Play & Learn Class - St. Patrick's Day/Rainbows

This week we held our first Play & Learn class.  I am partnering with Kindermusik with Carol Anne Friesen to offer these monthly pilot classes this spring.

I divided the class into three exploration centers.  Each center provided an invitation for parents and children to Play & Learn together!  Posted near by were objectives, the PA Dept. of Education Early Childhood standards that each activity met, and vocabulary word suggestions to use for language development.

This month we had a St. Patrick's Day/Rainbow theme.

We painted with Happy Hooligans' homemade watercolor paints discussing wet/dry.   We experimented with a resist technique using crayons to draw, then painting over the drawing with the watercolors.  White crayons created secret messages for us to uncover!  

We engaged our senses while exploring rainbow rice sensory trays.  We poured, scooped, and searched for gold that the tricky leprechauns hid!  I used Pink and Green Mama's directions for dying the rice.

We sorted paint chips, matching them to the pictures of every day colors around us.  Our older learners made their own rainbows with them as well!  This is an awesome FREE activity that you can repeat at home by getting paint samples at your local hardware store (that's where I found the pictures of the everyday objects as well)!

Families went home with a handout summarizing what we did in class which provided suggestions on how to extend the learning at home.

Check out which centers were the children's favorites on our Facebook page.  I'm looking forward to our Earth Day theme in April!