P is for Princess and the Pea!

With my two older boys in school, my preschoolers at home are both of my girls. When I suggested to my 4-year-old daughter that we could have a P is for Princess day, she was pretty excited. I don’t think the boys would have been quite so thrilled The baby decided to take a 3 HOUR NAP (heavenly!) so the girls and I just kept playing. Fun morning. (These activities would also work for handsome little princes too!)

• Getting all Dolled Up … a little princess prep Not necessary, but definitely fun!
  1. Do your hair … my older daughter was happy to have her hair done “fancy” today. Ribbons, bows and all. My 2-year-old has a little cold and was grumpy today. She preferred her bedhead hairdo That works too.
  2. Make princess crowns … these two got new fancy tiaras for Christmas, but of course, they wanted to make their own
     • Cut out a simple crown design.
     • Add long strips of paper to each side.
     • Decorate with stickers, crayons, jewels, and glitter (I didn’t dare today!)
  3. Add a gown … they each picked out a dress-up princess gown to wear.

• Peas and Carrots Snack
  1. Spread out a blanket on the floor
  2. Put carrots and peapods in a bowl for the kids to snack on while you read the book.

• Read “The Princess and the Peas and Carrots” by Harriet Ziefert … the illustrations are one of my favorite things about this story. And I love that Rosebud’s dad tells her the real “Princess and the Pea” story as a bedtime story (a fold-out book inside). A cute little twist on the traditional tale. I made sure to add that Rosebud’s mom HELPED her clean up her room after her tantrum
  • NOTE: You could always go with a more traditional Princess and the Pea story.

 

• Where is the Pea? … my girls loved this game
  1. Cut a simple bed frame out of brown paper.
  2. Cut out several colorful “mattresses”. I used one of each of the basic colors because I wanted to work on color names with my 2-year-old.
  3. Cut out a smallish green circle for the “pea”
  4. TO ASSEMBLE:
     • Tape your bed frame to the wall (down low)
     • Stack the colorful “mattresses” by taping the top edge (so it flaps open from the bottom.
     • Hide the “pea” under one of the mattresses
  5. TO PLAY:
     • With the kids, count the mattresses. We had 10!
     • Name all of the colors.
     • Have the kids tell you one color. Lift the mattress to see if the pea is hiding underneath! 
  6. NOTE: my girls’ favorite part of the day was these little paper princesses I made with their faces. I just google searched “princess clipart” and chose the one I liked. I cut out the face and substituted one of my girls. They loved them. I tried to draw my own so you can print them out and color the hair and dresses … not bad

 

• Our ‘P’ pea banner … we had to have some decorations for our fancy princess day.
  1. Cut out several circles from green cardstock.
  2. Think of as many ‘P’ words as you can.
  3. Write the word & draw a picture of it.
  4. String them on a ribbon and hang up!

 

• The Pillows and the Pea Game … this game was pretty entertaining
  1. Spray paint a golf ball green = the pea.
  2. Set out several pillows on the floor.
  3. TO PLAY:
     • Hide the golf ball “pea” under one of the pillows.
     • Have the kids take turns sitting on the pillows to discover where the pea is hiding! To make it harder, try stacking 2 or 3 pillows together.
     • When they find the pea, let them hide it under a pillow for the next person to find.

• Princess & the Pea Lunch … it just makes lunch more fun
  1. Mattress sandwich = layer bread, PB, bread, jelly, repeat.
     • We topped our mattress sandwich with a green M&M “pea”
  2. Frozen Peas
  3. Cheese cut with P cookie cutters. I have ones similar to these here.

P is for Pizza

We are off to a good start this week. I stayed up way too late last night getting some things ready for today, but it ended up being a lot of fun. Today, we had a great P is for Pizza day. Lots of counting and creating and we ended up with yummy homemade pizzas for lunch!

• Read “The Little Red Hen (Makes a Pizza)” by Philemon Sturges … I thought this was a cute story. The little red hen has run out of bread and decides to make a pizza. The cat, dog and duck follow the traditional tale and refuse to help. The ending has a new twist where the hen actually shares her pizza.

• Build “P is for PIZZA” … my kids love using this Letter Construction Set.
  1. Set up all of your pizza books for the kids to see.
  2. Help them find the word “PIZZA” on each book cover.
  3. Build the word “PIZZA” with the Letter Construction Set. Available here. Instruction cards that come with the set have directions for upper and lower-case letters.

