Our PreSchool Blog

Rainbow rice is the new sensory material for our sensory bins.  Fun exploration for our toddlers (and siblings too)!

Our Shape Review included lacing button shapes, shape match- up mat, shape collage, shape cards complete with an interactive zoom to give live feedback, shape stories, and more!

Our live zoom also included some gross motor bean bag fun!

Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar is a classic favorite for all.  I read the story via video and retold the story using magnets.  The toddlers were provided with materials to craft their own caterpillar and fun temporary tattoos too!

Distance Learning Creative Tots Toddler Style:

The geese are wondering where the tots are!  We miss you!

We have had so much fun with fall and farm activities in the toddler room this month.  Lots of sensory experiences have been planned to help explore and learn. An apple peeler provided us with fine motor practice, yummy snack, and cute photo opportunity. Watercolor, glue, and other art mediums were provided to create fall foxes, scarecrows, and leaves.  Old McDonald has been a favorite classic to sing and play with instruments.  We discussed things that we were thankful for and talked about foods that families eat on Thanksgiving Day.   We are so thankful for our toddlers and their families!

We have been learning about the square for our shape this month. We try to incorporate the shape into our centers, with a craft, and with hands-on activities. This helps reiterate the shape in different capacities. For example, our little learners can learn through hands on manipulation of the shape, as well as learning to sight the shape by finding different items throughout our classroom that are square.

Going along with our monster theme, we invited the toddlers to create monsters by having monster bodies behind contact paper, and then sitting out monster eyes, mouths, horns, arms, etcetera for them to create their own monster. It is an activity to help foster their creativity and imaginations in open-ended ways. It is also good fine motor practice, with the toddlers having to peel the pieces back off of the contact paper. Check out some of our students creating below:

Head to the dino washing station to scrub some dinosaur scales! We had fun in our discovery bins washing the dinosaurs. We use our discovery bins to provide different sensory experiences for our little learners to explore.

We also sorted dinosaurs by color, matching the color of the dinosaur to the bowl.

Our focus of transportation has been fun this month in the toddler room!

R is for Road

Lacing and sorting with all types of transportation manipulatives help toddlers work on their fine motor skills.

We had discussion of all different types of transportation and watched a video of hot air balloons taking flight.  This inspired a hot air balloon craft.  Our centers have included all types of transportation manipulatives including sailboats with shape locking sails.

We had fun with a name building choo choo train.  We discussed letters and colors and worked on name recognition.

We had fun with a paint sensory experience using the truck wheels to make tracks with the paint.

Dobber paints and stickers on transportation sheets help toddlers with one to one correspondence, color recognition, and fine motor skills.

Sorting by color, shape and size are objectives in the toddler room.

Our toddler class took a pretend flight on Creative Tots airlines.  We practiced buckling our seat belts and staying seated during the “flight”.  The flight attendants passed out a special snack to enjoy while looking out the windows at the ground below.

We are enjoying the wonders of winter and the color white through sensory experiences.  Sensory activities facilitate exploration and naturally encourage children to use scientific processes while they play, create, investigate and explore.

Shaving cream on the tables provided an interesting textured sensory activity.  It also provides an empty canvas to practice drawing shapes, letters, and lines.

Our sensory bin and discovery tubs provided different textures and items to sort and pour.

Maurice Sendak’s Chicken Soup with Rice provided an activity to use all of our senses including taste!  We read the book, danced to the video with song by Carole King, and tasted chicken soup with rice!

With all of the snow and cold weather we received this week, we could not go outside for recess…this meant we had to bring some snow inside! We painted snow, and made “Mr. Potato Head” snow people!

We had to get some wiggles out with some parachute fun!

“My Mistletoes” Art Project!

Fine motor and letter formation with our “pokey pin” activity

Christmas Cutting Center!

L is for Lights

Easter came early this year at Creative Tots! Our Preschool class celebrated by doing Easter themed activities all week!

The farm theme has provided some fun center options and activities in the toddler room.

The toddler sensory bin filled with corn kernels and farm animals.

A horse barn has provided a fun place for imaginary play.

We used our sense of hearing to listen to the farm animal sounds!

We have practiced fine motor skills while lacing farm animals!

Fun farm animal magnets were mixed with letters to provide discussion.

Another sensory activity included washing big and little farm animals.

We sorted farm animals by size (big and little) and by color.

Then we acted out our book of the month, I Spy On the Farm,  with face puppets.

 Alphabet Twister!