Circus Train and Carnival Games

Last week when we had our Circus theme, my class made a train with animals. I was searching around for some good pictures they could color and paint when I realized it would be more fun if they drew the animals themselves!

They could draw whatever they wanted and I cut it out for them. Then they glued it onto a colored rectangle and glued on some black strips of paper for the bars.

Then they glued on two wheels. Among the animals on the circus train, we had a lion,

some tigers,

a seal,

an elephant,

and an octopus!

I printed out a train engine with a clown and hung up all the train cars behind it.

The kids really did a great job! And we had a little Circus Carnival! All week we've been playing these games, but on Friday I put all the games out at the same time and even set up a ticket booth.

The kids earned tickets for good behavior during morning free-play, circle time, snack time, and ZYLAR time (Zip Your Lips And Read). But they could also buy more tickets by answering questions from me about things I've taught them in the past. I printed out tickets from here. (I printed the white ones onto colored card stock paper.)

And I quickly came up with names for the games and made signs. Here's Juggling Ball Spectacular, where you throw little plastic balls through holes in cardboard:

And Quiet-as-a-Pin Drop, where you drop clothespins into a plastic container:

This one was my favorite. Clown Nose Toss, where you throw big pom poms (or clown noses) into little cups:

And we did Pin the Nose on the Clown (which I talked about here):

And finally, the kids' favorite, Bottle Knock-Out, where you throw little rubber prickly balls at some plastic containers and try to knock them off the shelf:

(Side note: those plastic containers had Puffs baby snacks in them. My daughter loves them and I've been saving the containers to make her a bowling pin set!)
Anyway, the kids had a great time! It was so fun, in fact, that we invited the 3-yr-old class to come over in the afternoon. My kids ran the booths and showed the younger ones how to play the games. And then everyone got to pick a prize! It was a wonderful way to end the week!