Preschool Buckaroos

Our welcome week took on a "Wild West" theme because of the decorations in our classroom. The inspiration also came from a trip that my husband and I took with our family to TEXAS over the summer. The children enjoyed pretending to be cowboys and cowgirls. We read the book, Charlie the Ranch Dog by Ree Drummond together.

 The book is one of my favorites because it is told from the perspective of a basset hound. The class has already been hearing stories about my own basset hound, Dudley. I love to incorporate him into the classroom during story time.

We also engaged in many Wild West activities in the classroom. For example, we made our own cowboy hats and cowboy vests. We used brown paper bags to make the vests and the children were able to add fringe to their vest using scissors and color to decorate them.

Other activities included using a hool-a-hoop to rope cattle, panning for gold in the sensory table, and playing a board game called Buckaroo.

 We put pictures of cattle on onto small chairs and our carpet area became a place to herd the cattle. The children loved this large motor activity.

 The children loved sifting in the sensory table to find piece of gold. For this I found a yellow colored bean at the grocery store and added it to the sand. They used metal pans and sifters to pan for gold.

This game is great for the preschool age. They love to try to add items to the horse such as a hat, a saddle, and rope before the horse decided to buck it off. There we lots of laughs at this center!

We had a blast in the Wild, Wild, West together! I would consider making this unit longer in the future because there were so many great ideas online and in Mailbox magazines to incorporate learning into the classroom.