Lakewood at Home

Lakewood for Middlers: May 4

May 4, 2020 by betsy Leave a Comment

It’s Monday! We hope you had a wonderful weekend and were able to make time for self-care. As teachers, we have been thinking, reading, and discussing mental health for adults and children while we are all under additional stress. One theme that keeps coming up is making sure adults take a moment (or more!) for self-care on a regular basis. Perhaps the messy art invitation will give you a moment to laugh and have an extra drink of water while your child explores.

Art Invitation: Messy Art! Take your art outside and make a mess. What does it look like when your child paints with their hands? What does it look like if you invite them to explore the paint with their toes?

Intent: This activity allows for total creative control from the middlers. Big body motor skills will be used and the middlers will have fun being able to use their fingers and toes to explore the paint.

Music and Movement Invitation: Toe-ga

For this invitation you will need something small like pompoms or cotton balls and a break-resistant cup. Scatter the pompoms on the floor and set the cup in the middle of them. Challenge your toddler to use their toes to pick up the pompoms and put them into the cup using their toes. This can be a whole family exercise!

This invitation builds balance and coordination as well as strengthening children’s feet. It requires concentration and focus to get the pompoms into the cup using toes.

Outdoor/Nature/Gross Motor Invitation: Have a picnic outside today! You can picnic in the yard, on a porch or balcony, or in the middle of the floor. Your child can help find a location and carry a blanket, dishes and food to it.

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 and fine motor muscles to enhance gross motor development.

Lakewood for Middlers: May 1

May 1, 2020 by betsy Leave a Comment

Happy Friday! It’s the beginning of a new month with so many new possibilities! Here are some invitations from Sarah and Caitlyn to begin the month of May.

Sensory Invitation: Using halved paper towel tubes and toilet paper tubes, write the letter of the alphabet on them. If you have enough tubes you can write the whole alphabet, if not you can just choose your child’s favorite letters. Mix up any magnetic, puzzle, or other letter toys and have your child sort the letters into the matching tubes. If you do not have any letter toys you can write the letters on a piece of paper and cut them out for your child to sort.

Intent: The middlers are working on recognizing letters. This activity helps them with more letter recognition as well as sorting practice which uses the pincer grip, strengthening fine motor development.

Fine Motor Invitation: Sticker Lines. Draw a couple of different lines (zig-zag, loopy, squiggley, etc.) and have your child put stickers on top. This could be done on the wall, floor, or even outside!

Variation: If you do not have stickers they could trace with paint or different color markers.

Intent: The middlers enjoy having stickers in the middler room! This activity enhances fine motor development by using the hand muscles and pincer grip to place each sticker.

Art Invitation: Use any size cardboard box to build a house for your child or their lovies. They can use markers or crayons to decorate the house however they want. The Day the Crayons Came Home by Drew Daywalt or Box by Min Flyte are nice companions to this invitation.

Intent: This activity gives the middlers an opportunity to explore different creative options while making something they can have for personal use.

Lakewood for Toddlers: May 1

May 1, 2020 by betsy Leave a Comment

Happy Friday! Is a dance party part of your Friday celebrations yet? Today is also the first day of May!

Here are some invitations for your toddler as we enter a new month.

Sensory Invitation: Exploring animals and water

To begin this invitation, ask your toddler to collect all the toy animals in the house that can get wet. When they have collected them, fill a sink or dish pan with warm, soapy water and invite your child to wash the animals in the tub. You probably will want to have a bunch of towels and a change of clothes for your toddler handy.

Working with water is very interesting for toddlers as they explore a variety of concepts including displacement, cause and effect, and trajectory. In this invitation we wonder what will intrigue your toddler. Will they explore which animals float and which sink? Will they search for animals hidden by bubbles? Will they be excited to see which animal creates the biggest splash?

Motor Invitation: Transporting blocks with spoons

Transportation schema work is very important for many young children. They often carry bags, buckets and baskets full of a variety of objects from one place to another. Transportation is the exploration in this work. Today you can challenge your toddler to transport blocks (or another set of small objects) from one place to another using a large spoon. You can set all the objects on a chair with a spoon, and set a basket or mark off a square on the other side of the room. Invite your child to use the spoon to move the blocks.

Art Invitation: Watercolor paints and paper

For this invitation we suggest an adult or older sibling preps the watercolor paints by putting a drop of water onto each one. You can offer any kind of child-safe paint if you do not have watercolors, we will be testing recipes this weekend to share next week. Using watercolors is a multi-step process and young children often take time exploring different approaches. Your toddler may be fascinated by adding colors to a cup of water set out for rinsing brushes and never put any paint on the paper. That is okay. They may also use plain water to paint their paper until it is saturated and their brush begins to make holes in the paper. Consider how interesting it is for someone experiencing it for the first time. How curious that there are no marks on the table. How amazing that now the paper is soft and rips so easily.

Lakewood for PreK: May 1

May 1, 2020 by betsy Leave a Comment

It’s Friday! Today is also the first day of a new month. Here are three invitations for preschoolers to end the week.

Art Invitation: Podcast Illustration

Today we are curious about what children draw when listening to stories. Below you will find links to some of our children’s favorite story podcasts. Some of them have printable coloring pages or drawing ideas that go with the episode. While we usually encourage children to make their own lines, coloring can be a meditative activity for children and adults. You and your child can decide which better suits them at this point in the day.

Podcast Ideas:

Story Pirates

Circle Round

Little Stories for Tiny People

Building Invitation: Block building with additional loose parts

Building with blocks is an important learning language for young children. It also allows them to explore connecting and disconnecting schema, create imaginary worlds, and tinker with architecture and design. After so many weeks at home, it might be time to add something new to your children’s block collection. You can offer a variety of things to inspire young builders like cotton balls, small dry sticks, shells or empty cardboard boxes. Small LED candles are also a beautiful addition. You can also invite your child to create block people to live in their creations. Have them draw people (or animals or monsters or trees) on paperboard or thick paper, cut them out, and tape them to small blocks so they stand up. You can also use binder clips to support block people if you have those. To make them more sturdy, cover them on both sides with clear packing tape before attaching to the blocks.

Movement/Music Invitation: Dance Party!

A dance party is a great way to shake off another long week, connect with one another, and get some energy out! Put on a favorite playlist (our kids are loving “It’s Raining Tacos” these days) and find a place to explore this creative medium.