Lakewood Avenue Children's School

Preschool Ages 1-5

Lakewood at Home

Lakewood for PreK: April 10

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Happy Friday! Another stay-at-home week is almost over. Here are some invitation ideas from our preschool teaching team.

Book Invitation: Walter’s Wonderful Web by Tim Hopgood.

You can watch a video of this book being read aloud if you don’t have it in your home collection. This book ties in to both the fine motor/art invitation and the large motor/outdoor activity for today.

Walter the spider demonstrates persistence in the face of repeated failure and uses simple lines to create something complex and wonderful.

Fine Motor/Art Invitation: Negative Space Tape Painting

For this activity you will need masking or painter’s tape, cardboard, and child-safe paint.
Consider asking your child, what design could you make with the tape? Can you make a web with your tape? What would happen if you painted over the tape and pulled the tape off after the paint dries?

Intention is to plan ahead in the child’s work based on the hypothetical realities of a cause and effect relationship.

Sensory Invitation: Add Natural Elements to your play dough.

Have your child collect natural materials (sticks, pine cones, shells, rocks, etc.) and use them with their play dough to create designs and sculptures. You can use home made play dough or commercial play dough for this invitation. You can find our favorite home made play dough recipe here.

Ask your child to draw a representation of their sculpture.

Intention is to extend cognitive development rooted in a single project by encouraging a child to keep going with a project by asking how can we add to this project, how can
we make it more elaborate?

Outdoor/Large Motor Invitation: Interacting with the web constructed on Thursday.

Throw the balls through the web without knocking the web over!!! Repair the web as needed!!

Ask what could we pretend the ball is? What kinds of things knock over a spiderweb?
What kinds of things would get caught?

We hope you have some moments of joy this weekend. We will be back with more invitations on Monday.

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.

Lakewood for PreK: April 9

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Fine Motor Invitation: Cardboard Loom Weaving

https://www.instructables.com/id/how-to-weave-on-a-cardboard-loom/

Consider asking other family members to contribute.
Consider asking your child:

What pattern could we make with the color string we have? After looking at the size of the loom for what could we use the finished woven fabric.

The intent is to further develop fine motor skills, develop hand and grip strength, to help work on something that is a living documentation of the amount of work put into it.

Sensory Invitation: Making Play dough

You can use your favorite recipe, or try one of our favorites here.

Ask your child to count the number of ingredients. See if they can recall the which ingredient there is MOST of/least of. Ask if they can rank the ingredients from most to least. Consider talking about this as it relates how ingredients are listed in food.

The intent of this is to practice early math skills, practice pouring, measuring. If there is an accident and too much of something enters the mix, ask your child how they think that will impact the way the play dough feels.

Art Invitation: Drawing of your House by shapes recognized.

Look for shapes in your house, draw those shapes to make a picture of your house.

Ask where do you see squares? Rectangles? Triangles? Circles? How can we arrange these shapes to make the shape of our house?

The intent of this is to bridge the connection between paper in art and what we are observing. Also, in observing shapes in a building with structural integrity, what can we learn?

Music/Movement Invitation: Koo Koo Kangaroo

Double Scoop Dance Along

If one scoop is not enough, how many does your child want?

The intent of this song is learn sequencing through body movement like the dancers in the video (especially in the chorus)

Outdoor Invitation: Use string to make a spiderweb between trees. Try to walk through the web without touching it.
Leave the web up for tomorrow.

Ask and maybe even research how spiders make webs. What does the web attach to? Are different kinds of web used? Where does the web connect? What is the web attached to in order to keep it up?

Intention is develop critical thinking, developing connections between play and research.

 

Lakewood for Middlers: April 9

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The week is more than half over and it looks like it is going to be another warm, sunny day in Durham. Our wonderful Middler teachers have come up with some interesting invitations for children to explore this morning.

Sensory Invitation: Scooping water (soapy water, colored water, warm vs. cold water, etc)

Intent: This activity is both an exploration of the senses by working with water as well as fine motor practice with scooping. Have your child explore and discuss the different aspects of water.

Fine Motor Invitation: Create a maze to drive cars through. You could draw the maze or even use blocks.

Intent: The middlers enjoy playing with cars in the classroom and on the playground. This activity incorporates fine motor development by using their hand muscles to navigate the cars in between the lines.

Art Invitation: Use chalk to outline your body, your sister/brother’s body, mom or dad’s body, etc. Color it in!

Intent: We want to encourage the middlers to spend lots of time outside. Using chalk and tracing will help develop fine motor skills. Allow your child to be creative when coloring in the body. Explore using lots of colors, mixing colors. Add some water to the chalk- what happens?

Music and Movement Invitation: Sing one of the middler favorites… “Teapot” !

Extended version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J099pJlBSgo

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 their bodies through movement while listening to their favorite .

Outdoor/Nature/Gross Motor Invitation: Rainbow nature hunt. Choose a few different colors and find things in nature that match those colors. There are many ways to do this, you can use one of the many printable sheets available online (like this Montessori-inspired printable), have them collect things in an empty egg carton, or they might make a rainbow shape with their discoveries.

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 includes both gross motor development and cognitive development with color recognition and identifying different items in nature while moving their bodies around to find the items.