Blog: Middlers

Welcome back! It’s going to be another week of interesting spring weather. We hope you are safe after the storms and these activity invitations help get your week off to a great start.

Sensory Invitation: Let your child help cook/make a meal today. Let them mix, stir, and combine ingredients.

Intent: The middlers love doing ‘helping/teacher’ jobs. This will give them an opportunity to help with a task that they wouldn’t normally do. It also will help develop more fine motor strength by holding utensils used to cook with.

Fine Motor Invitation: Use plastic, paper, or any other cups you have to stack. “What else can you stack in your house?”

Intent: The middlers enjoy building and stacking with various types of blocks in the classroom. This activity incorporates fine motor development by using their hand muscles to move and balance each cup. It is also a wonderful way for children to explore the connecting/disconnecting and scattering schema.

Art Invitation: Explore drawing people. Draw a self portrait, or someone in your family, or a friend.

It’s wonderful if you can set your child up with a mirror, drawing utensil and paper so they can look at their own face while they draw. You can also do partner drawing with your child, or by setting this activity up for siblings.

Intent: This is the age when many children begin exploring drawing people. They often begin by drawing round shapes and then by adding in the details of the face. This activity encourages children to slow down, notice details, and engages their creative expression.

Music and Movement Invitation: Sing “Hokey Pokey” and do the dance.

Intent: The middlers LOVE singing during meeting time and all throughout the day. We want to encourage the middlers to keep singing every day and will give examples of some of their favorite songs! We also want to give the middlers an opportunity to express their bodies through movement while listening to their favorite songs.

Outdoor/Nature/Gross Motor Invitation: Do some yoga today! If it’s nice out try doing it outside in the sun!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XCQfYsFa3Q – a fun guided child yoga

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.

It’s Friday! We have almost made it through another stay-at-home week. Here are some invitation ideas from our wonderful middler teaching team.

Sensory Invitation: Making music shakers. You can use an empty paper towel roll or toilet paper roll. Have your middler decorate the outside! You can use paint, markers, stickers, or collage it. Get creative! When you’re done add some noise. You can use beads, small pebbles, spare change, etc. To close it use a piece of paper, wax paper, tin foil, etc. Use glue, rubber bands, or tape (duct tape works well) to close the top! Now make some NOISE!

Intent: This is an activity that allows each child to create an instrument start to finish. Allow them to help with every part of the creation. They will be using their fine motor skills, creativity, and exploring music and sound.

Fine Motor Invitation: “Digging for worms”. Put dirt into a container (or see the first picture for a less messy option) and add pipe cleaners, pieces of ribbon/string, etc. use tongs or your fingers to pick up the “worms.” Another idea: find a place to dig for real worms!

Intent: The middlers enjoy digging on the playground at LACS and sometimes they find different kinds of bugs. We want to encourage the middlers to strengthen their fine motor skills by using their hand and finger muscles to dig for worms.

Art Invitation: Use paper towel or toilet paper rolls to paint. Dip the roll in paint and press the roll onto paper.

Intent: Continue to explore different modes of painting. This activity recycles old toilet paper/paper towel rolls which you may have a lot of at home right now :). This activity also includes fine motor and potentially gross motor development depending on how big the painting gets.

Music and Movement Invitation: Use your shaker while singing songs today! Dance, make noise, shake to the beat!
Song ideas:
“Baa, Baa, Black Sheep”
“Firetruck!”
“Days of the Week”

Intent: The middlers LOVE singing during meeting time and all throughout the day. We want to encourage the middlers to keep singing every day and will give examples of some of their favorite songs! We also want to give the middlers an opportunity to express themselves through movement while listening to their favorite

.
Outdoor/Nature/Gross Motor Invitation: Raking or sweeping the yard or other outside area.

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. The middlers LOVE to use the brooms and rakes to clean up the playground at Lakewood. This activity incorporates big body movements to enhance gross motor development.

We hope you have a wonderful weekend and we will be back with more invitations on Monday.

The week is more than half over and it looks like it is going to be another warm, sunny day in Durham. Our wonderful Middler teachers have come up with some interesting invitations for children to explore this morning.

Sensory Invitation: Scooping water (soapy water, colored water, warm vs. cold water, etc)

Intent: This activity is both an exploration of the senses by working with water as well as fine motor practice with scooping. Have your child explore and discuss the different aspects of water.

Fine Motor Invitation: Create a maze to drive cars through. You could draw the maze or even use blocks.

Intent: The middlers enjoy playing with cars in the classroom and on the playground. This activity incorporates fine motor development by using their hand muscles to navigate the cars in between the lines.

Art Invitation: Use chalk to outline your body, your sister/brother’s body, mom or dad’s body, etc. Color it in!

Intent: We want to encourage the middlers to spend lots of time outside. Using chalk and tracing will help develop fine motor skills. Allow your child to be creative when coloring in the body. Explore using lots of colors, mixing colors. Add some water to the chalk- what happens?

Music and Movement Invitation: Sing one of the middler favorites… “Teapot” !

Extended version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J099pJlBSgo

Intent: The middlers LOVE singing during meeting time and all throughout the day. We want to encourage the middlers to keep singing every day and will give examples of some of their favorite songs! We also want to give the middlers an opportunity to express their bodies through movement while listening to their favorite .

Outdoor/Nature/Gross Motor Invitation: Rainbow nature hunt. Choose a few different colors and find things in nature that match those colors. There are many ways to do this, you can use one of the many printable sheets available online (like this Montessori-inspired printable), have them collect things in an empty egg carton, or they might make a rainbow shape with their discoveries.

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. This activity includes both gross motor development and cognitive development with color recognition and identifying different items in nature while moving their bodies around to find the items.