Lakewood at Home

Lakewood for Toddlers: April 13

April 13, 2020 by betsy Leave a Comment

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 PreK: April 13

April 13, 2020 by betsy Leave a Comment

Welcome back! It’s Monday and the preschool team has some wonderful invitations to get another week of stay-at-home adventures going.

Fine Motor Invitation: Make a face collage

In an old magazine or catalog try to find as many portrait sized pictures of people’s faces as you can. Ask your child how many eyes does a face have, how many ears does a face have, how many noses? What’s on top of the head? What’s underneath the chin? Have your child cut out faces or facial features and combine them to make new characters.

Intention is to explore the spatial relationship between various facial features like eyebrows above eyes, mouth below nose or to come up with imagined spatial relationships.

Outdoor Invitation: Making a pool – engineering challenge

Please wait until after the storms have passed to offer this invitation to your child(ren). Outside with a large bowl or bin,rocks, stones, sticks and leaves try build a “pool’ for water. Ask if the pool remained overnight, a week, etc. what animals might use the water?

Intention is to work on problem solving with questions like “how can we stop the water?” and “what will use the water?”

Art Invitation: Collage extension

Consider asking where the collage face from above is? Where is this person? On a separate sheet of paper create the backdrop for the collage face. This could involve creating the rest of the person’s body. Ask child how these two projects could be combined into one.

Intention is extend the project from above, connect previous work with current work, and plan based on previous work.

Lakewood for Toddlers: April 10

April 10, 2020 by betsy Leave a Comment

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 Middlers: April 10

April 10, 2020 by betsy Leave a Comment

It’s Friday! We have almost made it through another stay-at-home week. Here are some invitation ideas from our wonderful middler teaching team.

Sensory Invitation: Making music shakers. You can use an empty paper towel roll or toilet paper roll. Have your middler decorate the outside! You can use paint, markers, stickers, or collage it. Get creative! When you’re done add some noise. You can use beads, small pebbles, spare change, etc. To close it use a piece of paper, wax paper, tin foil, etc. Use glue, rubber bands, or tape (duct tape works well) to close the top! Now make some NOISE!

Intent: This is an activity that allows each child to create an instrument start to finish. Allow them to help with every part of the creation. They will be using their fine motor skills, creativity, and exploring music and sound.

Fine Motor Invitation: “Digging for worms”. Put dirt into a container (or see the first picture for a less messy option) and add pipe cleaners, pieces of ribbon/string, etc. use tongs or your fingers to pick up the “worms.” Another idea: find a place to dig for real worms!

Intent: The middlers enjoy digging on the playground at LACS and sometimes they find different kinds of bugs. We want to encourage the middlers to strengthen their fine motor skills by using their hand and finger muscles to dig for worms.

Art Invitation: Use paper towel or toilet paper rolls to paint. Dip the roll in paint and press the roll onto paper.

Intent: Continue to explore different modes of painting. This activity recycles old toilet paper/paper towel rolls which you may have a lot of at home right now :). This activity also includes fine motor and potentially gross motor development depending on how big the painting gets.

Music and Movement Invitation: Use your shaker while singing songs today! Dance, make noise, shake to the beat!
Song ideas:
“Baa, Baa, Black Sheep”
“Firetruck!”
“Days of the Week”

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

.
Outdoor/Nature/Gross Motor Invitation: Raking or sweeping the yard or other outside area.

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. The middlers LOVE to use the brooms and rakes to clean up the playground at Lakewood. This activity incorporates big body movements to enhance gross motor development.

We hope you have a wonderful weekend and we will be back with more invitations on Monday.