This month, we are learning all about arctic animals.

Using wooden play dough hammers, we practiced freeing our arctic friends from large chunks of ice.

This encouraged motor development, hand-eye coordination, creativity, and math and science skills!

As young children explore with age-appropriate tools, they use small and large muscles.

As they make decisions about the orientation of the hammer, they participate in problem solving skills.

Lastly, as they complete their project, they experience a feeling of accomplishment. Most importantly, they had fun while doing it!

Your preschooler consistently expresses her preference for tactile play. As young children seek to grasp new information, this form of play provides the perfect forum to apply newly acquired concepts.

As they interact with peers, their teacher, and provided materials, your budding ornithologist forms relationships to learned notions that enable them to make sense of their world. For this particular activity, we learned about how snow owls are born. Because they are reptiles, most birds lay eggs.

Using play dough, tiny snow owls, sticks, and rocks, we created our very own owl nests! We first made the play dough (using salt, flour and water), and then created our nests!

Your little scientist enjoyed spinning elaborate tales of baby owl cavorting through the “snow forest” as they followed their “parents”. Their conversations allowed for the processing of new vocabulary and the enjoyment of working together toward an idealized goal.

Although the formal study of reading and writing does not occur until kindergarten, young children are capable of recognizing letters and their functions.

Providing regular opportunities to practice pre-reading skills, is essential in gaining knowledge of the alphabet and its association to how words work.

Using flour and our fingers, we practiced tracing the letter W.

Throughout the week, we have been talking about different words that start with the letter W.

We have additionally been singing songs that reinforce the different sounds that W makes.

Using socks as flippers and white paint, we created our very own walruses! We began the project with a discussion about what walruses, where they live, what they eat, and what flippers are!

We then dove into the paint, and created a messy, but fun masterpiece! This sensory activity was one of the favorites for the week!

Sensory play is important because it gives children the change to play with different types of textures, which helps them to build new ways of talking about the world.

Sensory play is also calming for young children. It helps regulate their internal discomfort by soothing their senses and providing a creative outlet for their emotions.

Since we are learning about snow owls this week, we used to play dough to create our own!

Using play dough as a medium, feathers, and plastic eyes, we created our own version of our favorite snow owls!

Using play dough helps a child practice using certain physical skills with the hands when they manipulate the dough with their fingers.

Children can practice skills such as pinching, squeezing or poking while they play with the dough.

Lastly, using play dough helps a child practice using imagination and other cognitive abilities such imitation, symbolism and problem solving.

This helps your little ones learn more about their environment as they make and mimic everyday objects with the play dough.

Using pre-cut pictures, we practiced putting snow owls together!

Puzzles help young children build the skills they need to read, write, solve problems, and coordinate their thoughts and actions – all of which they will use in school and beyond.

They also help them begin to recognize colors and shapes, and come to realize that the sum of parts make up a whole – a concept that will help them with math later on.

By arranging pieces into the puzzle, your little one also develops the muscle group used for writing, or the “pincer” grasp.