On our Arctic travels today, we discovered lots of new things! In Ms, Lori’s group, the boys and girls learned about how polar bears stay warm. With a little Crisco, plastic Ziploc bags and ice cold water, the children got to feel how important blubber is for Arctic animals. In Ms. Courtney’s group, the children got in touch with their snowman building skills while rolling out some Playdoh to make the letters V, W and X. The similarities in the “big lines” used to create all three letters helped the children remember how these particular letters are formed. In Ms. Leslie’s group, the boys and girls created number twelve letter constellations. Poking tiny holes into the paper made our “stars”. The children were excited to turn the lights off and see their very own constellations. We discussed what a constellation is, and the children got to see a very neat video on the Northern Lights!
We had a ball on Thursday during small groups. Ms. Lori let us create an arctic scene from Greenland with homemade puffy paint and homemade textured sand paint. The kids enjoyed adding the puffy fur onto the Polar Bear to help keep it warm. During reading groups, after reading our readers, we played a Cookie Crunch Sight Word game on the Smartboard to polish our sight word recognition. Then, we used our white crayons on black paper to practice our letter formation and orientation of our current sight words. Watch out Kindergarten….here we come!
In part two of our snowman building, our snowmen received a blast of arctic snow, along with a face, scarf and buttons! It was time to get ooey and gooey again with shaving cream and glue as we applied snow to our dry paper mache. Everyone dug in as we put our finishing touches on our snowmen masterpieces!
As we continue our theme about the arctic and arctic animals we read “Hello Arctic”. The children discovered alot of the different animals and all of the snow! We were so inspired we de
cided to make our own snow with shaving cream and glue!
Cooking doesn’t have to involve complex baking. Today the children took over as each child had their own plastic knife and bowl to chop up lots of fruit and stir in a little Cool Whip to create a delicious Ambrosia Salad. Those fine motor skills are coming along as some of the children were able to master the grip and back and fourth motion of the knife! The children enjoyed choosing his/her own fruit and creating their own kitchen masterpiece!
Beluga Whales live in frigid Arctic waters, but today, they came to life in our classroom! While working on the letter W, the children used their fingerprints to create an ocean scene. When the children were finished, we worked on building the letter W using our “big lines” and magnet boards. While working on the /w/ sound, we also discovered the letters V and X.
We read Snowballs today by Lois Ehlert then tried our hand at making our own snowball soap creations that won’t melt, but will slowly disappear after we use them to keep our hands clean!
Even though our snow has melted, that doesn’t keep us from building our own snowman! Today, we made paper mache snowmen. Mixing equal parts water and flour, the children got ooey gooey by slathering our balloon snowmen with pasty newspaper. This two-part project has a ways to go. Next Thursday, we will get to decorate the snowmen by getting ooey gooey again when making them white (shaving cream anyone?!), and topping them off with their proper decorations. We can’t wait to to see the finished product!
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!
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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