Our PreSchool Blog

Our toddler classroom is filled with opportunities to explore, problem solve, create, and learn through play.  Our curriculum theme of the month is winter.  We have used this as a guide to introduce and practice new vocabulary, incorporate our focus of shape (rectangle) and color (white) of the month, practice fine and large motor skills, and build on natural curiosity through using our senses to learn and grow.

Gross Motor Fun inside!  An indoor snowball fight and balancing on a rectangular beam.

Individual discovery tubs are filled with items to discover by touching, pouring, sorting, and scooping.

Polar bear shape sort and a rectangular polar bear craft have been a fun way to learn about arctic animals, shapes, and fine motor skills.

Free choice center opportunities provide toddlers with materials to explore and create igloos and “homes” for arctic animals.

Using our five senses to discover hot cocoa / cold whipped cream and enhance a Maurice Sendak classic Chicken Soup with Rice!

Lacing provides problem solving skills, patience, and practice.

We read the story 10 Apples Up On Top by Dr. Seuss and listened to the song version by Jason Mraz.  The toddlers had so much fun balancing apples, counting apples, picking apples, sorting apples, bobbing for apples, creating apple crafts, and peeling apples.

Pretend apple pie!

The toddlers utilized the farm theme to reinforce shape, color, counting, fine motor, and vocabulary skills.  We sang Old McDonald and read The Big Red Barn.  Our learning environment this month includes farm puzzles, toys, animals, and even a farmer’s market for pretend play.

A square scarecrow was our weekly craft.

We practiced using glue sticks for this craft!

Tractor painting while discussing different colors created a fun sensory experience!

Pigs covered in mud was another fun sensory experience.  We watched a video of real pigs rolling in the mud.

Pin the tail on the piggy!

Milk the cow!

Roll the die to see how many wool rolls to put on the sheep.

The costumes….oh my!  Animals, super heros, princesses, dinosaurs, cowboys, ghosts, and more!  Such a fun party with games, crafts, and special I is for ice cream snack!

We practiced our Five Little Pumpkins finger play throughout the month.  The toddlers reinforced this through group time action and crafts.  We also used fine motor skills to take washi tape on and off little pumpkins, salt trays, dot paints, and coloring.  Pumpkin shape matching too!

Toddlers were very busy with spiders this month.  We listened to the story by Eric Carle, made our own class spider web, threw spiders at a web, color matched spiders, stacked spiders, and did a web craft.  There’s a Spider on the Floor by Raffi was a favorite song this month as well!

Focused on the letter G, the toddlers got to experience putting a penny into the gum ball machine.  We all guessed what color would come out!  We then created our own gum ball machine craft using colored circle stickers as gum balls.

F is for Fall and H is for Haunted House!  Lots of fine motor skills used to create letter crafts this month!

Whoo Whoo knows about owls and triangles?  Oliver the owl puppet came out to say Whoo Whoo!  Five Little Owls, a triangle owl craft, building triangles, matching triangles, sorting by color, games, and more helped the toddlers learn about owls and triangles!

The Studio Toddler class has really gotten into a rhythm in our classroom. Our toddlers are anticipating our daily schedule and following routines well. They’ve also been practicing sitting and doing crafts at our tables. This usually involves following directions, which is a skill we practice all year long in the toddler class! Check out some of the crafts we’ve been making so far below.

C is for Cat:

My 5 Senses Craft:

D is for Donut:

Each month the toddlers focus on one shape.  We immerse ourselves in the shape using all of our senses to reinforce learning.  In September we used our circle shape to create crafts, play large motor games, practiced our fine motor skills, and sang circle songs!

We combined our theme and shape to create a circle “I am special” mirror.

A little sneak peak of our culminating art projects for the end of the year.

The toddlers do one project a month – we will send them home in May!

We also combined our favorite foods theme with a circle craft after reading

the favorite story If You Give a Pig Pancake by Laura Numeroff.

An objective in the toddler class is starting to recognize the different colors and shapes. We love implementing different methods of learning these objectives through play! Being able to incorporate gross motor and fine motor into our learning also makes the activities more fun and interactive. Check out some of the activities below!

In the toddler class, we’ve also been working on our crafts, which entails sitting at the tables, following directions, and taking turns. This is something we have to practice from the start of school, and our little learners have been doing great! Last week we made a “donut” out of the letter “D”!