Hi Mommy Teachers! It’s Casey stopping over from Kidspired Creations! As a former Pre-K and Kindergarten teacher, and a current stay-at-home mommy, I always try to think of different ways I can approach play time to make it a great learning experience too!
Today, we invited Mr. Potato Head to join in on our fun. My boys and I were all sitting around MPH and adding different parts to his head. He looked like a monster with an arm sticking out of his eye socket, eyes where his feet should go and a nose in each ear. As I watched my boys, James (turning 4 next week), was holding MPH and bossing Leyson (20 months) about what he should do with the nose in his hand.
I then turned this into a learning opportunity about sharing. I took all of the parts off of MPH and then told the boys that they can only put one body part in at a time and then it was Brother’s turn. An eye in for James, a nose in for Leyson, then back to James. See what kind of a cool monster we can make together!
This reminded me of a time that I subbed for a 2nd grade classroom. I had the students all participate in creating a monster that I drew on the board based on their descriptions. They each told me one thing to describe what the monster looked like and I added that to our drawing. I then had each student write a paper describing in complete detail what the monster looked like so that anyone who had not seen the monster that I drew could draw the same monster on their own. (What? The teacher didn’t leave a lesson plan for me and I taught the wee little ones… no clue what to do with 2nd graders).
So I asked James to describe the monster to me: “MPH has a huge blue muscles on his arm that is sticking out where his nose should be.”
Then, I got to thinking… how else can we learn with Mr. Potato Head?
Here are my top 10 ways that you can join in on the fun!
5. HAND-EYE COORDINATION 
Mommy: “This next body part rhymes with ‘south.'”9. SORTING
Place 1 pair of eyes, 1 nose, 2 ears, 2 arms, 1 mouth, 1 hat, 1 mustache and 1 pair of shoes in a bag. Have your child reach his/her hand in the bag without looking and grab one body part. They must then guess which part they have in their hand.
Now, if you don’t have a Mr. Potato Head, he’s everywhere… in fact, he pretty much has his own website where you can search for all of the different Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head kits available. ENJOY!!!
A special THANK YOU to the ultimate Mommy Teacher, Jessica, for allowing me to share my playtime experiences with every one!
