Theme: Bouncy Big Balloons
Phoneme: /b/
Materials: 3-4 balloons (not blown up). I used red, yellow, and blue 15" balloons.
Vocabulary and Concepts: high/low, empty/full, big/bigger/biggest, blow, bounce, hands, head, finger, hard, soft, "My turn", predicting, sitting, standing, turn-taking, stop/go
Beginning: Transition song - Bouncy, Bouncy, Bouncy
Today I told the kids I had something in my back pocket that was little but would get bigger. I took it out and held it in my closed hand. What is it? The children made guesses before I showed them a balloon.
Miss Carrie: What color is the balloon?
Children: (red, yellow, blue)
Miss Carrie: What do I need to do to make it bigger?
Children: Blow in it. (One answered "Put water in it!" Hmmmmm, not today.)
Miss Carrie: How many times should I blow it in to make it big?
Children: (predicted that I would need to blow 3 times, 10 times, A LOT times.)
I started to blow and the children counted how many times I had to blow in the balloon to make it big. The first time it took 7 breaths. I pulled another balloon out of my back pocket and repeated the process. Then I pulled out a third balloon and repeated the process.
Miss Carrie: How many balloons do we have? (3) What can we do with these balloons? (pop them, play with them, hit them in the air)
We stood up and bounced or hit the three balloons to each other. The kids were laughing and having a great time. After 5 minutes I asked for the balloons and we sat down. This time I gave instructions that we would remain sitting on our pockets with legs crisscross or out in front, and hit or bounce the three balloons to our friends.
The adults in the room would model the vocabulary, concepts, and description of the balloons during the activity. If a balloon popped, we would laugh very loud before throwing the broken balloon away. When it was time to move onto the next part of our schedule, I told the children that the balloons would be on my chair and that they could choose to play with the balloons during Work Time.