• Pizza Parlor Game … after a little prep the night before, this was a fun game.
  1. Cut out several pizza crusts by tracing a small bowl or plate on orange foam craft paper.
  2. Cut out pizza sauce by tracing the same bowl or plate on red foam craft paper and cutting out in a slightly smaller wavy circle shape.
  3. Cut out your choice of pizza toppings from foam craft paper! We used:
     • cheese = yellow
     • pepperoni (or canadian bacon) = pink
     • olives = black
     • green bell peppers = green
     • mushrooms = white
  4. Make a “Pizza Menu” or print out the one I made here!
  5. Laminate your menu and cut it in half (so you have 2 menus). I use this Scotch laminator and love it.
  6. HOW TO PLAY:
     • Welcome your kids to your Preschool Pizza Parlor!
     • I started with all of the toppings in a big pile and they sorted them into this veggie tray.
     • Tell them that their first customer has arrived! Show them the menu and fill in the number of toppings you would like. I use Crayola Dry Erase Crayons. Seriously, the best and they’re washable!
       • NOTE: they also liked it when I just put an ‘X’ next to the toppings I wanted and they could put as much or as little on as they wanted.
     • Have them follow the menu and count out that many toppings.
     • Make a big deal about checking your pizza and gobbling it up when they’re done.

• Make homemade pizzas for lunch! … we were all hungry by lunchtime and this was the perfect meal.
  1. Let the kids help prepare your favorite pizza dough recipe. We used our go-to recipe and cut it in half.
  2. Give each of the kids their own ball of dough. Put a little flour on the table and help them roll it, squish it or stretch it out into a pizza shape.
  3. Transfer the dough to a baking sheet.
  4. Let the kids spread pizza sauce and choose the toppings they like. My 4-year-old wanted plain cheese. My 2-year-old likes olives and mini pepperoni. I had all of the above, plus orange bell peppers. Mmmm.

• Peg’s Pizza Place … a fun pizza game while we waited for our pizzas to cook!
1. Play Peg’s Pizza Place on PBSkids.org
2. The kids follow the directions to make simple pizzas.
3. They are also introduced to simple fractions. 

• Fruit Pizza … this was our treat after our family night this evening. Half of it was eaten before I remembered to take a picture A perfect way to end our P is for Pizza day.
1. Make a sugar cookie crust (or use store-bought sugar cookie dough!)
2. Mix 8 oz. cream cheese, ½ cup sugar (I used powdered sugar) and 1½ tsp. vanilla. Spread on cooled crust.
3. Top with sliced fruit.
4. TIP: The best tip I read was to slice the frosted crust before putting the fruit on. So much easier (and prettier) than trying to slice through all the fruit!

Make a Family Post Office

 

We don’t live very close to anyone in our family. We get to see grandmas and grandpas and cousins every now and then, but not nearly enough. My 3-year-old loves writing letters and drawing pictures. She is always asking for an envelope and a stamp so she can send her picture to Grandma or an uncle or cousin.

So, I decided to put together a Family Post Office. It was simple to do and I love that the kids can see their cousins and grandparents and send them letters more easily now! Here’s how we did it…

1. Print a Cover

• I found a 1” binder we already had and printed out a cover and side thingy  
• I love free printables, so if you’d like to use the same cover and spine label, just click HERE to download!

2. Add a pencil pouch

• Snap a pencil pouch right inside the front cover.
• Put big and little envelopes in the pouch.
• Add several different stamps.

3. Add paper and cards!

• Fill the left front pocket with blank paper and some different blank cards the kids can pick from.

 

4. Address Pages

• Find a picture of each family/person in our family.
• Add their address on the right side (mine are blurred out, but they’re there!)
• NOTE: I love that if the address changes, I can update and just print out that one page.
• Put the pages in plastic page protectors.

5. Back Cover

• On the back cover, I taped an envelope with a “How-To” address the front and where to put the stamp.
• There’s a little sticky note pad at the bottom … sometimes my 3 or 5-year-old will tell me what they want to say and I’ll write it out for them so they can copy it.

7. That’s it! … For now, it sits on the counter by our tin bucket filled with pencils, little scissors and a stapler. My kids know they can use these anytime they want to. They are quite the little creators.

8. Mail your letters!

• The last thing my kids do after they address the envelope and put a stamp on is to run it out to the mailbox and put the flag up.
• So exciting! Especially when the mailman brings a letter back to them!