Pp popcorn day- preschool style

Another fun themed day, popcorn!  Also, could this school year be going any faster?  Already on the letter P?  Goodness, Bee and Lou are going to be in high school in like five seconds.

So first we talked about how popcorn grows, different ways to pop it (microwave was the popular vote).  We looked at this ear of popcorn.  We talked about how the Native Americans (which, by the way, are we saying 'Indian' again?  Seems like I'm hearing it that way.) would pop the popcorn in the ground in a jar with hot coals surrounding it or they would put an ear on a stick and pop it right on the ear over an open fire.

The kids wanted to see the ear I brought in popped.  So, later we did.  We stuck it in a paper bag and put it in the microwave.  They were tickeled to see what it did.  This picture is after the class picked off of it.  The paper bag was half full of popcorn too. 

I was disappointed with the selections for popcorn related books. If someone has a better one, I'd love to hear about it. I settled for this book, Popcorn by Alex Moran which is an easy reader so it's super short. It's not a bad book, I was just looking for something different. I dragged it out a bit and talked about the pictures some. 

Then we did some taste testing.  I brought in store bought pre-popped popcorn in three flavors.  I had a little cup with each flavor in it.  Each child dumped their cup out on a paper towel.  We sorted out the colors and I told them what each was.  We tasted each flavor separately.  We had cheese, caramel and butter. I asked the kids to choose which was their favorite.  We used a set of pictures of each child that we use for attendance to make a graph.  They took turns and placed their photo next to the flavor (my colored paper popcorn pieces represented the flavors) they liked best.  I think we had 12 friends like cheese best and 3 or 4 like the other two each.  All of this velcroed to our flannel board. 

Then we played this 'roll a popcorn' game.I made a grid sheet for each child and we rolled the dice.  I made up a 'fast' dice with big numbers and we had a dice with smaller numbers.  I wanted to be able to speed up the game if needed.  

Honestly, the kids were all over the place with their counting as we tried to color in, say, 7 squares (yellow for butter, orange for cheese or brown for caramel).  We all ended at different points.  Oh well.

Bee and Lou always do a test run of games for me and somethings they find staying with the group easier than my other little people.   They actually decided to play separately and race each other.

Wait, Lou in funny glasses, we must see more of this. 

We also danced to Laurie Berkner's song Popcorn Calling Me.  It's a fun one.  The chorus has you sizzle sizzle sizzle (repeated) then POP, pop, pop.  I not very good about making up 'dance moves' to kiddo songs, but this song lent itself to some good popcorn like dancing easily.

I think I've gotten things out of order now, but at some point, we played a Pp puddle game too.   I had cut out felt puddles and sloppily stitched on numbers 1-15.  I laid them around the room and had the kids jump from puddle to puddle while I played some rain music I got on itunes.  It was one of those 'nature sounds' songs.  When the music stopped, they had to get to a puddle, look at their number, confirm with any buddies also on the number what the number was and be ready for me.  

Then I called out a handful of numbers each time to 'start the rain again.'  Friends on those numbered puddles clapped on their legs, or rubber their hands together, or snapped their fingers to make rain sounds.  Then I started the rain music back up. We played this several times.  Everyone enjoyed it.  I may figure out a way to rework this for umbrella day.   This worked really well at home too.  I was able to stop the music on numbers I knew Lou needed to practice. I'm tricky like that. 

Here the craft from the day.  Pp popcorn on a letter purple P. Looks like Lou's glue is still wet. 

Here are a few things I set out for arrival time and dismissal time.  These letter cards make up pretty quickly, but I won't make many more sets.  The kids just don't work with them.  Lou will at home sometimes, but  will never choose it on his own. 

Here are the words from the bible verse to put in order.  It's such a short verse that it wasn't too hard for anyone.

This was a favorite for us at home and several groups of kids played memory with these purple popsicles during preschool too.  Thankfully they were well played with , because they turned out to be a good bit of work to make.

I just printed out Pp word pictures (2 of each) and glued them to purple paper popsicle shapes.  Each stick had a front and a back piece.  I hot glued these around a popsicle stick stick, after cutting out the purple shapes, laminating, and re-cutting.  

Then you lay them out 'memory match' style and start matching.  This idea is based off of an idea I saw at Eat Drink Chic (which I found via Pinterest).

Our leader brought popcorn for snack and there was a lot of vacuuming to do after class.  We didn't eat too much popcorn because Lou and I went home and made kettle corn for a snack after lunch.   All that popcorn talk all morning,  I couldn't get it out of my mind.