Documentation

Color Exploration Art

Colour recognition and exploration have always been a big interest in Preschool B and we like to find ways to intergrade the topic into our play, circle, and creative art. Today for circle the class took a vote for the book “The day the crayons quit” which is always a fun book to read while visually observing the different colours on the page. For art today we thought it would be fun to let the children pick out whatever colours they wanted from a variety of different paint colours (red, white, black, blue, orange, green, yellow) and to let them freely and creatively paint on a piece of paper. The preschoolers used their pincer grasp and fine motor skills to hold the paint brush. Each child used different methods and motions to paint their pictures. Some just spread around the paint in a back and forth motion, some dabbed the brush on the paper, we noticed swirling motion and some of the preschoolers carefully painted each colour and then excitedly mixed them together. We can’t wait to explore colours further!

Cotton Ball Pincer

We practiced our pincer grasp in our sensory bin. We added cotton balls and clothing pins, the preschoolers grew an interest in trying to pick up the cotton balls. While H.C was playing in the sensory bin he was using color recognition “this is purple” referring to the clothes pin.

This activity helps develop the open/closing motion when picking objects up and putting objects down when needing to use your pincer grasp. Constantly developing your pincer grasp at young ages help develop the foundation on having a good pencil grip once beginning school.

Dramatic Play: Post Office

We wanted to do something different for our dramatic play center, we also wanted to try our best to incorporate Valentine’s Day. We decided to turn our dramatic play area into a post office. We talked about what kind of things make up a post office. During a circle discussion, we talked about letters, envelopes, stamps, postcards, boxes, mail delivery people, and what happens when we put our letters and packages into the big mailbox. We thought it would be fun to make our own letters to mail out. We used our pincer grasp to hold pens and pencils and used our imaginations to creatively make our very own postcards for our families. The preschoolers had so much fun designing and coloring in their own stamps. For our post office, we also wrote letters that were filled with words, drawings, and imagination. Once our letters were complete we folded them in half which was challenging, but the preschoolers enjoyed the practice, we sealed them with a sticker stamp and an address. The preschoolers then put their letters in the mailbox to go out for delivery! We had so much fun jumping in the role of a post office worker, and as people who like to mail our letters and packages. We worked on lots of different valuable skills during our dramatic playtime today. We worked on inclusion, communication, fine motor, and pincer grasp, letter, and color recognition, and just the skills of learning how to “write a letter” and what we need to mail out! We are so excited to keep working on our skills while having fun and gaining other skills along the way.

Geoboard Activity

We recently have introduced a new activity to the preschoolers, geoboards. They are a fine motor activity for children. It is a board with little pegs, the idea of this activity is to use your pincer grasp/fine motor skills to creatively stretch an elastic across the pegs creating different patterns and designs. This activity focuses on your hand-eye coordination and precision. The preschoolers were very excited to try this new activity, they spent some time examining the toy and elastics. The children were talking about the stretchiness, color, and sizes of the elastics. Some elastics were small and thin, some were big and thick. Some were stretchier than others. This was a fun way to be creative while strengthening our fine motor skills. We are so excited to have this activity in our classroom!

Glitter Hearts

Today we did a fun, mess-free creative art activity. We used foam hearts, white school glue, and pink and purple glitter. The preschoolers placed their foam hearts in a container and used a paintbrush to drizzle some white glue on the hearts. Once they were finished with the glue part of their activity they excitedly sprinkled glitter all over their foam hearts. We talked about how the glue is sticky and how even though they put lots of glitter on the heart, the glitter would only stick to the gluey parts of the heart. This was a fine way to explore cause and effect and to use our fine motor skills to shake the glitter out! We are very excited about Valentine’s Day. 

Ice Melting Experiment

Today while out in the snow the preschoolers were very interested in the snow and icicles. Miss. Sara had a great idea to bring snow inside to watch it melt. We left the snow sitting in our classroom as we ate lunch. The children would look at the mason jar every so often and talk about what they see that is different. After nap time all the snow was gone. We had a circle about what happened to the snow and discussed how it turned into water. Miss. April asked Pre A if it melted because it was too hot or too cold and T.P said it was because it was too hot. Science activities encourage creativity and conversations with other children and adults. The melting of the snow science experiment helps the children understand the importance of observations.

Icicle Experiment

Today the class participated in a group experiment. We got a large icicle and placed it inside of a jar. The idea of our experiment is to see how long the icicle will take to melt. This experiment brought up the topic of “hot & cold” we discussed different things that are hot and different things that are cold. We talked about how the sun is hot and how snow and ice are cold. We talked about the temperature in our classroom and what we thought would happen to the icicle. The preschooler’s guesses if the ice would melt because it’s warm In here or stay ice because it’s cold. Each preschooler made a prediction about the icicle and they guessed how long it would take to fully meltdown to water. We placed the icicle in the jar at 10:00 am and by 12:50 pm the icicle was fully melted. This activity was a fun way to do something in a large group setting, it encourages communication, science learning, and it was fun!

Independence

In preschool A we have been making it a focus to practice our independence, especially when getting ready for our outside time. We have noticed that when the children are getting ready on their own or attempt it, they express excitement. During certain times the preschoolers have been turning to their peers in the classroom for help. This skill has been demonstrating self-help and teaching other children the importance of helping others.

