Ideas for Toddlers and Up

Now that the school year has officially come to an end, I will posting less, but will still be looking out for great ideas and recipes to share with you at least once a week. 

Our Older ToddlerTeacher, Miss Catherine sent these ideas to her parents, but I wanted to share them in the blog since most of them are great activities for all age preschoolers. 

Fun activities geared towards working on their fine motor skills, pre-math skills, sensory learning and problem solving that will also peak curiosity and creativity:

1. Collander and pipe cleaners (fake flowers w/stems if you want to make it spring related). Having them stick the pipe cleaners into the collander and manipulating the pipe cleaners.

2. Bug prints/ animal prints/ car tracks. Anything they can dip in paint and put on paper. Using (easy to clean) toys for painting activities is always a fun way to spark creativity. 

3. Spring scavenger hunts (ex. Find a lady bug, bird in a nest, flowers, butterfly, new plant growing etc.)

4. Emptied clorox wipe holders, or baby wipe holders anything they can fill up with things like pom poms, cotton balls etc.

5. Sorting colors. Amazon has some awesome options for sorting toys (we have bears and bugs in our classroom that they really enjoyed). You can also use toys around your house not only sorting colors but cars, stuffed animals and whatever they can pile in like categories.

6. Shaving cream is also a fun activity. We use it as “snow” in the winter but it is still a fun activity through out the year. Most just like to run their hands through it and play with it. You can also add animals or cars to it to add another layer of play to it. 

Encouraging language: This is the year where speech goes from baby babble to words you can understand! In the classroom we use every opportunity to encourage them to talk to us. This is best done when doing something they love to do. Like playing with their favorite toy, eating their favorite snack or reading their favorite story. Having them describe it, if it “so yummy” or “so soft”. Also, a great time to encourage language would be outside or on a walk. Asking them things like “where do birds live?” “where do flowers grow?” Anything to get those incredible little brains thinking and then verbalizing it. 

Books we love to read during the year:

1. Pete the Cat (I love my white shoes and four groovy buttons). These are two books your children probably know by heart. 

2. The Very Hungry Caterpillar 

3. Brown Bear Brown Bear

4. Polar Bear Polar Bear What Do You Hear?

5. The Napping House. This is a great book when we needed to quiet down just a bit. We had to be very quiet because we didn’t want to wake up the characters in the book. :)

These are just a few of the books we love to share during the year.