Lakewood Avenue Children's School

Preschool Ages 1-5

Lakewood at Home

Lakewood for Toddlers: April 23

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It’s Thursday! It looks like the weather will be cool and wet this morning, a great day for boots and raincoats. Here are a few invitations we hope will inspire your toddler today.

Small Motor/Cognitive Invitation: Muffin tin sorting

Young children are natural explorers, from a young age they are drawn to sorting and classifying as they work to make sense of the world. Toddlers in particular like to sort things. A muffin tin and a collection of small (but too big to be choking hazards) objects becomes an open-ended puzzle. You can offer clean bottle tops, small blocks, tiny animals, etc.

This invitation was inspired by one of our favorite books, Loose Parts 2: Inspiring Play with Infants and Toddlers by Lisa Daly and Miriam Beloglovsky.

 

Art Invitation: Play dough and sticks

Play dough and clay are wonderful materials for young children. They can be used as tools for exploration and creative expression. Today we suggest having your child collect some sticks, or pulling out some craft sticks (coffee stir sticks or straws also work) and set them out with a ball of play dough, or clay if you have it. Your child might poke all the sticks into the dough like a porcupine, use them to create holes and tunnels, or something else entirely! 

 

Outdoor/Sensory Invitation: Mashing mud

With the wet weather expected today, there may be mud available near you. You can put some in a bucket or bowl and invite your child to explore the mud with a potato masher or similar tool. You can also use child-safe potting soil and have your child mix it with water in a tub.

This sensory invitation encourages children to explore the many properties of and possibilities in soil mixed with water. They can test theories, investigate texture, and build motor skills.

Lakewood for Middlers: April 23

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It looks like it will be a wet and cool spring morning today. We hope these invitations offer inspiration for your young child today.

Sensory/Fine Motor Invitation: Making and exploring Moon Dough

Moon dough is easy to make and only requires two ingredients.

In a bowl mix two parts cornstarch with one part conditioner. Four tablespoons of cornstarch and two tablespoons of conditioner makes enough for a small exploration. Depending on what you have in terms of ingredients, you may want to make more. Moon dough is interesting to explore. It molds well and can be easily cut with cookie cutters or a butter knife.

Intent: This sensory invitation is also a science experiment! It uses fine motor skills, and results in a new medium for creative expression.

Art Invitation: Negative space painting. Use a piece of paper and lay pieces of tape down in an interesting pattern. Have your child paint the paper. After it has dried, take off the tape to reveal your negative space art piece!

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 “We Are the Dinosaurs”

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: Nature faces. Create a face with various things you find in your own yard. You can look for flowers, grass, rocks, sticks, etc.

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.

Lakewood for Middlers: April 22

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It’s Wednesday! Halfway through another week. Today’s invitations center on the belief that everyone has a story to tell and that all our stories are important.

Language/Literacy Invitation: Storyteller’s workshop

Staple a few sheets of paper together and invite your child to dictate a story and illustrate it using crayons, pencils or markers. Telling stories is an opportunity for children to put their imaginings and experiences into words and pictures. It is a chance for creative expression to begin to blossom and often brings such joy to the author to see their story in a book.

Building Invitation: Build a story from blocks

After writing their story, or instead of writing their story, invite your child to tell a story using the language of blocks. This may look like building houses for the three little pigs and knocking them over, or creating a world with tall buildings, or volcanoes. You can photograph or make a video of your child’s work so they can reflect on it later when the blocks are put away.

Music/Movement Invitation: Dance a story

To connect brain, body and imagination, invite your child to select some music, possibly put on a costume, and tell a story using dance. You can do this inside or outside if your child’s story needs more space. You can share this short video of the Northern Ballet’s Goldilocks and the Three Bears for extra inspiration.

 

Lakewood for PreK: April 22

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It’s Wednesday! Halfway through another stay-at-home week. Here are some invitations you can offer your preschooler today. A couple of the invitations today tie in with work the preschool class had been doing around storytelling and writing.

Literacy/Language Invitation: Storyteller’s/writer’s workshop

Staple a few sheets of paper together to make a blank book. Invite your child to pick out what tools they would like to use to illustrate their story. Early writers may want to write some of the words or letters, other children may dictate a story to an adult or older sibling.

Writing and telling stories is a powerful tool for young children. It connects their real experiences with their imagination, helps build the language of storytelling in pictures as well as words, and helps children make sense of their experiences.

Building Invitation: Block building al fresco

Moving materials to a new location can bring new life and new ideas into play. Today we suggest taking some blocks outside. You can take a large piece of cardboard to build on or a blanket to contain smaller blocks. Building outside may present new challenges as well as new inspiration for your child’s work.

Art/Sensory Invitation: Play dough or clay story

Invite your child to build a representation of their story from play dough or clay. They may interpret this in different ways making a different sculpture for each page, creating the world of their story and acting it out, or something completely new. You can ask if you can take photos or a video of the story so they can reflect on it later.