Doll Play Theme Week

Our paper cut out "dolls" that we used for math activities.

My daughter and her two little friends, that I watch during the day, have themed weeks each week that our structured activities and some of our play activities are based on.  This week is Doll Play Week.  Now, granted we play with dolls just about everyday but I wanted to do a theme week with it and include some structured activities using doll props.  Also, I wanted their doll play to be a little more purposeful this week and encourage them to expand their ideas when playing with dolls.

My daughter and her friends started off the morning playing with Dora and her baby sister and brother dolls.  They decided that the Dora doll would be the mom.  The girls had mommy Dora take the babies to the doctor and the store and then home for a nap.  We have a Dora bed that goes with the big Dora doll which struck up the idea of a nap for the babies. 

After the babies had "slept" for all of two seconds, my daughter got out the little people house and decided that the baby she was playing with would live in the house.  She asked her little friend's doll to come to her "house."  They rang the doorbell a bunch of times and had the babies eat dinner in the kitchen. 

Soon, it was onto another idea.  The girls were all now sisters, and they were taking their dolls shopping.  They used little paper bags with handles (that I keep from stores like Bath & Body Works and Starbucks) and filled them with anything and everything they could fit into the bags.  On their own, they dumped the items out of the bags and started to count them.  I helped them count when they were unsure of a number but overall, they counted very well.

The girls were very excited about their counting and then asked if we could make numbers on the floor using our bodies.  This was a math activity that we had done last week (Number Week.)  So, I asked the girls what numbers they wanted to make. We preceded to make numbers 1, 11, 7, 2, and almost an 8. 

After this, we continued our daily routine with potties and snack.  Then we had our morning circle in our mini classroom.  The girls LOVE to sing the songs, count and hang up the calendar numbers and hang up the "weather men." 

Next, came some of the more structured "doll activities."  For fine motor practice, each girl picked a Princess paper doll and used their pincer grasp to dress the doll and decorate her hair.  Next, we moved onto our math activity.  I made simple people cut outs (that we called dolls for this week) in different colors.  We named the color of each doll and then counted how many dolls of each color.  The girls wanted to count all the dolls next---there were 10 total.  To finish our structured time, we made patterns using the doll cut outs and sang songs about the doll patterns.

The girls then choose to play with the paper dolls we had dressed earlier.  It was too cute!  The girls had their paper doll Princesses talking to each other, singing, dancing, and modeling (the girls LOVE to model, lol.)

As you can tell, we had a pretty busy morning.  Right now, they are all resting.  Soon enough, the girls will be awake, and I am sure when my "big girls" come home from school, the "little girls" will want to share the fun with them. 

Tomorrow will be another day full of fun with dolls.  I am planning to use the Barbies in a math activity, have a doll "search and find" game, and include some additional toy props to extend the girls' doll play.  I am super excited for Friday because we are going to have a tea party with our dolls!