Our PreSchool Blog

The studio toddlers had a fantastic February.  We focused on the color pink and heart shape in honor of Valentine’s Day.  Pink hearts were repeated during games, finger plays, crafts, sensory bins, songs, stories, and more.  The toddlers practiced fine motor skills making love bug hats, lacing hearts, and  painting bags during our Valentine’s Day party.  We also incorporated purposeful play throughout our study of space.  The toddlers loved dressing up as astronauts, blasting off rockets, an astronaut obstacle course, stamping letters to spell their names on rockets, puzzles, books and scooping in our space sensory bins. The Bengals heading to the Super Bowl was all the rage in Cincinnati so we had a class pep rally learning about Bengal tigers and creating a keepsake craft.  A fun February for all!

Happy New Year from the studio toddler room!  The weather has kept us busy indoors this month but we have filled our days with crafts, discovery bins, winter centers, stories, dancing, and learning through play.  Our color focus is white and our shape is the triangle so we incorporated these focus targets into most of our centers, small groups, whole group and purposeful play.

All the colors and senses of the season give the toddlers opportunities to learn through purposeful play.  Hands-on activities and crafts along with a sensory rich environment lead to peer interaction, learning, and fun!

The toddlers are enjoying a fabulous fall full of squirrel songs, apple sorting /peeling, rectangle scarecrows, and name building with fall leaves.   Our centers this month are designed to give the toddlers the opportunity to explore farm animals, farm books, farm puzzles, new textures in the sensory bin,  and “cooking apple pie” in the dramatic play center.  We have milked a “cow”, sorted leaves, and continue to enjoy the season through purposeful play.

Orange is the focus color for the month of October!  So many fun purposeful play experiences to immerse the toddlers in all things orange.  Pumpkins, paint, playdough, discovery bins, fine motor skills, large motor skills, new vocabulary, songs, games, and more have kept our class busy learning through play.

The studio toddler class has taken the month of September to explore our environment, learn routines, and adjust to being away from parents for the first time but it is also a time of socialization and making new friends.  Socializing with other children  is an excellent way to foster a toddler’s social and emotional development.  We set up our environment for purposeful play and social experiences.  Children begin to mimic during parallel play and then start to communicate with peers. They learn vocabulary and appropriate ways to express themselves through pretend play, free choice centers, and games.  As teachers, we facilitate the environment and activities and then gently guide the toddlers to use words, solve problems, take turns, and have fun through play.  The result is a classroom full of new friends!

Our little learners reviewed all of the shapes they’ve learned throughout the year with some hands on shape activities. One was finding the bug hiding under the shapes. They had to pick the shape I asked them to find and see if the bug was hiding underneath it! They also matched shapes to the underwater animal puzzles. We finished off with a shape collage. We glued each shape one by one as a group.

We finished off our alphabet with some letter Z activities. Zoo is for Zoo animals–washing zoo animals! We also did a Z is for Zipper activity. Each student picked a pouch with a zipper and found what was inside and then sorted the surprise inside by color!

We were busy bugs in the Studio Toddler classroom in April! We learned about how plants grow, made our own name gardens and played in garden sensory bins for some hands on learning. We also sorted bugs by color and made our own bugs in a jar craft using buttons and coloring grass for the bugs!

The toddlers celebrated Earth Day this April by creating headbands and sorting trash versus recycling.  We also have sorted flowers, talked about the parts of a flower, created a name garden, painted bottle print flowers, and planted seeds.  To round out our unit the toddlers painted a flower picture to put on the back of a special gift for Mother’s Day.

Spring is the perfect season to do an insect study.  The toddlers have painted, colored, and created  insect crafts.  We have read stories and sang songs about butterflies and bumblebees.  We have also played some fun games that reinforce counting and color recognition.