People wear hats throughout the world for a variety of reasons.  Go for a trip around the world and discover all the wonderful hats.

Materials

• Directions for easel paper hat
• Send a note home a day or two ahead asking the parents to let their child wear a hat for hat day.
• Hats for hat match game with extras for coloring.

Vocabulary

• Hat (a covering for your head)
• Crown (the top part of the hat)
• Brim ( the part of the hat that surrounds the crown of the hat)
• Names of different kinds of hats as you discuss with the children

Before Reading the Story

            Bring in several varieties of hats from your dramatic center or from your home.  Tell the children that you are going to hide an object under a hat (it can be anything) and then let the children take turns guessing under which hat the object is hiding. 

Social & Emotional Development/Cooperation; develops increasing abilities to give and take in interactions; to take turns in games and using materials; and to interact without being overly submissive or directive.

Reading the Story

            Talk about the more unusual hats as you read.  Can you tell what it is made of?  Why do you think that he is wearing that kind of hat?

Approaches to Learning/Reasoning & Problem Solving; develops increasing abilities to classify, compare, and contrast objects, events, and experiences.

After Reading the Story

            Put up 4-5 pictures of hats on the wall. Give each child a slip of paper with their name on it. Let them take turns putting their name under the hat that they would like to wear best. After everyone has had a turn to put their name up count and talk about your graph. Which hat had the most votes? Why did you like this one best? Which hat had the least votes? Why did you like this one best?

Mathematics/Number & Operations; begins to associate number concepts, vocabulary, quantities, and written numerals in meaningful ways.

Discovery

            Put the Hats, Hats, Hats book into the center and add a globe or map of the world. Help the children find where different hats originated from.

Social & Emotional Development/Knowledge of Families & Communities; progresses in understanding similarities and respecting differences among people such as genders, race, special needs, culture, language, and family structures.

Music and Movement;

            Sing My Hat it Has Three Corners https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4xXiHllJO8

            Put on the Mexican Hat Dance music and teach children how to dance to it.  Lay a hat in the center of the circle. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgRMRfQgslM

Left foot, right foot, left.

Right foot , left foot, right.

Left foot, right foot, left

Right foot, left foot, right.

(Go around the circle to the right.)

We’re dancing, we’re dancing, we’re dancing.

We’re dancing around the hat

We’re dancing, we’re dancing, we’re dancing.

Now that’s the end of that.

Language Development/Listening & Understanding; shows progress in understanding and following simple and multiple-step directions.

Blocks

            Add fire hats and fire trucks to the center.  Or add construction hats and tools.

Social & Emotional Development/Knowledge of Families & Communities; develops an awareness of jobs and what is required to perform them.

Art

            Make hats with the children.  These could be paper plate hats with the center cut out or these could be crown like hats from a sentence strip.  The children can either collage on them or you can put out theme based hat materials (silk leaves and flowers to glue on: shapes to cut out and glue: long strips of colors to fold and glue)

Creative Arts/Art; gains ability in using different art media and materials in a variety of ways for creative expression and representation.

Library and Writing

            Put out copies of the hats for matching and allow each child to pick their favorite hat and color it.  Ask them to tell you why they like that hat and write their responses down.  Attach the hat and the response to a piece of paper.

Literacy/Early Writing; begins to represent stories and experiences through pictures, dictation, and in play. AND Literacy/Early Writing; experiments with a growing variety of writing tools and materials, such as pencils, crayons, and computers.

Sand and Water

Dramatic Play

            Add a variety of “worker” hats to the dramatic center. If you have enough hats the children can pretend to buy and sell them at a hat store using play money and a cash register.

Social & Emotional Development/Knowledge of Families & Communities; develops an awareness of jobs and what it is required to perform them.

Math and Manipulatives

            Show the children how to make a paper hat by folding two sheets of easel paper together. They can then decorate it with markers or paints. https://www.babycentre.co.uk/v25014841/how-to-make-a-paper-hat-video

Creative Arts/Art; gains ability in using different art media and materials in a variety of ways for creative expression and representation.

  Outdoor Play

            Bring out several of your classroom hats and beanbags.  Line the hats up and let the children take turns tossing the bean bags into or at the hats.

Physical Health & Development/Gross motor Skills; demonstrates increasing abilities to coordinate movements in throwing, catching, kicking, bouncing balls, and using a slide and swing.

Transitions

            Let the children take turns telling about their hat they brought from home. Why is it special? Where or when do you wear it? If they did not bring a hat from home, have pictures of hats that they can take turns talking about.

Approaches to Learning/Initiative & Curiosity; grows in eagerness to learn about and discuss a growing range of topics, ideas, and tasks.