Lakewood Avenue Children's School

Preschool Ages 1-5

Blog: Middlers

Lakewood for Middlers: April 3

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It’s Friday! You have almost made it through another stay-at-home week. We hope there have been some moments of joy in your week. Here are a few invitations for today.

Sensory Invitation: Use your hands to paint!

This is a high-mess activity. Be prepared with old clothes and damp rags. Children can paint on paper, cardboard, or on a tray or other washable hard surface.

Possible Dialogue:
How does the paint feel?
Is it easy to paint with your hands?
What parts of your hands can you paint with? (finger tips, palm, fist, etc.)

Intent: Allowing middlers to paint in non-conventional ways. Exploring touch and feeling of items we don’t normally interact with on a daily basis.

Fine Motor Invitation: Painting – use paintbrushes, fingers, sponges, etc. to draw shapes, people, the three little pigs, (anything you want.)

Intent: Encouraging the middlers to use various methods of painting to enhance fine motor development.

Music/Movement Invitation: Singing and doing the movements for “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes”

Here are the lyrics in Spanish as well.

“Cabeza, hombros, rodillas y pies
Rodillas y pies
Cabeza, hombros, rodillas y pies
Rodillas y pies.

Ojos, y orejas, y boca, y nariz.

Cabeza, hombros, rodillas y pies
Rodillas y pies.”

Intent: The children in this age group that we know LOVE singing all throughout the day. Singing is wonderful for language development, creative expression, and singing together builds connection.

Outdoor/Nature/Gross Motor Invitation: Go on a walk in your yard, neighborhood, or around the house. Walk, run, skip, jump. What can your body do? If you slow down and look closely, what can you find?

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, and practice looking closely and carefully at the world around them.

Lakewood at Home for Middlers: April 2

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Welcome to Lakewood at Home for Middlers! These activities are tailored for the interests and developmental needs of children aged 24-40 months, but certainly have wider appeal. We hope you will join the greater Durham community in sharing your experiences in the comments. We will take them into account as we craft future posts. Enjoy!

Fine Motor Invitation: Tearing paper. Pull out some scrap paper, magazines, newspaper, etc. It can be fun to set it out on a tray or in a large bowl or bin. Invite your child to rip and tear the paper into pieces.

Intent: Exercise and build fine motor skills.

Sensory Invitation: Take a toy or kitchen object and freeze it in a block of water. Allow your middler to explore the feeling of the frozen block and determine a way to extract the toy from the ice.

Intent: Freezing water allows the middlers to explore the properties of ice and water. Let them help with the whole process so they can observe the changes.

Art Invitation: Collage! Use the scrap paper the middlers tore to create a collage. You will also need an adhesive (school glue or glue sticks work well) and a substrate (another piece of paper, cardboard box, etc.)

Intent: To give the middlers an opportunity to do an art project where they create every part of it, this project also encourages creative expression and exercises fine motor skills.

Music and Movement Invitation: Sing “The Itsy, Bitsy Spider”

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!

Outdoor/Nature/Gross Motor Invitation: Hammering/getting the toy out of the ice. Watch how the ice melts.

Intent: Continue exploring the properties of ice and water. Expand the observations of water versus ice. Use gross motor/big body to try and rescue the toy from the ice.