Today we practiced our letter sounds while strengthening our wrist muscles and hand-eye coordination. Writing on vertical surfaces is very important in handwriting development. Training the muscles to work in different ways is great repetition for preschoolers. We identified and circled letter sounds on the smartboard today.
This week we read an focused our small groups on the adorable story Gingerbread Baby by Jan Brett.
Ms. Cally played “Listen & Color” and helped the preschoolers practice their listening skills. This is great prep for following directions and understanding classroom dynamic. So much of traditional schooling is based on auditory learning. Preschoolers need to practice being able to listen not only to directions, but for directions as well. We structure our classroom to give cues to call attention such as flashing the lights or clapping our hands. This helps create awareness for what is happening around us in the classroom. Ms. Cally instructed the preschoolers to ‘color the star orange’ or ‘find the spoon and color it purple’. This is a great activity to do at home with your little one!
Next with Ms. Lori we practiced our counting skills. Each child had a turn to roll the dice and count how many dots they had. Then we colored the spot on the gingerbread baby that had the matching number on it. This was a fun way to count, work on number recognition and strengthen fine motor muscles!
In Ms. Courtney’s group, the preschoolers practiced number recognition. On each gingerbread baby was a number. Their job was to count the right amount of pom poms to decorate the gingerbread baby. This is a great task for hand-eye coordination.
This was the first of our December Gingerbread Study. We are very excited to explore more stories!
We’ve been learning about Native Americans this month and how they helped the pilgrims survive when they started their lives in their new world! Today we discovered how some Native Americans told stories without letters or words and tried our hand at our own symbols.
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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