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.
Preschool Prep had a lesson in sharing! We read Should I Share My Ice Cream? by Mo Willems and then pretended to share our ice cream with one another; asking, “please?” and replying “thank you!” We discussed how we share all of our toys in our classroom, the same as we shared our ice cream.
Block shadow matching! Our courtyard classroom activity involved matching blocks to their outline on butcher paper
Fine motor skills: Preschool Prep will be working on letter formation in the coming months, and practicing our fine motor skills will help with this development. Lacing is a great fine motor skill to help strengthen the pincer grasp, which is holding objects between the thumb and index finger, such as you would when you hold a pencil.
Block shape match
Bubblewrap Beehive creation!
More lacing! We laced felt pieces onto krazy straws, but we also had to match the colored felt pieces to the right colored straws. They all worked together to make sure all of the pieces were filled up onto the straws.
Spider Ring Stacking
5 Little Pumpkins Craft
Monster Donuts!
“S” is for “Skittles”! We built our letter “S” with skittles to use as a new item to practice our pre-writing skills. They all did a great job and got to eat a couple of the non-handled skittles 😊
We worked on fine motor skills by beading the different colors of the rainbow onto pipe cleaners to make a rainbow bracelet!
Our toddler class continued to learn about the color red as we took turns peeling apples. Our fine motor skills were put to the test as well as revisiting our study of the five senses. We enjoyed our peeled apple slices for snack. A yummy lesson indeed! We will be “picking” apples next week – a picture of this will be included in the color book sent home at the end of the year.
The Toddler + Preschool Prep class has been hard at work this October! We have been using our Halloween theme as focus for some of our small group activities.
In one group, we fed different colored “Lego Monsters” that only eat Legos that match the color of their faces.
We also used a “spiderweb” to match shapes. They got to pick a shape and then stick it to the sticky spiderweb onto the shape it matched!
We are always trying to work in fine motor practice any chance we can get! Routine practice of using the thumb and finger grasp will help develop and refine their fine motor skills. Our students did a great job of stacking spider rings onto orange straws 🙂
We are using the dinosaur theme to incorporate fine motor skills, sorting, matching, position words, and more. We have read several dinosaur books including Dini the Dinosaur, we have learned dinosaurn fingerplays, and danced to Laurie Berkner’s We are the Dinosaurs. Toddlers are learning through play!
During the month of February, we talked about transportation and things that take us all over the world! We learned about trains, cars, bicycles, hot air balloons, and airplanes. We even took an imaginary airplane to the beach!
Ms. Kristen was the pilot of our plane, while Ms. Melanie and Ms. Kelsey were the flight attendants. They even got a snack and drink on the flight 😉
We also learned all about what the red, yellow, and green lights stand for! We practiced learning these colors and their meanings by tossing matching bean bags with the color on the “stop light”
Our alphabet page for our transportation theme was “R” is for “road”! The toddlers practiced their fine motor skills by peeling off stickers, and sticking them onto the “road” made out of the letter R!
We also had a fun sensory activity with our cars, having a pretend car wash in our sensory bins.
And because you can never do too many color sorting activities, we used miniature modes of transportation to sort onto our color mats!
We had such a great time learning about polar bears in the toddler classroom! We talked about the habitat that they live in, what kind of food they like to eat, and what a polar bear does in the arctic!
In one of our small groups, we had an obstacle course, where our friends pretended to be polar bears, living in the arctic! It’s always great when we can incorporate some indoor gross motor skills–especially since it has been too cold to go outside!
In another small group, we built snowflakes using pipe cleaners and beads. This is excellent fine motor practice, putting the bead onto the pipe cleaner. Open-ended art projects are always a fun way to see each child create their own unique pieces, too!
In our third small group, we made a rectangle polar bear! This is one of our guided art projects, in which they follow directions on where to put each separate piece.
Learning about the letters of the alphabet is so much fun when you use a story to go along with it. The book, “Chicka Chicka Boom Boom”, is a toddler classroom favorite, and our toddlers had so much fun learning about all of the letters, and wondering if there will be enough room for all of them at the top of the coconut tree!
They all got to take a turn picking a letter from the mystery can, saying which letter it is, and putting it on the coconut tree!
Next we did a Chicka Chicka Boom Boom art project, where we used fine motor skills to peel alphabet stickers off, and then place them on their own coconut tree! We are working on the thumb and finger pincer grasp this month, and stickers are an excellent tool to practice this grasp, as well as improve hand strength.
“Chicka Chicka Boom Boom” was such a fun unit, and we are so excited to get into our October themes for the month!
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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