Our PreSchool Blog

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! 🙂

In the toddler classroom, our students have an opportunity for “free play/center time” two times in their morning. This means that they are allowed to choose in which center they would like to play. This time for free choice is a great way for toddlers to use their own independence to pick their activity. We change our centers each month, so our friends will always have new centers to explore. We have so many different centers for them to choose from!

Sensory Tub

Manipulative Center

Art Center

Light Table

Mirror Table

Train Table

Dramatic Play

Kitchen Center

Library Center

Pre-academic Center

Block Center

Welcome to the 2016-2017 Creative Tots Toddler Classroom! We are so excited to have so many wonderful friends, old and new, in our class this year. This was our first full week of school, and being at school for the first time can be tough for friends as young as ours, but they all did SO wonderfully! We just know this is going to be an excellent school year. We know that you, toddler parents, are curious about what happens in your child’s day at school. On our blog you will find weekly updates about what happens in the toddler classroom. In the coming weeks, we will be posting about our daily schedule, and you can get a feel for what our mornings look like. For the first couple of weeks, we wanted all of our friends to get very familiar with their new surroundings. They are already learning about sharing, using their words, and how to clean up their messes!

Below you can see a rough structure of our day. Our toddlers are already learning how to transition from one activity to the next. This helps foster a sense of independence, once they know what to expect as they get more and more used to the schedule of our day.

Center Time/Free Play

Whole Group Story Time

Outside Play

Small Group Time

Snack

Art/Discovery Bins

Music & Movement

We hope you enjoy seeing your children grow and develop through these pictures throughout the school year. We cannot wait to see how they thrive! 🙂

In our fifth 2-3 year old summer playdate series, Dinosaur Playdate, we had so much fun spending the week imagining a time when dinosaurs still roamed the Earth. We got to dance around to one of our favorite tunes, “We Are the Dinosaurs”, with Ms. Joanie, on Music Monday. We also used dinosaur mats for our friends to practice using tweezers to place the pom pom on the coordinating color–excellent fine motor for our younger ones to practice their hand strength!

We also had different group time games, one of which was sorting different size dinosaurs into their correct bowl. The other game we played was a dinosaur shape matching game, which our friends loved, too!

Dinosaur crafts 🙂

For some science fun, we used warm water in squirt bottles to melt dinosaurs out of their frozen ice eggs! The ice and water cooled us down on a hot summer morning, and they so enjoyed when they freed the dinosaurs!

On our party day, they got to decorate their own cupcakes with different types of candies and sprinkles, then they dug right in!

We had a rocking good time during our musical playdate, where Ms. Joanie visited us every day! We made our own instruments, played musical games, and ended the week with a great party day!

Decorating our own tambourines!

A rainy day wasn’t going to stop us from enjoying our Wednesday Kona Ice treat–we kept the fun going indoors 🙂

Howdy, ya’ll! Our 2-3 year old summer playdate series started off wonderfully, with fun on the farm!

Throughout the week, we talked about all of the different farm animals you find on a farm, and what we get from farms. They were great farmers, and even got to “milk” a pretend cow 🙂

Outside fun with the parachute and popping up the beach balls!

Pigs on the farm day! Complete with pin the tail on the piggy and a “pigs in the mud” snack with chocolate pudding and pink marshmallows

Of course we had our weekly visit from the Kona Ice Truck!

Cool Critters came to visit us one day and we got to meet and interact with some different animals!

Ducks in the pond using water beads, which is a great sensory tool, and rubber duckies

Friday party day! What’s a party without cupcakes, piñatas and balloons!?

Thanks for sending your kids to play with us this summer! See you at the next playdate 🙂

While learning about the letter “x”, we decided since we made a xylophone out of the letter “x”, we would actually learn about the xylophone and how to play music with it! We sang different songs, such as, “Row Row Row Your Boat” and “Do You Know the Muffin Man?” and our friends practiced playing along with the xylophone. Since we didn’t have enough xylophones for all of our friends to play at once, we took turns and those who weren’t playing a xylophone got to shake a maraca. We were just like a real band! Ms. Joanie would have been so proud 🙂

Our color for the month of April is the color “blue”. What a great excuse for us in the toddler classroom to make blueberry muffins all together! The toddlers love to help mix in each of our ingredients when we make different recipes, all of them waiting as patiently as they can for their turn! Turn-taking is a very important step in cognitive development for toddlers and young children, and the beginning stages of being able to communicate back and forth with their peers. Because of this, we focus on turn-taking as much as possible in our classroom. Taking turns in larger group activities also helps toddlers practice for when they encounter turn-taking in one-on-one situations during free play and/or recess.