into two groups and let the other adult play a game with one half while you play this game with your half.

From Joan L in Athens, Ohio:
Special Bingo: Stormie, I created a very simple "heart shapes" Bingo game for my Pre-Math Learning Center (that two children can play at a time) on this special party day. It's made even more special by providing them with those tiny heart-shaped candies to use for markers.  I instruct them not to eat any of the "markers" as they can come to me and choose a couple CLEAN ones from a bowl for eating after they play the game and have washed their hands. Obviously, there isn't time for all the children to play this one game so they can choose candies from the bowl after playing other games that day too.
To make the game:
Make two gameboards by dividing two 8 1/2 x 11" pieces of posterboard into 9 squares (use a pencil first in case of mistakes then go over those lines with a permanent marker).  Next, draw around a small heart stencil in the center of each square creating the same sized heart in each one.  Then, decorate each heart differently by placing a different set of stickers on each -- that's 18 "different" hearts.  (I have stickers by the rolls, but if you don't have that many stickers, do something like print a different letter of the alphabet inside each heart.)  Laminate the gameboards.  Now, from a separate piece of posterboard, cut out 19 hearts from that same stencil and decorate each of those hearts to match the ones on the gameboards.  Laminate them.
To play the game:
Two children sit side by side at a table with a gameboard in front of them.  They mix the loose hearts as they would a deck of cards and then place the stack of hearts face-down between their two gameboards.  Alternately, they each turn over the top heart on the stack.  The child who has a match on his/her gameboard places a candy heart on that match.  (The loose heart is simply placed aside.)  Now the other child turns a heart over from the stack.

What do you do for your classroom Valentine's Day party? Please share it with all of us.
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Reminder from Stormie: If you would like to begin collecting ALL my current classroom ideas (each on a 4 x 6" index card), as well as new ones that I create, you can do so by ordering my "Activity Cards." Click here to check them out.

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