Our PreSchool Blog

While learning about Fall and the farm, we are learning all about the different animals you find on a farm! Below you can see some of our farm animal activities we have been doing in our small groups.

Matching is a great mathematical skill for our toddlers to practice. We also talk about big and little, so we practiced matching the big farm animals to the little farm animals!

Name recognition! Although name recognition is an advanced skill for most toddlers, we try and incorporate ways in which they can start to recognize their own name. In this activity, they put their name under which farm animal they like the most!

Farm gross motor movement! We used our die with inserts to play a fun game that also practices listening, following directions, and taking turns. You could roll like a pig in the mud, flap your wings like a chick, gallop like a horse, etcetera.

And we always like to sneak in some fine motor practice using stickers 🙂

Stay tuned for some Fall and Thanksgiving fun from the end of this week and next week!

The month of November is all about the farm! We have different centers that reflect our farm theme, such as the Farmer’s Market center, to the art center where they stuck cotton balls on a sheep! Below you can see some of our November centers and activities.

Stringing farm animals for some good fine motor practice

Learning the colors of these farm animals and the noises they make

Farmer’s Market, where they sort the fruits and vegetables by color into their baskets

Playing pretend with our new farm and farm animals

Farm Train Table

Farm animal manipulatives

And, always the favorite–our farm animal sensory bin with a corn kernel base!

Sticking cotton balls to our sticky sheep at the art center

As the Halloween season has comes to an end, and we head into Thanksgiving and our Farm theme, we wanted to share some of the fun Halloween-inspired activities we did in the toddler classroom!

First we practiced some of our math skills, by matching different colored/patterned ghosts!

We then practiced sorting colors using different colored Legos. Our toddlers had to pick a colored Lego from the Mystery Can and feed it to the monster it matched!

Building letters using Candy Corn!

Counting practice: 5 Little Pumpkins Sitting on a Gate!

We had so much fun celebrating Halloween on Monday and Tuesday in the toddler room! All of our friends looked so cute in their costumes. We had a couple of fun days filled with games, crafts, and a yummy Halloween snack! Below you can see all of the toddlers in their costumes, enjoying their Halloween party.

We have been talking about triangles this month in the toddler room, and learning about the 3 sides a triangle has. When learning about shapes, it is always fun to see if they can find every day objects that are made of triangles, like the roof of a house! Below you can see we even used triangles to help make our “‘D’ is for ‘Dinosaur'” alphabet page!

Triangles on triangles!

Matching triangles with different patterns and colors

Orange is the color of the month for October, which is fitting with the colors of Fall and Halloween all around us! We have been doing a lot of orange activities this month. We sorted different items that were colored orange, made a pumpkin craft with orange paint, and did an open-ended orange collage using glue sticks and assorted paper shapes!

Orange Collage!

We had to snap a picture of our friend in her orange outfit 🙂

Pumpkin prints using pool noodles. Check out those hand grips!

Putting our 5 little pumpkins on the gate

Learning about the letters of the alphabet is so much fun when you use a story to go along with it.  The book, “Chicka Chicka Boom Boom”, is a toddler classroom favorite, and our toddlers had so much fun learning about all of the letters, and wondering if there will be enough room for all of them at the top of the coconut tree!

They all got to take a turn picking a letter from the mystery can, saying which letter it is, and putting it on the coconut tree!

Next we did a Chicka Chicka Boom Boom art project, where we used fine motor skills to peel alphabet stickers off, and then place them on their own coconut tree! We are working on the thumb and finger pincer grasp this month, and stickers are an excellent tool to practice this grasp, as well as improve hand strength.

“Chicka Chicka Boom Boom” was such a fun unit, and we are so excited to get into our October themes for the month!

As our “All About Me” unit has come to an end, here is a look at a couple of activities that we did to teach them about their own uniqueness, and to talk about how each of our friends are different and special in their own ways.

One day they painted their names, using watercolor paints. The trick was that they had to find their name at the table! Some of them recognized it, and some needed guidance. Name recognition is a skill we will gradually work on throughout the year.

Another activity, which was sent home, was when each of our toddler friends took turns being measured by Ms. Kristen, using a ribbon! Each ribbon represented the height of the child at this time in their lives. We hope they will look back one day and realize how much they have grown!

In the toddler classroom each month, our toddlers have learning objectives, which you can find in our newsletter that was sent out earlier this month. Every month, they will learn about one letter a week and during the fourth week of the month, we will review the letters we’ve learned. We talk about what each letter looks like, and the sound that the letter makes.

Because children learn while doing, if they want to, during our art time they can make an alphabet  page. So far we have made “‘A’ is for ‘Ant'”, “‘B’ is for ‘Button'”, and “‘C is for ‘Cat'”.

The color we have been focusing on in the toddler classroom this month is the color yellow. We incorporate the color of the month into different small group activities, art projects, and within our centers whenever we can!

For one of our small groups, we found yellow play-dough in Ms. Kristen’s mystery can, and we got to make our own yellow play-dough! Each of our friends took a turn adding different ingredients for our play-dough recipe. They do such a good job waiting for their turn!

It’s so exciting to be able to play with the play-dough you made yourself! 😉

In another small group, we made a yellow collage with glue sticks, yellow shapes, and yellow crayons.

Yellow bean bag toss to practice gross motor skills! Gross motor skills are such an important part of your toddler’s physical development. Having different types of movement activities helps to promote muscle movement, and strengthen coordination.

Yellow color sorting!

We love to do art projects with our friends, especially ones that involve using our senses! Our friends were able to make some lemon prints, using real lemons, which they got to smell and taste before we used them for painting. They were so sour! 🙂