CASTLES AND ROYALTY: PK-4

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Ana's Week

Whereas week one of preschool was quite the running start for Aria, week two was a lesson in adaptability. Between the Labor Day holiday (and daddy being home), my birthday, and a surprise hurricane that brought surprise guest into town, there were loads of distractions to help us get off course. While the week’s activities were fun and both girls seemed to enjoy most of the things that we did, I didn’t necessarily see as much learning happen as had happened week one. Part of that might be due to the theme not lending itself to super strenuous learning activities (since we are doing a lengthy fairy tales unit in the spring and wanted to save most of the fairy tales for the fall), but part of it was that we simply started and ended the week with so much going on around us that staying on topic wasn’t easy.

Aria and Skylar loved playing in the castle that Zach and I built for them out of cardboard boxes, though we quickly discovered that we should have been saving up large boxes. We had to build a patchwork castle out of small boxes, which not only looked pretty ridiculous but struggled to hold up to the two rough children who powered in and out of the castle at high speed over and over again! Having a castle in front of us was super helpful, however, when it came to learning castle terms, and we had a great time playing puppet shows inside the castle.

Dress up was a favorite portion of the week, with Aria dressing up like a princess one day and having a princess tea party and dressing up like a knight in the Armor of God another day. Even Skylar got into the dress up and was able to wear her own knight costume that I found in the Halloween section of the dollar store!
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Our week was supposed to culminate in a fun trip to Medieval Times in Atlanta on Saturday as a reward for making it through schoolwork, but our trip had to be postponed when Hurricane Irma blasted into our area. We had no desire to fight the interstate traffic of everyone fleeing north and figured it was best to hole up and hunker down. Luckily, our area wasn’t hit badly at all and our home made it through safe and sound with no damage, but hopefully we can make up that trip to Atlanta soon! Even though Aria wasn’t as passionate about Castles and Royalty as she was about the Ocean unit, I am glad we have a strong basis for these concepts before doing our fairy tales unit in the spring and diving more deeply into knights, royal characters, and mystical castles.

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Jessica's Week:

When I started planning a fairytale week for my little princess I was shocked to find very little in the way of learning games/activities centered around the different classic princess stories on Pinterest. I saw lots of printable worksheets with the same puzzles, do a dot, writing copy work etc but Taegan gets tired of those same formats over and over just with different graphics. I wanted something more active and fun, but still educational. I dug deep and was able to find a few of these but most of our activities this week were things mom made up.

 It's so easy now days to just Pinterest ideas for a theme and avoid re-inventing the wheel but sometimes being inventive really isn't any harder than recreating a pin-worthy post. In my Pinterest adventures I often find I need to buy/gather a lot of random things I might not have and then do a lot of the prep work to tailor them to pre-k level. It's nice having someone else come up with the ideas most of the time but when I put in a lot of effort and they don't work out as easily as pictured it’s a bit of a letdown. This week was much easier. I was able to use materials we had on hand, tailor them to Taegan's interests (right now that means lots of moving around and pretend play), and focus on learning skills I thought she could use some extra practice with. For example, most of the activities I created revolved around learning left/right, order sorting, and alphabet with upper and lower case mixed together.  I had her sort shoes for Cinderella and stuffed bears for goldilocks. We made an alphabet walk of beanstalk giant footsteps and hunted for alphabet rose petals to stick back on the enchanted beast's rose. We talked about plot lines and acted out each tale in order of events. I have a background in film and theater acting so sharing this passion with my daughter was extra special. It was also a nice positive outlet what with her flair for the dramatic and all haha.  In effort not to leave out our new found love of Montessori life skill work I had her measure, pour, and mix porridge in a sensory tub and do each of the seven dwarfs chores with a hi-ho attitude 😉. Braiding Rapunzel's hair was a bit too advanced for her pre-k motor skills but since that was our only fail you won't hear me complain! 
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 I chose to focus on one Disney princess story, one common fairytale she was unfamiliar with, and one other lesson non-fiction royalty related (aka castles, kingdom hierarchy, biblical kingdom, family crest). She loved reliving her favorite Disney films but really had a blast with the new fairytales as well. This was a great week and I can't wait to do it again next year with a new set of stories.