practice with letter recognition and developing fine motor skills
Today we made the first name of each child’s name with pumpkin seeds! We guided them as they traced their letter with glue and then they placed the pumpkin seeds on their pumpkin. Walter is making a “W” for Walter! This is great practice for letter recognition.
Friends helping friends
These kind of moments are so sweet and precious that it is to hard to pass up a picture! Caroline and Sophia were on their way up the ladder to play when Sophia lost her shoe! Caroline stopped right there and sat to help her get her shoe back on. She then hugged her and made sure she was okay=) What nice friends we have here at Creative Tots!
The first time I saw a light table was at a Reggio Emilia inspiried preschool in New York City. Every classroom had one and I began to wonder what they were all about. After researching the various ways these could benefit preschool age children in their learning process, we decided to get one for our own classroom.
Today as I walked by our light table I overheard a child saying, “Let’s count the squares! While the other child responded, “I’ll count the diamonds then we can count them together!” They were referring to various translucent geometric shapes that had been placed on the light table for the children to manipulate. We have been talking about classifying and sorting objects by different attributes (color, shape, size, number of sides, etc.) What I was witnessing was the children taking what they had learned in small groups and applying it to their other classroom experiences. Great work kids!
Our light table allows children to experience everyday objects in a whole new way. In the coming months we will be using the light table for a multitude of activities as well as free choice play with ever changing manipulatives. Here are some of the activities that may take place at our light table this year: building our names and sight words with special translucent letter tiles, exploring and creating colors with color paddles, using various stencils, using the light table to trace our letters and names, manipulating shapes to become more aware of spacial relationships through the use of translucent geometric pieces while discovering the basics of geometry, viewing x-rays of various types of animals and shells, and finger painting on parchment paper (just to name a few). These should be great experiences for your children and ones that they will not soon forget.
We continued name practice today with our Pumpkin Seed Letters. The preschoolers Identified the first letter of their name and placed pumpkin seeds all around that letter. Our names provide so much exposure to those important letters of the alphabet and are such a great tool for teaching. We talk about the first letter of our name and how it is ALWAYS uppercase while the rest of the letters in our name are lowercase. These types of activities are not only great for letter recognition but they start our students down the road of becoming readers! Children are excited to be able to read their own names and feel very proud when doing so! What a great confidence builder, too!
With Penn on the job no fire has a chance
Penn was having too much fun putting out the fire today! With his fire hose at his side, he is ready for any flames that come his way!
experimenting with watercolors
Ezra is concentrating hard at painting the letter “H”! This week we are focusing on the letter “H” and today the kids were able to use watercolors to paint the letter! He is also looking closely to see what animals are on his paper that begin with the letter “H”. Orange paint was the color choice today as we talk about it each day to reinforce the color of the month.
Today the toddlers got to turn their orange painted pumpkins into Jack O’ Lanterns! We talked about all of the different shapes we can use to make the faces. We used triangles for eyes to reinforce the shape of the month and let them choose between triangles or circles for the nose. The last step was to make their pumpkin happy or sad. For the most part everyone choose happy but there were a few that went for the sad pumpkin!
teaching shape recognition with the familiar pumpkin
bubble art
Today we worked on step two of a special project for our Art Show. After painting our bubbly ocean water, it was time to add sea creatures! The kids were able to pick two sea creatures to put into the water. Johnnie chose a scary shark and something else that can been seen on November 13th!
Today we worked on another special piece for the art show! The kids had three steps to this project to make it complete! The first fun part was to take a paint roller and roll paint all over the bubble wrap. The next step was to use their hands to pat it down all over their paper and the third exciting step was to lift up the bubble wrap to see what they made! A close up of their masterpiece can be seen at the Art Show on November 13th!
Another sneak peak at one of our artists preparing for the November 13th Art Show
Helping promote the recognition of healthy emotions in the toddler classroom
Today at group time we learned the song “5 Little Pumpkins Sitting on a Gate”. We are also talking about the color orange this month so it was fun to talk about the color of the pumpkins! The shape we are focusing on this month is a triangle. The kids loved playing the pumpkin face game by telling me what shapes I should use for the face of the pumpkins. The concepts of “happy” and “sad” are also important to talk about with children at this age. The children laughed when I made one pumpkin a happy pumpkin and the other pumpkin a sad pumpkin.
Below is the song we learned today so you can sing it at home!
“5 Little Pumpkins Sitting on a Gate”
5 Little pumpkins sitting on a Gate,
The first one said “Oh my it’s getting late!”
The second one said “There are witches in the Air!”
The third one said “But we don’t care!”
The fourth one said “Let’s run and run and run!”
The fifth one said “I’m ready for some fun!”
Ohhhh Ohhhh went the wind!
And OUT went the lights!
Then five little pumpkins rolled out of sight!
Creative Tots has specialized in the private education of both toddlers and preschool age children for over 15 years. We began in the heart of Madeira and now also have a new Mason location. We are specifically designed to focus on early childhood development for children ages 18 months to 5 years.
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