Monthly Archives: December 2014

Ice Skating

Seasons, Winter 1 Comment
Using wax paper, we ice skated at school!
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We began the activity with a discussion of the weather, the different kinds of weather we see throughout the year, and the different kinds of things we wear for cold weather.
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We then put on our hats, scarves, and mittens, and skated around the room to waltz music!
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Weather activities teach young children about the exciting world that they live in.
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Talking about how weather changes helps your little one to make associations to how the world around them affects their daily lives.
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Umoja Around the Rosie

Kwanzaa Leave a comment

The Kwanzaa holiday was created to introduce and reinforce seven principles which were viewed as core value systems for healthy and thriving families, stable and loving and caring relationships, effective parenting practices, school achievement, and non violent, safe and productive communities. Thus, the seven days of the Kwanzaa holiday is organized around the seven principles of Kwanzaa: Unity, Self-determination, Collective Work and Responsibility, Shared Wealth, Purpose, Creativity and Faith.

The Umoja (unity) principle instructs that each member of the family and by extension the community is constituted by a web of interpersonal relationships. The health and possibilities of the family and community, therefore, is dependent upon the quality of relationship within the family and community.This activity involved your little one playing a group game to reinforce the principle of Umoja.

Organized activities can be fun and contribute to children’s learning and development. But many traditional games, such as Musical Chairs and Duck, Duck, Goose focus on competition and eliminate children from the fun. In contrast, cooperative games help preschoolers learn to work together, follow directions, listen, and develop problem-solving and movement skills. For this activity, we played the Kwanzaa version of Ring Around the Rosie. We chanted the following words:

Umoja, Umoja

Let’s light the Kinara

Kwanzaa, Kwanzaa

We all fall down!

Your little ones delighted in this game, as they laughed and giggled with their friends. It added to the excitement of Kwanzaa week!

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Christmas Tree Sewing

Christmas Leave a comment

This activity involved lacing a pipe cleaner through a paper Christmas tree. Lacing (or sewing) activities are a great educational and developmental tool for preschoolers.

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As children grasp the tip of the the pipe cleaner, they are building their pincer grip which is crucial for writing skills.  They also learn patterns and develop hand-eye coordination through the act of weaving the string through the holes.  Finally, it is also a lesson in patience as they ever so slowly work their way across the Christmas tree with their string.

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Kwanzaa Place Mats

Kwanzaa Leave a comment

Weaving is such an excellent activity to try with preschoolers!  Weaving not only promotes fine motor skills, but helps children learn how to create patterns and work through problems they may encounter while weaving.

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It can also be a beautiful way for children to express themselves artistically. For this activity, we created Kwanzaa place mats using black, red, and green pieces of paper.

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Your little one weaved strips of paper through their place mat, to create a beautiful piece of functional Kwanzaa art!

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Ice Sculptures

Arctic Theme, Seasons, Weather, Winter Leave a comment
Using toothpicks, and styrofoam pieces, your little architect constructed their very own structures!
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 Playing with a variety of building materials is critical for the development of spatial thinking, or envisioning where different items go in relation to each other as they build.
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Deciding how to structure the pieces, connect them together, and configuring whether they are aligned or perpendicular to one another, are just the kinds of skills that support later learning in science, technology, engineering and math.
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Dreidel Dreidel Dreidel!

Hanukkah Leave a comment

The dreidel, known in Hebrew as a sevivon, dates back to the time of the Greek-Syrian rule over the Holy Land—which set off the Maccabean revolt that culminated in the Hanukkah miracle.

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Learning Torah was outlawed by the enemy, a “crime” punishable by death. The Jewish children resorted to hiding in caves in order to study.

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If a Greek patrol would approach, the children would pull out their tops and pretend to be playing a game. By playing dreidel during Chanukah we are reminded of the courage of those brave children.

Tracing the Dreidel

Hanukkah, Literacy, Pre-writing Leave a comment

The tactile experience (touching the letter with your finger) is important for building a memory trace. This enables students to acquaint the name of each letter with a visual representation for the letter sound.  For a child who is struggling with their letters, the sooner they can integrate the sound of the letter with what it looks like, the sooner their writing contains more meaning for them.

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For this activity, we talked about the letter D. We discussed words that begin with this letter; words like dinosaur, dirt, dreidel, and dog that we pronounced and then broke up into their component parts. Using our fingers, we moved to the ground, where we carved (with some help from Miss Carrie) letter Ds into the dirt, and then traced them with our pointer fingers.

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Tactile Letter Puzzles

Hanukkah, Pre-writing Leave a comment

Tactile letter activities are an amazing way to help kids explore the alphabet. Tactile means connecting with the sense of touch, so these activities are designed for kids to explore the alphabet using their fingers. When they trace the letters, they are learning the strokes and shape of the letter to prepare them for writing in the future.

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For this activity, we used pieces of foam to construct the letter D. All of the alphabet letters include either straight lines, diagonal lines, and/or big and little curves and this experience helped students perceive how these components fused together to create a larger picture. Before preschoolers begin to read or spell, they must learn the letters of the alphabet and the sounds they represent. Learning to pair letters and sounds helps prepare preschool children for later reading.

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The Visual Perceptual Menorah

Hanukkah Leave a comment

Research has shown that young children learn best through active, hands-on experiences.

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In other words, children learn by doing. Play provides the foundation for academic learning.

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To incorporate the menorah into our Hanukkah theme, we placed candles into real menorahs!

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This activity accessed several developmental areas.

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Each candle was color-coded to match a corresponding cavity on the menorah.

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By discerning between an array of different colors, students exercised their matching and visual perceptual skills.

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This experience also encouraged your little ones to investigate, discover, and learn new ideas related to a culture different from their own.

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By collaborating with their classmates, they also fostered their decision-making skills, supporting their emerging social-emotional development, as they best problem-solved how to share supplies to meet a common goal.

 

D is for Dreidel and Dinosaur

Hanukkah Leave a comment

We have been learning about the many words that begin with the letter D, because our word for the week is Dreidel! We began our week with the words dreidel, dirt, and dinosaur.

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To help make this activity fun and memorable, our task was to place dinosaurs inside a large letter D. By doing this, your little one incorporated several developmental domains. They not only accessed their ability to evaluate space (How many blocks will fit?), but were given an opportunity to work with their peers.

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Social development is an essential component to many of our activities. They build self-esteem, create community, and encourage conflict resolution, which is essential as your little ones continue to grow and flourish!