Today, the children got in touch with their creative sides using a cob of corn to roll out some art! Using different textures sparked curiosity and interest. The children had the opportunity to explore the corn a little more in our sensory tub. The corn can be manipulated and plucked off of the cob to follow up this creative art activity. The United States is, by far, the largest corn producer in the world. Here’s to home grown food made in the USA!
This month, as we focus on the letters M and N, the children are working hard to remember the distinct difference between the two. Word associations are a great way to practice. Today, using a word sort, each child identified the picture or letter, decided if it began with a M or N, and then put it in the corresponding bowl. The children learned first hand how tricky some sounds can be!
The preschoolers explored all different types of harvest vegetables from the farm today. Cutting them open we found that some have seeds while others do not. Some are soft and easy to cut through while others are hard and tougher to cut. Some have prickles on the outside leaves and some even have a large pit in the middle! Vegetables of all kinds were the exploration of the day! We had a ball!
Sorting items is usually done by their obvious attributes: shape, and color. Today, Ms. Courtney challenged the children by suggesting different ways to sort squares, and then letting the class decide which way was best. The children came up with the first way: to sort them by color. After that was complete, suggestions were made, and they decided to sort by how many holes were in each square (very clever!).
What starts with the letter M? Mirror, marble, markers, magnifying glass…the list goes on. Having the children manipulate these items and make the connection that these items begin with the letter M, helps the M to become more concrete in each child’s memory. What child doesn’t love to use markers?!
Counting and number recognition are two very important mathematical foundations. Putting those together and practicing those skills brings a child’s thought process to the next level. For example, some of the older children were able to recognize the six dots on the die with out counting them, and then identify the number six on the paper and stamp it. These types of hands on activities are excellent practice to those children who are still working on building up their math skills.
We explored and discovered the science of leaves today during small groups. First, we observed the details of our leaf an drew a sketch making sure to include all the details we saw. Next, we found the “area” of our leaf by covering it with pennies. Some leaves had an area of 8 pennies while others had an area of 15! We had leaves of all sizes! Lastly, we made our leaves float in a bowl of water and found how many pennies it took to sink them! The children recorded their finding on their own science log.
During our small groups today the children enjoyed learning the colors of the rainbow. Our focus this week will be on rapid recognition of color words. During reading groups we were introduced to many color words in our reading book, Birds. We used the initial sound in each word to determine each color. This would be a great time for you to add the basic color words to your sight word practice during nightly homework (red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple).
The kids then had a ball reading, writing then stamping each color sight word into their own booklet. We will work on these booklets this week and bring them home on Thursday.
To help cement what we learned today we played a game of color matching using our color sight word cards and our colorful sorting bowls from the math center.
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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