Ten Ways to Incorporate Learning into a Street Fair

We love our town and it’s yearly street fair.   The kids and I are looking forward to next weekend using the festival as a way to engage and interact with my preschoolers.   Here are ten ideas that we are planning to use to interact with our youngsters at Celebrate Roanoke, or any other local fall fair:

1. Play where's Waldo, only pick a clown or someone in costume.   Have your children tell you whenever they spot him or her walking around.
2. Count the number of people you see dressed in historical garb.   How many different types of outfits or historical personalities are there?    Talk to one of the people in historical character and ask them who they are pretending to be.
3. Watch the historical reenactments and ask your kids to tell you what they think life would have been like if they were at the gunfight or if they had to drive around in a horse-drawn carriage all the time.
4. Count the number of people in line for an event, like a bounce house.   How many people are before us?   After another batch gets in for their turn, re-count and discuss subtraction and addition as more people have entered or left the line.
5. Make quantitative comparisons of the lines at two different vendors, or between the balloon-blowing clowns and the face painters.   Ask your kiddos which line they ™d prefer to be in, the longer or the shorter one.   Ask them to theorize why someone would prefer to be in the longer line.
6. As you walk up to or past a music stage, ask if they can hear the music yet, and talk about how the closer you are to something the louder it becomes.
7. Practice map skills.   I love that Celebrate Roanoke distributes a program with a nifty map, or they did previous years.   You can use the map to discuss where you are and pick a destination of where you want to be – like you are at the bounce houses trying to get to the mini-train station – and have the kids figure out how to get there.
8. Practice telling time.   Pick an activity that your kids are looking forward to and have them tell you how long they will have to wait before the event will start.
9. Discuss safety as your kiddos are exposed to and get the chance to interact with law enforcement and firemen.
10. During the fireworks, try and guess which color is going to explode next.  Compare the bangs.   Was this set of fireworks bigger or smaller than the last one?   Have your kids describe what they see.

If you live in the North Texas region, check out Celebrate Roanoke, maybe I’ll see you there!.