We have jumped right in to our October literature with our reading of Eric Carle’s The Very Busy Spider last week! We had fun reading the story together, and making all of the different sounds of the animals that the Busy Spider met while spinning her web. The students all got a turn to touch the raised spiderweb on the pages of the book, which was a favorite part for most 🙂
Using puffy paint and a squeeze bottle, each student got to make their own raised “spiderwebs”!
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!
Welcome to the 2016-2017 Creative Tots Toddler Classroom! We are so excited to have so many wonderful friends, old and new, in our class this year. This was our first full week of school, and being at school for the first time can be tough for friends as young as ours, but they all did SO wonderfully! We just know this is going to be an excellent school year. We know that you, toddler parents, are curious about what happens in your child’s day at school. On our blog you will find weekly updates about what happens in the toddler classroom. In the coming weeks, we will be posting about our daily schedule, and you can get a feel for what our mornings look like. For the first couple of weeks, we wanted all of our friends to get very familiar with their new surroundings. They are already learning about sharing, using their words, and how to clean up their messes!
Below you can see a rough structure of our day. Our toddlers are already learning how to transition from one activity to the next. This helps foster a sense of independence, once they know what to expect as they get more and more used to the schedule of our day.
Center Time/Free Play
Whole Group Story Time
Outside Play
Small Group Time
Snack
Art/Discovery Bins
Music & Movement
We hope you enjoy seeing your children grow and develop through these pictures throughout the school year. We cannot wait to see how they thrive! 🙂
We had a great month of January exploring with our winter color of “white”, in several different ways! One day, we made “snow” play-dough. Another day, our friends frosted a cookie, used chocolate covered raisins for eyes and noses, marshmallows for ears, and voilà, a polar bear cookie treat! Finally, a good sensory activity that our friends love is playing with shaving cream! The messier, the better!
The holidays are upon us, and nothing beats the different smells of the holiday season! Continuing on with our exploration of the five senses, we made no-cook peppermint play-dough during group time. Each of our friends took a turn pouring in a separate ingredient, making sure to smell some of them along the way, like our peppermint extract! They loved adding in the food coloring, making our play-dough red, which is our color of the month!
Although our peppermint play-dough smelled good enough to eat, we let them explore with their sense of taste at snacktime with a peppermint patty treat! Exploring with our senses is not only fun, but tasty, too! 🙂
For the month of November, we will be focusing on the use of our five senses: touch, taste, sight, smell, and sound. Early education focuses a lot of learning through sensory play and active learning because our senses are some of our most useful learning tools! It is important for toddlers to continue to develop their different senses, as well as to learn the use of their senses, because that is their means of processing the world around them. Use of the five senses can help children link their senses to recalling memories, which helps with overall cognitive development.
With our toddlers, we made pumpkin muffins as a class, and we used our senses to explore what we were making along the way. Here goes some multi-sensory learning!
Ms. Kristen had some already made muffins in the Mystery Can, and our friends listened to the sound it made in the can. We then started making our muffins, by adding each ingredient in a big plastic bag, one step at a time. Our friends got to smell each ingredient we were adding (yum, cinnamon!) throughout the process.
After adding all of our ingredients, it was time to mix the batter together. Each of our friends got to take a turn (yay, sharing!) mixing our muffin batter in the bag. They loved how squishy and soft it felt!
After putting the batter into the pan, our friends got to add their own chocolate chips on top–we always love to sneak in some fine motor skills 😉
They used their sense of taste at snack time, when they got to enjoy what they helped make!
To celebrate Halloween this week, we had all Halloween-themed activities! We did Halloween art projects, played Halloween games, had spooky snacks, and of course–COSTUMES! We had so much fun celebrating Halloween with our friends. Have a safe and happy Halloween, from the Creative Tots Toddler Room!
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!
Knowledge of positions is essential as children communicate in the classroom and in the real world. Young children are in a period of rapid language growth and knowledge of positional words such as above, below, inside, outside, right, and left enhances their ability to follow and give directions and to use language precisely. We practiced these language skills today using our fun tunnel! We climbed in, crawled through and came out! Simple, playful, fun activities can be wonderful learning opportunities!
They told us when they were in the tunnel and told us when they came out…Learning is so fun!
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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