As we usher in a new month, the children have the opportunity to discover new things in our centers. All of our centers have new items, but today we focused on the math, literacy and art centers. Learning how to do new activities is just one more way to practice/learn a skill in a different way.
Walking through the door this morning, the children were talking about how they have mittens to give other kids who can’t buy there own. It is so heartwarming to hear three and four year old talking about the importance of giving to others. We started our mitten activity by reading The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein. As we distributed mittens, the boys and girls sorted them by color. After that, we sorted them into three categories: stripes, solid color and design. Using an oversized graph, the children were graphing whizzes! To finish our graph, the children identified the category with the largest amount of mittens (the design category), and ordered the mittens from numbers one to eleven. We tried on a few different types of mittens, but we all decided it would be best to give to those in need! Thank you very much for all of your generous donations and for helping us teach your child the importance of giving back. We had mitten success!
By popular request, we have finally found ourselves joining the online social community. A number of you have been asking about this for quite sometime. We will update with blog highlights, events and current school activities. Simply use the link below and join us!
On the first day back we read Polar Bear Polar Bear What Do You Hear? By Bill Martin Jr. The children reenacted the book by playing with different arctic animals.
Welcome back!! It was great to see everyone’s smiling face back in action today! To start the new year off, we introduce new center activities, along with a new January country: Greenland. With a cold climate and lots of white to see, the children have lots of opportunity to explore activities with letters, numbers and shapes that represent snow and ice. In Ms. Leslie’s small group, we played “Flurries or Snowstorm?” The children chose a number, then put the corresponding “snowflakes” onto our winter scene. In Ms. Lori’s small group, she showed the children several ways to build a snowman: rolling balls using playdoh, stacking different sized circles, and tracing a snowman. In Ms. Courtney’s small group, the children used “snow” to trace out the letters V, W and X. We had a snowtastic day!
Today we read Dream Snow by Eric Carle again. The children were very excited that they remembered the name of the Author.
We discussed The Dream Snow Christmas Tree.
And then we made our own Christmas Tree.
The Farmers animals are named one, two, three, four, and five. We found our own animals and named them!
Because we cannot go outside, we worked on our gross motor skills inside!
Gross Motor skills are important for major body movement such as walking, maintaining balance, coordination, jumping and reaching and throwing.
Fingerplays help children to develop their cognitive small motor, memory, and language skills.
Fingerplays also offer a way to learn about poetry, which is an extremely valuable and delightful experience for children. The beauty of fingerplays is that they can either soothe and calm children or stimulate their intellect and imagination.
Pencils and crayons are not the only materials we use for pre-writing skills. The children were given M&Ms to work on fine motor skills by outlining the first letter of their name.
Reinacting real life in the dramatic play area is very helpful in strengthening socialization skills and respecting others.
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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