Happy Friday! Is a dance party part of your Friday celebrations yet? Today is also the first day of May!
Here are some invitations for your toddler as we enter a new month.
Sensory Invitation: Exploring animals and water
To begin this invitation, ask your toddler to collect all the toy animals in the house that can get wet. When they have collected them, fill a sink or dish pan with warm, soapy water and invite your child to wash the animals in the tub. You probably will want to have a bunch of towels and a change of clothes for your toddler handy.
Working with water is very interesting for toddlers as they explore a variety of concepts including displacement, cause and effect, and trajectory. In this invitation we wonder what will intrigue your toddler. Will they explore which animals float and which sink? Will they search for animals hidden by bubbles? Will they be excited to see which animal creates the biggest splash?
Motor Invitation: Transporting blocks with spoons
Transportation schema work is very important for many young children. They often carry bags, buckets and baskets full of a variety of objects from one place to another. Transportation is the exploration in this work. Today you can challenge your toddler to transport blocks (or another set of small objects) from one place to another using a large spoon. You can set all the objects on a chair with a spoon, and set a basket or mark off a square on the other side of the room. Invite your child to use the spoon to move the blocks.
Art Invitation: Watercolor paints and paper
For this invitation we suggest an adult or older sibling preps the watercolor paints by putting a drop of water onto each one. You can offer any kind of child-safe paint if you do not have watercolors, we will be testing recipes this weekend to share next week. Using watercolors is a multi-step process and young children often take time exploring different approaches. Your toddler may be fascinated by adding colors to a cup of water set out for rinsing brushes and never put any paint on the paper. That is okay. They may also use plain water to paint their paper until it is saturated and their brush begins to make holes in the paper. Consider how interesting it is for someone experiencing it for the first time. How curious that there are no marks on the table. How amazing that now the paper is soft and rips so easily.
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