Since gross motor skills can be learned and improve with practice, children need plenty of opportunities to exercise these skills. If you want to learn about other activities you can do with your child to help them develop better gross motor skills, click on the first picture below.
The Cincinnati Zoo visited our classroom today and taught us how different animals survive in the winter. She brought two visitors with her….
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!
Studying Greenland this month means learning about different animals in the cold, Arctic habitat. Today, Ms. Krista, and a few of her zoo friends, came to see us! We learned about how turtles hibernate beneath the ground during the winter. We also got to see and touch a chinchilla! Chinchillas live on the top of cold, snowy mountains, and use their incredibly soft, warm fur to keep them cozy from the cold. We wish these cute little guys could stay with us all month long!
Practicing our letter formation is fun, but practicing them in Cool Whip is even better! Today, in Ms. Lori’s small group, the boys and girls practiced writing the letters V, X and W in a small tray of Cool Whip. Working from left to right, top to bottom, the children enjoyed this memorable experience!
Some like their vegetables steamed, some like them raw. How about covered in paint?! Today, the children practiced the letter V by tracing it with vegetable stamps. While practicing the /v/ sound, we also came up with words that begin with the letter V: vegetable, violin, vet, very, and everyone’s favorite…vvvrooooooommm!
We’ve been reading this wonderful Eric Carle Book during our Arctic theme this month. The children love the repetitive language and rhythmic text. By day two they were reading right along with us! Reading books with rhyme and predictable text helps children begin to understand story structure. They are able to figure out what is coming next and better understand difficult vocabulary.
In order to help prepare children for writing and other activities that require small movements in the hands, we must first build the small muscles in the hands and fingers. There are many activities that help build these muscles. Today we used small spoons to transfer “snowballs” from bowls into our sorting trays.
During small groups today, our focus was the math concept of sorting. We sorted ice by their shape…it was COLD!
We had our first Show and Share today in the Early 3’s! The children had the opportunity to bring in one item that started with the letter S…
S is for Snoopy!
S is for Snow White
S is for Snake!
S is for Sun!
S is for Snowball
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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