Hellobee

At the end of Fairy Tale week, I let the kids decide what we would learn about next.  They agreed that the following week should be Superhero week. I was a little nervous at first. My creative side works best when I have a deep understanding of my topics. Superheroes are not exactly my forte, although now being a mother to three little guys I am becoming more familiar with all of them, but in most cases they now know more about the characters than I do. So I tried to keep it simple and go with what I knew of the characters.

Throughout this week I didn’t really have a long project like the alphabet book in our Fairy Tale week, but I wanted something to be cohesive that linked all the days together. I cut up strips of paper with a superhero and their power written on it.  Each morning they picked which super hero they would be for the day. James kept cheating to make sure he got Spiderman and Lilly wanted to be Wonder Woman, but Nick and Joe had fun pretending to be a different super hero every day.

Batman

–          I looked around for some printables for this week and I came across a Batman preschool  pack.  I used several of their pages. The first was Heroes vs. Villains which had a page of heroes and villains to cut out and than a spot to paste the pictures in the correct spot. It gave us a chance to talk about what a hero is and what type of behaviors make someone a villain.  The kids love to cut and paste so they had a really great time with these.  The second was a Bat symbol memory game.  The Batman Symbol was printed in various colors and there were also cards with the name of the color spelled out.

–          Batman paper doll. I found this printable and let the kids use water colors to make their Batmans. They are still  hanging up on our wall because Lilly wont let me take them down.

Watercolor Batman Craft

–          While we were doing Superhero week, I found out the Barnes and Noble by my house was hosting a Batman day. We all wore our Batman attire (My mom took a boy’s shirt and sewed a little skirt on it for Lilly. She absolutely loves her Batman dress) and headed out for a special Batman story hour and craft time. The kids had a great time and it was a free event. Lilly ran around the whole day singing “na na na na na na na na Batman!”

Batman Day

Superman

–          Paper Airplanes – I taught the kids the saying “it’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s Superman.” So I decided to use the plane part as inspiration for an activity.  I found a site that had a lot of different paper air plane instructions. Although paper folding is not my forte, the kids had patience with me while I made their airplanes. We took them outside to have some airplane races.

–          Leaping over buildings in a single bound – not literally, but we did make a little obstacle course out of pillows, blankets and bean bag chairs. They took turns seeing if they could jump over objects like Superman could. I used soft items to jump over because if they didn’t clear it, they would usually fall.  They had a blast setting up their “buildings” and seeing if they could leap over them.

–          Superman snack – I made blue jello and mixed it in a cup with some whipped cream to make it look like clouds and the sky.  Since Superman can soar through the sky I thought it would be a fun addition to our day

–          We worked on the letter S by coloring in a Superman insignia.  Then we flipped the paper over and practiced writing the letter S.  James has had a rough time with writing the letter S and most of the time he just flat out refuses.  I was hoping that attaching it to Superhero week would give him a positive nudge to write the letter. It did work a little.  He was willing to write one s on the back of his page.

The Avengers and X-Men

–          Coloring sheets – I printed out some pictures of some of the members of each of these teams. I wanted to make sure that I used some of the female superheroes for Lilly. Don’t get me wrong my little lady loves Thor and Captain America, but she is also a big fan of the lady superheroes as well.  So I made sure to have some pictures of Storm, Jean Grey and Jubilee along with our Avengers and Wolverine.

–          Cloud in a cup – I have done this experiment with my kids before and they always have a blast. Because Thor from the Avengers and Storm from the X-Men can control lightening and storms, I figured the cloud in a cup experiment would fit nicely with the day. It is pretty simple.  I put warm water in the bottom of a glass and a plate with ice on top of the glass.  I light a match and put it in the glass, but I have been told you can also use hairspray. Anything that puts a few particles of stuff in the air will work.  Right away the cloud should begin to form. Once a dense enough cloud forms, you can remove the plate and play in the vapors for a bit.

–          Avengers puzzles from this preschool printable – There were two sets of puzzles. One set had an individual puzzle for each character and the other was an Avengers puzzle that also had numbers at the bottom. When the kids put the numbers in order they finished the puzzle.

Spiderman

–          Practice with the Letter S – again I wanted to have a topic that excited James and helped him with writing his letter S. I had a letter S recognition page and on the back we practiced free hand.

–          We made a spider web in our door way out of packing tape. I made a lot of it, but they directed me where to place different strips of tape and how to connect them. Then we had fun wadding up small bits of newspaper for our “flies.”  The kids had a fantastic time throwing all the little flies at our spider web and seeing how some got stuck but some made it through.

–          We looked at different types of spiders online and compared their different webs and how the differences changed what the web was used for.

–          I printed out a picture of different poses of Spider-Man.  The kids each took turns picking a pose and trying to get into it.  By far their favorite was Spider-Man hanging upside down by his web.

He was so proud that he figured out how to get upside down like Spider-Man.

Real life heroes

–          Who are real life heroes? We took some time to come up with ideas of what makes someone a hero. I told them to think back to the beginning of the week when we were sorting heroes and villains. They listed things like they catch the bad guys and save peoples’ lives. So I tried to see if they could come up with some examples of people they know who do those same things. They were very easily able to come up with police, firefighters, doctors, and military men and women.  They were so excited to talk about people we knew who are in those jobs and how they must be heroes like Superman.

–          We had a quick coloring sheet that had some of those professions and the name written below. We went over the letters and how to spell police and fireman.

–          We happened to be going on a tour of Dodger stadium that afternoon with my Dad, and so we also talked about how sports figures can be considered heroes as well. We talked about some of the retired numbers that were listed like Jackie Robinson and what contributions they made to the sport and to society.

Although I was a little worried about being able to come up with activities that would related to superheroes, I think the week went pretty well. The kids ended the week begging to pick our next topic. I really thought they may have gotten tired of our morning “mommy school,” but they loved it and asked what we were going to do every morning.  It really helps to motivate me to come up with these activities for them and it was a great way to spend our time together.