Young children learn best by “doing”.

Because we are always talking about our colors, we practiced sorting fish according to their color. Using cardboard cut-outs of fish and a Twister board, we placed fish onto their matching color.

This activity fostered an array of pre-math skills, including sorting, classifying, and categorizing items by similar and contrasting characteristics.

Our first week of Dr. Suess revolved around the book Ten Apples Up on Top.

This book presented a host of opportunities for us to practice our counting skills! For this activity, we used blocks (of which apple stickers were attached), to practice our counting!

Using our hands and our thinking minds, we stacked our blocks until we reached ten! Creating a foundation for complex mathematical thinking is initiated in early childhood.

Stacking objects helps your preschooler begin to acknowledge quantities, cause and effect, and measurement. This awareness lays the framework for more complicated concepts later on.

In the story of Bartholomew and the Oobleck, oobleck rains down from the sky and covers everything in its path.

Using play dough as a medium and small plastic people, we recreated the story! This activity also revisited and reinforced vocabulary words, such as inside, outside, under and, and over.

Using play dough helped your little practice using certain physical skills with their hands as they manipulated 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 our little ones learn more about their environment as they make and mimics everyday objects with the play dough.

Sensory activities play a key role in the maturation process of young children.

Activities that require manipulation and touch enable children to heighten the adaptive response through their senses.

They are an integral component in early childhood education. They not only engage the child, but stimulate cognitive development.

To access this, your young one participated in an activity where they made oobleck!

Using corn starch, food coloring, and water, we manipulated and created various combinations to create the perfect consistency for our goo!

Throughout the early years of life, children notice and explore mathematical dimensions of their world. They compare quantities, find patterns, navigate in space, and grapple with real problems such as balancing a tall block building or sharing toys fairly with a playmate.

Math­ematics helps children make sense of their world outside of school and helps them construct a solid foundation for success in school.

In our classroom, we use play and sensory experiences (in addition to more direct academic approaches) to relay these integral math concepts to your little ones.

This activity involved stacking egg carton turtles onto one another in this Yertle the Tertle activity. In the story, Yertle commands the turtles of Sala-ma-Sond to pile onto each other so that Yertle could grab the moon.

The very act of stacking presented a host of counting opportunities for our class, so we put our learning into action! Students were first directed to stack their turtles.

This was a bit tricky, as it required them to focus. Doing so enabled them to witness the magic of cause and effect. Once fully stacked, students were then urged to count their pile.

Following the mastery of this task, students broke their piles into smaller groups and counted them as well!

Our third week revolved around The Foot Book.

For this activity, we painted with our feet.

To add a science component, we mixed two different colors to create a new color!

Using red and blue paint, we made the color purple.

Your little ones squealed as they squished their feet through and walked around with the paint on their feet!

To help us hone our fine motor skills, we strung shoestrings through a turtle-themed lacing card.

Parents may think that activities like these have very little developmental significance, but the truth is just the opposite.

Activities like this are crucial because they allow a break in the sometimes monotonous tasks of tracing or even coloring, and provides a wide range of motion that young writers can use.

Lacing activities also enable young children to become aware of the roles of their dominant and non-dominant hands.

Stabilizing the cards while working the shoestring through the holes strengthens those little fingers and muscles.

In our classroom, we use a variety of ways to teach your little one about literacy.

Throughout each theme, we select a letter related to it, and integrate into our activities throughout the week.

For this activity, we used green play dough to make the letter T. Each student was given a play dough mat with the letter T and a picture of a turtle on it.

Everyone was then directed to pinch pieces of the dough off to place onto the map, which enabled them to practice their fine motor skills.

The story of Yertle the Turtle was a favorite of the children. Yertle is the king of the pond, but he wants more. He demands that other turtles stack themselves up so he can sit on top of them to survey the land.

Mack, the turtle at the bottom, is exhausted. He asks Yertle for a rest; Yertle ignores him and demands more turtles for a better view.

Eventually, Yertle notices the moon and is furious that anything dare be higher than himself, and is about ready to call for more turtles when Mack burps.

This sudden movement topples the whole stack, sends Yertle flying into the mud, and frees the rest of the turtles from their stacking duty. The students loved the story and requested that we read it over and over again. For this activity, we recreated Sal-ma-Sond, the pond in which Yertle lived. Using green water, plastic plants, and turtles we recreated the story with sensory materials!

Children love to discover the world with their senses; they love stories; they love to play!

Story trays use a preschooler’s natural enthusiasm for sensory play and stories by telling stories in the tray and inviting them to retell the story with creative materials.

It is an intermodal expressive arts tool that can be used to relay a variety of concepts to the young learner.

In our Cat and the Hat story trays, students are provided with an engaging way to present the story line of the book in a meaningful and personal way.

For this activity, we used a back drop of the two children in the story, combined with figurines of the Cat and Thing One and Thing Two, red boxes, red blocks, and our imaginations to retell the story!