Our PreSchool Blog

Toddlers are experimenting, thinking, solving problems and learning all the time. Through exploration and experimentation, children develop the ability to think, understand, communicate, imagine, and work out what might happen next. In September our cognitive development focus is on the five senses.

I filled our mystery can with big marshmallows.  We shook the can and listened to the marshmallows bounce around using our sense of hearing.  After taking the lid off – I gave the toddlers a peak of what was inside.  We described the marshmallows as white, round, and bigger than tiny marshmallows.

The toddlers used their noses to use their sense of smell.

Every child got to choose one to use their sense of touch to feel and squish.

The best of the five senses was getting to taste the marshmallow!

We took our cognitive development focus one step further and put a lemon in the mystery can.  We went through all five senses and compared the lemon to the marshmallow.  The tasting resulted in some fun pictures.

Because our color of the month is yellow  and our shape is circle – We used large lemons to do prints!

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.

Color recognition is a skill that uses the cognitive function, which is what our brains use to think, reason, and remember. Through cognitive reasoning, children link visual clues, such as colors, to the word it corresponds to, which is recalled from the use of their cognitive function.

The toddlers have been learning all about the color green this month! We incorporated the color green into lots of activities this week, for them to have the continual to exposure to one color, in which they can link to the word, “green”. They went on a hunt for the color green, used green markers, crayons, chalk, and paint, to create different artwork, and used green circles and triangles to sort shapes! Our friends sure made green week fun!