Parents may have western-style clothing their children can wear.
Teach preschoolers about the Wild Wild West while playing games, singing, eating foods and making crafts that have to do with the Old West. Small children love western themes and learn by doing with hands-on activities. Choosing themes like the Wild Wild West help children understand the history of America.
Decoration
Decorate the classroom with "Most Wanted" posters and ropes. Make horses out of poster board and tape them on the wall behind a cardboard or paper fence. Teach children about campfires by painting four paper towel tubes brown. Glue them into a square for the base. Decorate three more tubes with yellow and orange tissue paper, glitter or paint. Glue the "fire" tubes in a pyramid shape on the base. Place the campfire in the middle of a circle. Have a singalong or tell folk tales, like the cowboys did out on the prairie.
Food
Have the kids make their own trail mix. According to The Food Timeline, trail mix came about when travelers needed a filling, yet portable treat. The Native Americans even shared their version of trail mix, pemmican, with voyagers. Discuss the importance of Native Americans in the Wild West. Step by Step Childcare recommends passing out brown paper lunch bags to the children, who can decorate them before filling them with trail mix. Place bowls of mini finger foods like pretzels, chocolates, raisins, marshmallows, cereal and dried fruit on a table. Bring in other Old West type food such as cornbread, oatmeal, tortilla chips and melon. Explain the kinds of food cowboys and Native Americans might have eaten.
Dress
Child Care Lounge includes in its rodeo theme page vests that children can make out of brown paper grocery bags. Cut a slit up one side of the bag, adding holes for arms and a scoop for the neck. The children decorate these vests with self-adhesive jewels and crayons or markers. Give bandannas or foam cowboy hats to the children to wear around their necks and on their heads. Explain that cowboys used these hats to keep the sun off their heads and out of their eyes and the bandannas to dry the sweat when riding in the hot desert.
Crafts
Children will feel powerful when they are all sheriffs! Give each child a star to make his own sheriff badge and then tape it to his chest. Supply self-adhesive jewels and markers for decorating. Cut the stars out of yellow or gold construction paper, poster board or foam. Kits are available for purchase at Making Friends as well. Making Friends also includes free printouts of coloring pages in western themes. By showing pictures of Wild West images -- such as horse shoes, horses, cattle, boots and cacti -- children will want to draw a western scene of their own imagination.
Songs and Sayings
Play kid-friendly country songs in the background of the classroom. Also, both Child Care Lounge and Preschool Education provide rodeo-theme songs for singalongs. Teach the preschoolers common western sayings, such as "howdy partner!" and "Get along little doggie!" to use throughout the day.
Games
Play pin the tail on the donkey/horse with the children. A free printout is available at Family Games Treasurehouse. Play hide and seek, but instead of hiding themselves, the children search for a piece of gold -- a piece of metallic paper crumpled up or a rock painted gold in color. The winner receives a prize, such as a horse stuffed animal or piece of "fools gold," also known as pyrite. Teach the children about the gold rush and why gold was and is such a desirable mineral. Child Care Lounge shares the "lasso game," which you play by making a cow or horse head out of poster board and taping it onto a short chair. Children use a hula-hoop to "lasso" the animal.
Tags: Wild West, Care Lounge, Child Care, Child Care Lounge, Native Americans