Exciting New Activities

Older group of children:

Children are practicing their language and mathematical skills daily
This week we have focused on improving our literacy skills in particular to phonemic awareness, rhyming, and recognizing the beginning letter sound of a word.
Children show a great interest in the different practical life activities throughout the day. Working on practical life activities helps the children learn and develop their manipulative skills/ gross-motor, self-development, manners, caring for the environment, and life skills.
Manners we are practicing daily are:
Daily greetings
Please and thank you
Table manners:
Waiting for everyone to be seated
Making sure everyone has food
Sitting up straight at the table
Many of the children really care for the environment and take care of it.
They enjoy wiping down the tables
Sweeping the floor
Making sure everything is put back
Children learned what sifting meant and were excited to sift flour on their own
This activity helps the children strength the muscles on their hands
Fine motor skills are necessary for developmental skills and functional tasks
The children were able to bake a cake and all were very delighted. They were all very happy how their cake tasted. They are all wonderful little chefs.
Baking exposes the children to new vocabulary, oral language skills, and mathematical concepts: counting, sequencing, and measuring.
Some of the children asked if they could do the exploding colors again; we explored the color theory with baking soda and vinegar eruptions again.
The children discuss the reactions taking place, make predictions, and review the results.
Children also revisited our plastic project, which we made out of vinegar and milk. Many were fascinated at the process, they are also discussing how mixing vinegar with different substances or ingredients causes a reaction.
When playing outside the children are interested in drawing with chalk
They all draw beautiful pictures or words such as; unicorns, flowers, shapes, etc.
Drawing with chalk allows the children to increase strength on hands, getting into different positions and engaging the core muscles
They also enjoy playing with the big blocks, while using their imagination to create different things such as: robots, transformers, animals, or houses.
Children discuss the different colors they used or count how many blocks they used

Younger group of children:

Used shaving cream and paint of primary colors to make a secondary color. Children loved the sensory play with the mixing.
Children have taken interest in a new book found in our classroom called The Witch On the Broom, asking the teacher to read it multiple times throughout the day!
Dinosaurs have been an ongoing topic and choice of play, we play all together on a daily basis. While practicing taking turns, complementing each other, and working together.
Children worked together to put different shaped/colored construction paper into a box. They took turns and interacted well with one another!
Used a variety of sized cardboard to make what they wanted. Most of them made cars and trains!
Using paper and crayons children created their art pieces, when asked what they were drawing many of them said different shapes including triangle and circles.
The children’s favorite song lately has been Freeze dance; they show great interest and are able to recognize the words.
For imagination we used a cardboard box and used it as a boat to travel the world! This has been extremely fun for both the children and teachers!