Happy Friday! It looks like it is going to be a beautiful day. We hope you and your child can spend some time outside today.

Sensory Invitation: Noisy or Quiet? Use a tin can, glass jar, plastic container or another container you can close. Find quiet and noisy items from around the house. Place them in the jar and determine if it’s loud or quiet.

Intent: This sensory invitation uses your child’s sense of hearing. Play around with different amounts of items in the jar to see how it sounds the same or different. How does a soft item sound different from a hard item?

Fine Motor Invitation: Tape extra paper towel/toilet paper tubes to the wall and drop pom-poms, cotton balls, small balls, etc. through the holes.

Intent: This activity incorporates fine motor development by using their hand muscles to guide each pom-pom to where they want it to go.

Art Invitation: Draw your backyard, include all of your favorite things to play with outside.

Intent: This allows the middlers to work more on using their fine motor skills to draw and paint. Have them draw from memory or look outside and draw what they see. Have them use colors that they see outside to create the drawing.

Outdoor/Nature/Gross Motor Invitation:Backyard Scavenger Hunt

Here are suggestions for things your child might look for/find.

• 3 different leaves
• 2 sticks as long as your foot
• something that smells good
• something growing that is green
• something you think is beautiful
• something that makes you laugh
• something that feels soft

Intent: Get outside and enjoy the nice weather and beautiful spring scenery. To look closely at the world and engage all the child’s senses.