Lakewood Avenue Children's School

Preschool Ages 1-5

Blog: Toddlers

Lakewood for Toddlers: April 14

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Good morning! We hope you made it safely through yesterday’s windy weather. Here are a few ideas for toddlers (or children of any age) for today.

Fine Motor Invitation: (making) Play Dough

Our favorite play dough uses the stove, but your toddler can help mix the dry ingredients and stir in the wet ones before cooking.

You can find our favorite play dough recipe here.

Cooking of any kind engages children’s curiosity and builds motor skills.

Sensory Invitation: Play Dough

Once your play dough is cool, you can invite your child to explore it using their hands, or tools like butter knives, chopsticks, or rolling pins.

This invitation is an opportunity for creative expression, fine motor skill building, and exploring a different texture.

Art Invitation: Outdoor Chalk Paint

Mixing equal parts cornstarch and water with a little food coloring creates a delightful chalk paint that children can use on natural objects. In our test, it did not wash away cleanly with just water, so you may want to do this on the grass or an old shower curtain or plastic table cloth.

Self-expression through a multitude of languages is a central tenet of the preschools and infant-toddlers centers of Reggio Emilia. At LACS teachers work to make children’s thoughts and learning in a multitude of languages visible. This begins in the toddler room where children begin to become familiar with the tools and techniques of paint and painting.

Outdoor Invitation: Neighborhood Walk (scavenger hunt)

We have all been confined to our homes and neighborhoods for several weeks now. Going on a scavenger hunt can help you and your child look at the familiar in new ways. We like this scavenger hunt from Run Wild My Child, or you can make your own.

This invitation combines cognitive skill-building with exercise, encourages children to look closely at the world around them, and builds cooperation between siblings if you ask them to work together to complete the hunt.

Lakewood for Toddlers: April 13

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Welcome back! It’s Monday again and the start of another interesting spring weather week. We hope you are safe after the storms that are expected. Below you will find a few invitations for toddlers for today, or any day.

Sensory Invitation: Trucks, sand/dirt, and rocks

Construction vehicles always seem to fascinate the toddlers at Lakewood. Seeing dump trucks driving by the school is a cause for celebration and questions. Today we suggest getting out any trucks you may have and pairing them with some sand or dirt and a few rocks for them to move around.

Intent: To build fine motor skills, engage children in sensory explorations, invite them into pretend play.

Art Invitation: Colored pencils and paper

For toddlers, learning to hold a mark making tool and discovering how to make marks on paper is undertaken with great interest. As you may see with finger painting, children approach mark making in different ways. Some make small, careful dots or lines, other cover the whole paper with zigzags and circles. These early explorations are the first steps into many different languages: the language of writing, the language of art, the language of design. Depending on your child’s approach to this work, you may want to provide them with large or small pieces of paper.

Intent: To engage toddlers in investigating how colored pencils work and how they can be used.

Outdoor Invitation: What changes did the rain bring?

Intent: At LACS we  believe in the power of nature in children’s lives. We also love the Swedish saying, “there is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes.” Tornadoes and hurricanes are surely an exception! Later today looks like it will be a wonderful opportunity to see what the rain changed about the world. Are there puddles? Has the pollen been rinsed away?

Lakewood for Toddlers: April 10

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It’s Friday! Even though the days of the week are more difficult to distinguish at the moment, there is something wonderful about Friday. It is going to be considerably cooler in Durham today, but still sunny. Here are a few invitations from the LACS toddler team.

Fine Motor Invitation: Tearing Paper

Toddlers are often fascinated by what happens when they take a piece of paper between their fingers and pull. Tearing paper engages children in investigating cause and effect, builds fine motor skills, and makes a wonderful ripping sound. For this activity you can put out a tray or box with a variety of paper (newspaper, magazines, catalogs, etc.) and invite your child to rip it up. You may have to start a few pieces if the paper is thicker.

Art and Sensory Invitation: Gluing Collage

To extend the paper tearing invitation, you can add a piece of stiffer paper, cardboard, or a piece of paper board (from an empty cereal or cracker box) and some child-safe glue. At this developmental age, a small yogurt cup with glue for dipping may work better than an entire bottle of glue. Squeezing the glue out of the bottle is a wonderful fine-motor activity, but will use all the glue.

Music/Movement Invitation: Singing and doing yoga poses or other movement to “Old Macdonald Had a Farm”

For this movement invitation you can simply sing “Old Macdonald Had a Farm” with your child, asking them to tell you what animals they would like to have on the farm. You can build a movement component into the song by doing the corresponding animal yoga poses, or by asking your child to show you how they think that animal moves.

Outdoor Invitation: More Ball Play

It will be a cooler day today, so running around with balls may help warm your child up along with building large motor skills.

Lakewood for Toddlers: April 9

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It looks like it is going to be another beautiful spring day today. We hope these invitations from our toddler teachers are helpful when you are considering what to do with your young one(s) today.

Fine Motor Invitation: Crayons and paper

Crayons are an excellent first mark making tool for young children. Using them builds muscles because of the extra force required to make marks on paper compared with markers. They can also be used different ways; the tips make fine lines, and the sides color wide swaths. Children also find it very interesting to peel the paper off of crayons.

Sensory Invitation: Taste Test

For a sensory invitation we thought it would be interesting for the toddlers to explore different foods with similar colors during snack or lunch. Orange cheddar cheese, carrot sticks, and orange segments, for example, are similar in color, but very different in taste and texture. You can ask questions like, “How do the carrots taste, and how does the orange feel?”

Music Invitation:  I like to eat eat eat apples and bananas

This fun, playful song ties in with the taste-test invitation, or can be sung on its own. Toddlers enjoy the silly words that ensue when you change out the vowels in the lyrics.

Art Invitation:  Ice Painting

This invitation can be done in two ways.

  1. Freeze cubes of colored water (food coloring or diluted child-safe paint), and set them out with thick paper on a tray or outside. You can freeze craft sticks into the water by covering the tray with foil and poking the sticks through the foil.
  2. Set out plain ice cubes (or a larger block of ice) and small containers of colored water and paint brushes. It’s best to do this outside or in a large tray or dish pan.

This invitation gives children an opportunity to explore ice, water and color in different ways.

Outdoor Invitation: Catching Bubbles

Bubbles are endlessly fascinating to the toddlers at LACS. If your bubble solution stash is running low, consider making some. We tested several recipes and found a mixture of 1 1/2 cups water, 1/4 cup dish soap and 1 Tablespoon corn syrup worked well. If you do not have corn syrup, you can use 3/4 cup water, 1/4 cup dish soap and 1 teaspoon sugar. Stir either mixture slowly until combined. You can use bubble wands you already have, make some from chenille stems (pipe cleaners), or make some giant bubble wands. We made ours using nuts instead of washers and pushpins to hold the yarn on the end of the sticks.