Play to Learn, Learn to Play

Dramatic play where have you gone??? That is a question that I am sure so many kindergarten teachers have been wondering. Kids are in such need now days to learn to play, take turns, pretend, and defiantly share. This is something that Mrs. Gordon and I really wanted to see in our kindergarten classrooms this year. So we did it. We added a dramatic play center that will change out every two months or so with something else for the kids to play with. We started our year with a grocery store. We got very resourceful and changed our puppet stand into a checkout counter. We added a little paper and transformed it. We kept that up for August and September. For October and November we turned it into a pizza palace. We created a sign, menu, and an order sheet that the students use to help the imagination take off. The kids really are loving this center.

 








The Pizza Palace

Here is a free printable of our menu and the open and closed sign. Stay tuned to our blog and TPT store for more of our Dramatic play units.



Click on picture for the free download







Holy Cow!

I am sure you have been wondering where we have been. We had such high goals on our blog when we started it at the end of last year. But wow was our summer busy! We attended the Missouri Kindergarten Conference in St. Louis and gathered so many new ideas and walked away with that feeling that you are going to be great teacher this year. You know that feeling that we all walk away from conferences with. Then August came and the reality of getting the room ready begins. Mrs. Gordon and I had spent most of summer last year getting our rooms cleaned and arranged, then we got the school newsletter and our building was going with a building wide western theme. I don’t know about most people but news like that sent her and I into panic. How in the world would we incorporate western in our bright and colorful kindergarten rooms. We were not required to have much, but we did have to dress up the halls for back to school night. So we went shopping. I don’t think we did too bad! Here are a few pictures of some of our hallway decorations and bulletin boards. I just added a little cow print to my polka dot room and felt it worked.