Matching Colors

The toddlers are gaining knowledge and growing every day so we are trying to focus on basic skills and recognition of different things to help them further grow. We are mainly focussing on colours shapes animals and working on visuals. We are so excited to incorporate all of these new skills into play and to continue teaching them the skills to help them grow This morning we did some colour matching. Pulling out the blue folder we had R.J find a few blue items in our classroom to put in the folder. This builds confidence for the children to feel like they successfully found the correct colour for the correct folder. One at a time we moved from blue to red to purple etc. One thing we are working on is our vocal skills in pronouncing the colours out loud. When miss Jessie asked the children “what colour is this folder and what colour do you need to find in the classroom” O.C stood up and went to look around the classroom immediately, she came back with a purple barn to put in the purple folder. So proud of all these toddlers I can already see the progress coming along. Please remember to practice this at home with your babies to build colour coordination skills.

Snowy Sensory Bin

Too cold to go outside? That’s okay! The educators in toddler B decided to bring the outdoors inside! We filled up the sensory bin with LOTS of snow, put some of our toys inside, laid out some towels, and away the children went. One by one they slowly gravitated towards bins. The children started to dig with the toys and put their hands inside. “It’s so cold,” said KW. “It’s cold!” Shouted HC as he squished the snow between his fingers. Miss Jessica sat down with the children and put her hand inside the bin. She made a snowball and said “wow it is cold! Watch what happens when Miss Jessica squishes the snow.” Miss Jessica then squished the snow in her hand. When she opened it the children appeared to be shocked! “It’s all gone, it looks wet,” said KW. “You’re right KW! When I squished the snow in my hand it got warm which caused it to melt, meaning it turned to water!” The children started to pick up snow and squish it tight; when they opened their hands they looked at their hands with a smile.

STEM Building

We have noticed that Preschool A has had an interest in building these last few weeks. I wanted to explore their imagination for building with paper cups and popsicle sticks. At first, P.S and D.T were stacking the cups together. Miss. April joined in on the play and began building. P.S, N.M and J. G then joined in with the building. Some of the preschoolers build houses and others built a bridge. P.S and N.M both had an idea to try and poke the popsicle stick into the cup. Preschool A enjoys exploring their creative minds with all the different toys we have in the classroom. This activity explored the children’s observation skills. They observed Miss. April and the other children before joining play; also explored their helping skills.

Water Color Painting

During our creative time, we took out our watercolors and playdough stencils and painted. Preschool A discovered that you must dip the paintbrush into the water before picking a paint color. During creative, the Preschoolers would paint inside the stencil to reveal the design of the stencil on the paper. While painting the preschoolers would say out loud to their peers what the stencil was that they were painting. One of the techniques P.S discovered was she had to hold the stencil in order for it not to move while she was painting. The preschoolers who were painting used their listening and began doing what P.S did with the stencil while painting. Throughout the painting, we discovered that if you used too much water and painted over the same spot the water would begin going through the paper. We came up with suggestions on what we can do for the paper not to rip; move the stencil to a dry part of the paper.

Exploring and Making Fossils

Today in our 2 groups, the preschoolers go to be “paleontologists” by using special tools (a small hammer, carving tools) to break open a fossilized rock to see what was inside. Each preschooler took many turns trying to use the tools to crack open the rock. The children were using many methods to do so, some were hammering really hard, some were using the carving tools to carve at the rock, while others were creatively using the hammer to hit the end of the carving tool to put a hole into the rock. When the rocks were finally broken up, the preschoolers were ecstatic to find “gold coins” inside! We used a magnifying glass to examine them! Once we were done breaking open the fossils, we thought it would be so much fun to make our own fossils. We started by mixing a salt dough recipe for the base of the fossil. The recipe was 1 cup of flour, half a cup of salt, and half a cup of room temperature water. When we were mixing we added in more flour to make the mixture more dry and doughy. Once the dough was formed the children each got a piece to flatten out. After picking out a dinosaur from the “museum” the preschoolers used their dinosaur to leave footprints into the dough to make our very own fossils. This was a fun way to continue learning about dinosaurs and to actually observe the different features of dinosaurs as well as to learn about fossils and what they are!

Nature in Play

Pre A is always exploring with their play. While outside N.M and X.M found different ways to explore nature. N.M was making music with natural materials and a strainer while X.M was painting with a stick and water. Playing with natural materials is an important part of development, it allows children to develop problem solving and engagement. When exploring natural materials children become explorers, designers, and artists which allows them to incorporate these characteristics in other parts of their play.

Indoor Obstacle Course

Today the preschoolers were so excited to partake in our indoor obstacle course! We set up a challenging, fun, and interactive obstacle course inside our classroom using different sizes of stepping stones that allowed the children to practice their balancing skills, which led to another obstacle, the children we challenged to walk across a zig-zag line leading up to a jumping obstacle. The children had to try to jump from one like to the next exercising their leg muscles Once they finished jumping the preschoolers had to either crawl or limbo underneath a pole that was across two shelves. Once they got passed the pole, they could crawl or hop, or use some sort of movement across the floor to the next obstacle which involved using our hand-eye coordination and aiming skills to throw a ball or squishy toy into the bin. Following our ball throwing spot in the obstacle, we moved on to another balancing activity which used our legs and feet. This balance object is a great way to work on using our balance and movement. Near the end of our obstacle course, the children excitedly walked across a balance (bench) and onto the interactive part of our obstacle course. We have 4 communication foam dice, the preschoolers picked one dice and rolled it, each face on the dice has a question on it and the children had to answer whatever the question was. It was a great way to have a 1-1 moment with each child and a special way to learn more facts and to talk with the child about whatever it is that was written on the dice. Once they answered their question, they finished off the obstacle course by walking up the stepping stones to the finish line. This was a great way to encourage gross motor skills, memory and problem solving, coordination, communication skills, and exercise. We had so much fun challenging ourselves and accomplishing difficult gross motor tasks!