Christ Lutheran Preschool
April Theme: Our 5 Senses
Ask you kiddo to think of things we can SEE!!
Print this out and start a list! Print one for them to draw on too!!
Make connections, if we can see something, can we touch it too? Can we hear it? Can we taste it? Can we smell it?
Pink & Purple Stars
What Can you hear in your house and in your neighborhood ?
Let's Go Outside & Do a Purple Stars Scavenger Hunt
Genesis 1:1
God created the heavens and the earth.
Psalm 136:1
Give thanks to the Lord
Purple Stars
At Home Activities
Sink or Float? Nature Experiment
Take a nature walk and hunt for things to collect with your little one. Hunt for things like flowers, sticks, rocks, leaves, acorns, and other treasures. Take the items back home and talk about which items your child thinks will sink & which items will float.
How many items did you find?
How many sank?
How many floated?
Categorize with them!!
Get out 2 bowls, a big spoon, a slotted spoon, and tongs.
"Let's try to get all of the ice cubes into the blue bowl." "Which do you think will be easiest to move the ice cubes with?" "Let's try it and find out!"
Ask questions and make predictions.
How many ice cubes are there?
Is it cold or Hot?
Use descriptive words, Ask Questions, Be creative!!
Let the sensory play go as long as they will engage!!
Flour + Baby Oil = Cloud Dough
Just mix baby oil and flour in a 1:8 ratio-- About a 1/4 cup baby oil and 2 cups flour--and you have cloud dough! It looks like flour, but it holds its shape when pressed.
You can add different things for fun.
-Hands work great and it's so good for calming and self-regulating
- measuring cups for scooping and measuring
- trucks - made tire tracks
- add dinosaurs, animals, gems, etc. and then start conversations ...
Color Mixing Sensory Table
Explore colors with this water table sensory activity.
To prepare for this activity, freeze a tray of ice cubes with a drop of food coloring in each section. Try yellow, blue, and red food coloring.
Put them into a sand or water table filled with water. If you don't have a water table, you can use a large container or bowl of water.
Once they are dumped into the water, the colors start to stir, swirl and mix.
TIP: It's better to do this activity in a white or clear container, table, or bowl. Talk about what happens when colors mix together as you put two ice cubes on the spoon (the white spoon helped to see it better). Such a fun sensory experience with colors!
Pink Stars
At Home Activities
Easy edible chocolate slime (Edible- but not meant for a snack)
Best edible jello slime (Edible-but not meant for a snack)
Sensory and Fine Motor/ Earth Day Art
Milk Cap Activities
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If you save milk caps or have extra marker caps. Try some sorting and counting activities. Sort them by color, place out different colored bowls for the children to sort into.
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Counting - Place numbers on plates or cups. The children then count that many caps or covers into that plate or cup.
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Lacing - Punch a hole in the middle of milk caps and give the children lacing strings (use yarn, shoelaces, etc.) lace the caps together. This is a great way to work on patterns and counting!
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Patterns: Hot glue some caps onto cardboard strips creating patterns on each one. Have the children try to duplicate your pattern.
He's Got the Whole World in His Hand | Bible Songs
Biscuit's Earth Day Celebration
Earth Day challenges: Who can create the tallest recycled tower? See how many recycled boxes or containers you can stack before it falls over. Depending upon where you place the boxes, this activity encourages the child to squat down, reach high, motor plan, and more.
Recycle Carnival: Create carnival games out of recycled materials. For example, recycled, clean yogurt cups stack well for a target. Newspapers rolled up can hit objects for eye-hand coordination practice. Put newspaper rolls on the floor to jump over.
Bring me "5"
This is a game you can easily play any time your child is getting bored or antsy—give them a purpose.
Say something like, "I wonder if you can find 5 teddy bears to bring me" or, "Please bring me 7 crayons."
When your child brings you the objects, simply count them together. They will notice if they brought the wrong number and will likely want to correct it.
Making a scrapbook of favorites or familiar things with 2-year-olds also promotes language development. Parents can cut out pictures of various items and group them into categories. Together, parents and toddlers can make pages of different things, such as dessert foods, vehicles, animals, furniture.
While making the scrapbook, parents should encourage their toddlers to name the different objects and ask questions about the items included in the book. Parents can also create silly pictures by mixing and matching parts of different objects and talk with their child about what's wrong with the picture and different ways to fix it.
