Wonderful Waterfalls

Waterfall day was great! It was filled with creative arts activities and pretend play. The MGT craft was super simple, a ribbon wand, and the kids used them right away. Because they didn't take long to make, I had them come to the art table as soon as they arrived, so once finished, they could be used during praise & worship time. I taped together some colored popsicle sticks with blue streamer on the end for the kindergarten kids so everyone would have something to twirl.

I made a playlist of "river songs" for praise and worship, so on waterfall day, instead of gathering on the carpet, I split the kids up by class, and we "danced" along the riverbank, and into the blue "river" in the middle of the room. I even had one student use his ribbon wand to pretend to catch a fish in the river.

I found two really great YouTube videos about waterfalls that we watched. The first one was "Just Around the Riverbend"  from the Disney movie, Pocahontas. It features a river, waterfalls, otters, fish, and a beaver.

The second video was about spectacular waterfalls around the world. At the end of the video, the credits show in what country each waterfall is located. We checked our Global Friends world map to find the general location of each waterfall. I was impressed that Ruby Falls, in my home state of Tennessee, made the list!

We talked about other closer places that they may have seen a waterfall, and reminisced about our field trip last year to Minoh Park, one of Japan's oldest national parks, which has a beautiful waterfall between two mountains.

For dramatic play, we used striped floor mats to create a waterfall over the table, while the rainbow rugs made "dancing" rainbows, and river creatures "swam" through the water fall.

It was wonderful way to learn about waterfalls!