Lakewood Avenue Children's School

Preschool Ages 1-5

Blog: Middlers

Lakewood for Middlers: April 20

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Welcome to another week of Lakewood at Home. It’s Monday and looks like it might be wet. Here are a few invitations for engaging busy 2’s and 3’s.

Sensory/fine motor Invitation: What items in your house can you use as a musical instrument that isn’t already an instrument?

Have your child explore items in your house that make noise that they can use to create music.

Intent: This intent is to further the investigation into sound and things that make noise. How can different types of materials make different sounds? The middlers enjoy exploring the music wall outside on the playground which includes various pots and pans. This activity incorporates fine motor development by using their hand muscles to move the pots, pans, and utensils to make different sounds.

Art Invitation: Finger paint!

Paint with your hands. Make handprints. What can you create while painting only using your hands? Can you use a painted handprint and create a drawing based on that?

Intent: We encourage middlers to paint at school with paint brushes. How does it feel when you use your hands to paint? Explore the feeling of the paint and the differences of how your art can be created with different utensils.

Outdoor/Nature/Gross Motor Invitation: Go on a bug hunt outside. Put on your raincoat and boots, if you have a magnifying glass bring it with you! What bugs can you find? How many different bugs can you find? How many ants can you count?

Intent: Get outside and enjoy the weather and beautiful spring scenery. We want to encourage the middlers to use all of their big body muscles to enhance gross motor development.

Lakewood for Middlers: April 17

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Happy Friday! It looks like it is going to be a beautiful day. We hope you and your child can spend some time outside today.

Sensory Invitation: Noisy or Quiet? Use a tin can, glass jar, plastic container or another container you can close. Find quiet and noisy items from around the house. Place them in the jar and determine if it’s loud or quiet.

Intent: This sensory invitation uses your child’s sense of hearing. Play around with different amounts of items in the jar to see how it sounds the same or different. How does a soft item sound different from a hard item?

Fine Motor Invitation: Tape extra paper towel/toilet paper tubes to the wall and drop pom-poms, cotton balls, small balls, etc. through the holes.

Intent: This activity incorporates fine motor development by using their hand muscles to guide each pom-pom to where they want it to go.

Art Invitation: Draw your backyard, include all of your favorite things to play with outside.

Intent: This allows the middlers to work more on using their fine motor skills to draw and paint. Have them draw from memory or look outside and draw what they see. Have them use colors that they see outside to create the drawing.

Outdoor/Nature/Gross Motor Invitation:Backyard Scavenger Hunt

Here are suggestions for things your child might look for/find.

  • 3 different leaves
  • 2 sticks as long as your foot
  • something that smells good
  • something growing that is green
  • something you think is beautiful
  • something that makes you laugh
  • something that feels soft

Intent: Get outside and enjoy the nice weather and beautiful spring scenery. To look closely at the world and engage all the child’s senses.

Lakewood for Middlers: April 16

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It’s Thursday! Looks like the weather will be slightly warmer today. We hope you can get outside for a little while.

Sensory Invitation: Feel and Find

Use a shoe box (or similar box), cut a hole in the box big enough for your child’s hand to fit inside. Place a soft, smooth, rough, or furry item inside and let your child feel and describe what they feel. Can they guess what’s inside?

Intent: This sensory invitation will use the child’s memory on what different items feel like. Have them pay attention to how each object feels. What specific parts of the item can they recognize to help determine what it is?

Fine Motor Invitation: Draw different shapes on paper and try to cut out the different shapes.

Intent: The middlers LOVE drawing and using scissors in the classroom. This activity incorporates fine motor development by using their hand muscles to move and balance each cup. This activity also includes cognitive development with shape recognition.

Art Invitation: Use the shapes that you cut out and glue to create a collage.

Intent: The middlers have been very interested in using scissors and collaging. This activity encourages creative exploration while incorporating fine motor development.

Outdoor/Nature/Gross Motor Invitation: Blow bubbles. Have your child practice blowing bubbles and then have them chase and pop the bubbles you blow. If you have run out of bubble solution, you can find two recipes in this post.

Intent: Get outside and enjoy the nice weather and beautiful spring scenery. We want to encourage the middlers to use all of their big body muscles to enhance gross motor development.

Lakewood for Middlers: April 15

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It’s the mid-point of the week and the middle of the month today! Here are a few invitations for busy 2’s and young 3’s.

Sensory Invitation: Create your own fort/cozy corner. Bring in pillows, lovies, and soft toys. Experiment with how dark or light you can make it. Use flashlights to play with the light. Make shadows with the light.

Intent: This invites young children to explore with all of their senses. This activity focuses on what the child can experience through sight and feeling. Explore the differences in dark and light in the cozy corner/fort. Think about the softness of the toys. How does the soft toy feel in your child’s arms/hands?

Fine Motor Invitation: String beads onto string or pipe cleaners. If you do not have those items you could try putting rubber bands or hair ties around water bottles or similar objects.

Intent: The middlers enjoy playing with both the wooden beads and string beads in the middler classroom. This activity uses the small muscle movements to enhance fine motor development.

Art Invitation: Create your own paint brush and paint with it.

Painting with a variety of tools expands children’s ability to express themselves in this medium. It also asks children to be creative problem solvers as they create new tools and test them.

Intent: The middlers love painting and we want to give them an opportunity to explore painting with different materials. Have your child find some materials from inside or outside of the house and test out the different strokes each material makes that you paint with.

Music and Movement Invitation: Listen to calm meditation music while in your cozy corner fort. “How does the music make you feel?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhoIeqDJM6E

You could also choose other music that your child enjoys!

Intent: To explore a softer, calmer side of music and sound, to help children learn to relax.

Outdoor/Nature/Gross Motor Invitation: Work in the garden/yard. Pull up weeds, plant a seed, water plants, etc.

Intent: Get outside and enjoy the nice weather and beautiful spring scenery. We want to encourage the middlers to use all of their big body muscles to enhance gross motor development.