Little Blue Truck Read Aloud
Ice Painting
THE PROCESS:
Invite your children to brush the watercolors on top of an ice block.
OBSERVE:
Notice what happens with the watercolors as the ice starts melting. The texture starts changing, as do the color
WHEN FINISHED:
Either leave it as is or press a piece of paper on top to make a print. Then, simply place the ice in the sink to melt. Cleaning up is a breeze!
Cardboard Tubes with Pom Poms
The activity of dropping pom-poms, small balls, small cars down a cardboard tube. To spice up the activity, you could add more than one tube. You could try it in so many different ways.
Catch and count goldfish crackers game
STRAW BLOWN PAINTINGS (USE DIFFERENT COLOR BLUES)
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Cut a little hole near the top to stop them being able to suck up the paint (other great tips on the link)
Creativity - Investigating a range of materials and combining them, exploring color mixing.
Science - Using air to make things move, investigating, and experimenting with answering a challenge.
Motor Skills - Hand /eye coordination, fine motor skills, pincher grip.
Colors
How to teach kids colors Suggestions:
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When you show something, say a red balloon, use the word “color” together with the name of the object. Instead of saying “this is red”, it is better to say “this is a balloon and its color is red”.
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Do not test your kids before you are done teaching. It will put them off and prevent them from learning.
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When teaching kids colors, remember that receptive language comes before expressive language Kids will be able to point out the right color long before they can say its name. At the beginning of the process, ask them to pick up all the blue pieces. If they do not know, show them a few, until they catch on.
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Stick to the main colors.
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It is better to dedicate time to each color separately. Usually, when teaching colors over a whole week, the concept is learned very well. The more you repeat it, the better it is and if you do it over one week, it is easy to reach high numbers of experiences and exposure to one color.
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Experiencing colors in different ways helps carve the concept in the brain. When learning colors, kids can experience the colors through all their senses – sight, sound, smell, taste, touch – the more experiences they get, the easier it is to remember
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Sing a song. Songs about colors set to the tune of popular children’s music can also help your toddler learn his or her colors. Singing to young children supports early language development
BLUE
The Blueberry Bush
(Tune: The Mulberry Bush)
Here we go round the blueberry bush,
The blueberry bush, the blueberry bush.
Here we go round the blueberry bush,
So early in the morning.
Pick the blueberries small and round,
Small and round, small and round.
Pick the blueberries small and round,
So early in the morning.
Taste - blueberries, ripe and sweet,etc.
Fine Motor Activity - Hand painting
Toddlers learn by touching various objects, more interestingly, of different colors. To enhance their sensory skills and creativity, engage your child in the finger or hand painting. This will pull his/her attention to different bright colors and he/she will be more interested to learn them. Here is a recipe for easy homemade paint. (Focus on the blue paint this week.)
April Theme: Our Shapes
Square
Circle
Here are some great videos about Squares!
Stars
Story: Touch the Brightest Star
Story: Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star
Activties
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Get some construction paper cut out star shapes and have your child decorate them using crayons, markers. or, apply a thin layer of white glue and decorate with sequins or other or glitter. Cut out stars from styrofoam or fabric scraps. Tape or staple the "stars" to drinking straws or long pencils.
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Sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star accompanied by your child waving their stars on straws. Make up your own versions of this song. The most important part is to be creative and have FUN!
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Stamping - using construction paper and a cookie-cutter craft.
Diamond
Story: Peppa Pig: Flying a Kite
Activities
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Diamond Shape Cookies or Sandwiches
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Play I Spy and look for Diamond shapes around the house and outside.
It's not "just play"
Play is an essential part of early learning.
It is the lifeblood of the learning process.
As children play they are developing the cognitive, social-emotional and physical skills they will need to take them into successful adulthood.
They are developing their curiosity, problem-solving, intentionality, flexibility, and verbal & non-verbal skills.
Socio-emotionally they are developing their emotional intelligence - learning confidence, cooperation, negotiation, sharing, empathy and how to communicate appropriately.
Physically their fine motor and gross motor skills are being practiced and developed!
It is NOT JUST PLAY, they are skills for LIFE!!!
***MHC Early Childhood Solutions***