"Airplane"

Remember when you were a kid and things/places seemed HUGE, and you visit as an adult and you have a more realistic view? I feel like the gym is that way for the preschoolers, especially the 2's & 3's that haven't been to gym class before.

Today being the first day of preschool we played my "airplane" game. This is a great game to play when teaching how to move around a large space. The kids pretend to be airplanes (standing up, arms out) and "fly" around the gym. They can "fly" as fast as they want, but when they are landing at an airport they have to slow down to land and come to a stop before they hit the "control tower". This year the control towers were big Lego bricks stacked on top of each other placed in the 4 corners of the gym. I asked the kids places they'd gone on vacation (I had 4 pictures pre-printed and steered answers that way), and they "flew" to Disneyland, Legoland, the pool and Great Wolf Lodge. They work on using their eyes to watch for friends, because we don't want ANY plane crashes!

 Some of the classes were so funny, they stopped and looked at each picture and really pretended to be there :) Blue was Disneyland

 Green was Great Wolf Lodge

 Red was Legoland

Yellow was the pool

The 5 day pre-K class had a Lego theme today so they flew to different parts of Lego City (also pictures printed out online and taped to the big bricks)

I'm happy to report, we didn't have any crashes, a few that ran so fast they tripped, but no crashes! And then, because it wasn't raining, we were able to go to the playground and get some first day nervous jitters out.