Getting back into the swing of things means reviewing old routines and practicing procedures. For our small groups, the boys and girls learned new games and activities that are available to them in our centers. Teaching them how the activities and games work ensures that the children are playing the game/activity the correctly, ultimately gaining the educational purpose it is designed for. A new month means new centers, which means new ways to learn!
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!
Flour is an important ingredient when it comes to baking cookies. Today, we found a different use for it: practicing our letters! As we focused on the letters K, L and U, the children got those fingertips moving to create the letters in the flour. How many times can they write the letter? Believe me, they would do this all day long if they could! This multi-sensory activity definitely made for a memorable experience.
Sparkles anyone?! Activities with sequins, or anything sparkly for that matter, are always exciting. Digging through to find the exact color and shape that you want is excellent fine motor practice. Using the tips of their fingers, each child grasped and place sequins to trace his/her name. As we outlined the names in glue, the children were also able to practice tracing their names. Each child was very focused as they paid close attention to their sequin details!
As we round out our farm month, Ms. Lori took the opportunity to have the children create the letter H using pieces of corn. With Ms. Lori’s help the children dotted glue along the letter, and used their fine motor skills to place the corn on the dot of glue. Starting from top to bottom and working from left to right, the children created their own H masterpieces!
As we usher our way back from a restful holiday break, we got back into the swing of things by practicing our rhyming skills and matching upper and lowercase letters. When rhyming, the children discovered that it does not matter what the first letter is, as long as the ending of the words sound the same. When we found words that matched, the puzzle pieces fit together. As the children matched the capital and lowercase letters, they had to find the picture that began with that particular letter. If the letters match, the puzzle pieces fit! The children did an excellent job exploring the letters.
The letter H is one of the easier letters to write. Writing it in crayon, pencil and marker is excellent practice. Writing it in paint makes it a memorable experience. Today, Ms. Lori showed the children how to create a capital H and a lowercase h using art dot painters. The children caught on quickly and enjoyed using these special art utensils!
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!
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?!
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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