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.
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