Lakewood at Home

Lakewood for Middlers: April 24

April 24, 2020 by betsy Leave a Comment

It’s Friday! After a rainy and cool Thursday, today looks like it will be warm. We hope these invitations offer exciting opportunities for your young child.

Sensory Invitation: Colored Ice Sensory Play (an invitation for this afternoon or tomorrow)
Supplies: Water, Ice Cube Trays (or small containers you could freeze ice cubes in), Food Coloring.

Freeze your colored ice cubes for several hours. When the colored ice cubes are frozen take them out and have your child explore what they can do with them. You can use them outside if it’s sunny and warm to see how they melt on the ground. Add them to water and have your child watch how the color from the ice cube mixes with the water as it melts.

Intent: This allows for the middlers to see the different properties of water as it is seen in it’s liquid and solid form. This also gives the middlers a chance to explore what ice feels like with their hands and how it looks as the colors melt together.

Fine Motor Invitation: Sorting Different Shapes. Find three baskets/containers and label them with a triangle, circle, and square. Find different objects in your house that are those shapes and sort them into the baskets.

Intent: This activity incorporates fine motor development by using their hand muscles to pick up and place each item in the basket.This activity promotes the use of the pincer grip by grabbing some of the smaller items with their thumb and index finger.

Art Invitation: Smush Paint. Put different color drops of paint on a piece of paper and stick the paper inside a gallon plastic bag. Push and spread the paint around to create a beautiful masterpiece!

Intent: We encourage the middlers to continue using art materials to express their creativity. Having them help place the tape will help strengthen fine motor skills.

Music and Movement Invitation: Sing and Dance to “Old MacDonald”, but include animals that you might not see on a farm. Examples: unicorn, elephant, polar bear, leopard. You can also do a yoga variation by doing the animal poses.

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 songs.

Outdoor/Nature/Gross Motor Invitation: Number Line Run

Draw a line down the sidewalk with chalk and marked off the numbers from 0 to 10 (or higher if your child has been practicing counting higher). Have your child walk the line while counting the numbers. You could also call out numbers and have them run to the number you called out.

Variation: Instead of writing numbers you can write letters and do similar activities. Have your child say the alphabet as they walk past each number. Call out a letter and have your child run to that letter.

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 also enhances cognitive development by including number and letter recognition.

Lakewood for PreK: April 24

April 24, 2020 by betsy Leave a Comment

Happy Friday! It looks like it’s going to be a warm day today. We hope you have a wonderful Friday and a good weekend.

Scientific Investigation/Sensory Invitation: Magic Pepper and Soap

Using a plate or bowl add enough water to cover the entire surface of the plate. Sprinkle the pepper gently on the surface of the water. Have your child dip their finger into some dish soap and then poke the water! Observe what happens!

You may want to ask while engaging in this experiment:

Is the pepper sinking or floating in the water?

What do you think will happen when you touch the water with soap on your finger? What if there wasn’t soap on your finger?

Why do you think the pepper scatters when you touch the surface of the water with soap?

This activity is great for scientific inquiry and also some sensory play with water.

https://www.coffeecupsandcrayons.com/magic-pepper-and-soap-experiment/

Dramatic Play/Storyteller Workshop: Storytime Performance

We sent out an invitation to make a story book on Wednesday. If your child loved making a book perhaps invite them to make another, or ask them if they would like to create a play based on their story. The characters can be acted out by your child, their lovies, or other members of the family (if they are willing!). Invite your child to record their story through pictures or video so they can see the progress of their work!

This is a great way for your child to have some dramatic play, which is hard when they are away from their friends who play along with them.

Art Invitation: Colored Pencils and Paper

This simple and adaptable invitation presents and opportunity for children to increase their fluency in the language of mark-making with colored pencils. You can vary the activity by changing the type of writing surface you offer (paper, cardboard, paperboard, etc.) and the location. Colored pencils travel well so you could offer it near a window with a different view, or outside.

Lakewood for Toddlers: April 24

April 24, 2020 by betsy Leave a Comment

Happy Friday! We are almost through another week. We hope these invitations bring some joy and wonder into your home today. Have a great weekend!

Building Invitation: Block building

This morning you might consider pulling out whatever blocks you have and inviting your toddler to build. You can also invite them to build with empty cardboard or paperboard boxes. The invitation can be varied by where you put the blocks (a different room, on a table instead of the floor, or even onto a porch). You can also add small people or animal figures. Can you toddler build something as tall as their waist? Can they build a home for a person or animal? What else might they create?

Blocks provide an opportunity for children to continue building and refining connecting and disconnecting schema, they are a medium for increasing imagination as well. Building towers and houses requires persistence, especially on novel surfaces.

Art Invitation: Paint and cardboard

This invitation can be offered with any type of child-safe paint including homemade liquid watercolors from dry washable markers (see this Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh video for a how-to). An empty cardboard box becomes a 3-D canvas in this invitation. Your toddler may paint the outside, or the inside of the box.

The sides present new challenges for applying paint and an opportunity to explore the effect of gravity on liquid paint. Holding the brush is exercise for fine motor muscles. Open-ended painting is an opportunity for creative expression.

Large Motor Invitation: Dance party!

You can offer your child’s favorite music, or try some new movement songs. Koo Koo Kanga Roo has many exciting songs, or you can check out local artist Baron Von Rumblebuss.

Dance is a wonderful way to build balance, coordination and other motor skills. Children also love to express themselves through movement.

Lakewood for PreK: April 23

April 23, 2020 by betsy Leave a Comment

It’s Thursday! It looks like it might be a wet and cool spring morning in Durham. A great day for boots and a raincoat and a cup of lukewarm tea afterward.

Outdoor/Large Motor Invitation: Adventure day!

A central piece of our educational philosophy at LACS is the importance of being outside, not only on the playground, but out in the world. During this time of social-distancing, adventures look different. It may be a walk around the yard in boots and raincoat, going slowly and looking for changes, it might be a walk around your living room, or in your neighborhood depending on your situation. No matter where you walk, invite your child to take their time, to use their senses, and to wonder.

Adventures offer a new way to experience the world. Sometimes we go new places, but often we revisit to explore more deeply, to look for change, to seek answers to questions. We hope your child has a wonderful adventure today.

Small Motor Invitation: Observational drawing

Your child can bring a clipboard (you can make one from a piece of cardboard and a binder clip) on their adventure and draw something they see and want to remember, or they can find something in or around your home. Observational drawing is a way of looking at objects “like a scientist” and drawing what you see. Children sometimes find it helpful to look for shapes the know, to talk through what they notice about the object. A blank piece of paper and a sharp pencil or drawing pen are all they will need.

Observational drawing brings children’s attention to the shapes and details around them while building fine motor skills.

Building Invitation: Block map of your adventure

You can use this invitation as an extension of your child’s adventure from earlier, or set it up beforehand and have children map where they think they will go. A block map can also become the adventure for small figures or toys. If you have a limited supply of blocks, empty cracker or cereal boxes make excellent buildings.

Building representations of the world with blocks asks children to explore scale, physical properties, and cartography. Building with blocks also uses motor skills and requires persistence.