Lakewood Avenue Children's School

Preschool Ages 1-5

Lakewood for PreK: April 17

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Happy Friday! We hope your weekend offers a bit of respite even though it may be wet. Today’s weather looks beautiful and we hope you and your child can spend some time outside.

Language/Nature Invitation: Read Swirl by Swirl by Joyce Sidman with your child or listen to this video. Challenge your child to find spirals outside or in the house. Ask how they can make those spirals with available art materials you have.

Intention is to find ways to represent the natural world through observation.

Sensory Invitation: Mud and toy tracks. Paint muddy toys with water to clean.

Consider making your own mud with water, plastic bin and dirt from your yard. Consider asking your child how different toys move through the mud. Which toys can move easily? Which toys need your help?
For example could a car roll through the mud? A ball? Would it be easier
to move the toy through plain water? Why or why not?

Intention is to explore cause and effect relationships, understand viscosity, etc.

Art Invitation: Spiral Art

Find anything that you can spin, dip it in paint then spin it on paper. Paint by feeling a swirl

OR

Try to see colors in the swirls of a shell if you have one, Look in close to the swirl and see if it can be represented visually with any present art resources.

Intention is to choose to draw from feeling or from observation.

Outdoor Invitation: Build and Bowl

Build a tower with anything you have that can tumble down like plastic cups, small blocks, etc. Herein lies an opportunity to knock stuff over in the great wide open of outside.

Lakewood for PreK: April 15

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It’s the middle of the week and the middle of the month today! Here are a few invitations we hope bring a little wonder into your child’s life today.

Fine Motor Invitation: Read Not a Box by Antoinette Portis with your child. Find an empty box, and ask your child, “what can this be?”
Supply other recycling materials and tape as needed.

Intention is to foster imaginative and representative play, extend literacy into an art project

Sensory Invitation: Consider coming up with different sensory categories with your child like “soft, hard, squishy, pointy, scratchy” and ask your child sort their toys?

Intention is to further strengthen existing sensory schemas, work on classification systems, and possibly see how categories can overlap.
A toy is this AND that not always this OR that.

Art Invitation: Drawing “Not a leaf”

Using a leaf from outside, invite your child to think what shape the leaf resembles, inquire if they can make a drawing with the leaf representing the part of a drawing that your child chooses. For example, if your child were to say, “It’s not a leaf, it is an umbrella” then invite your child to make a drawing using the leaf as an umbrella.

Outdoor Invitation: Backyard Bird Walk

Listen to some bird sounds below. See if you can hear any of these calls outside…

https://www.aaastateofplay.com/50-bird-species-sounds-they-make/?fbclid=IwAR2PFq97_xI-UI3s_6G9ILlAHJ_kDyeRzQ8qcTeyhlQlT3enM-CFBC476Tw

Lakewood for Middlers: April 15

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It’s the mid-point of the week and the middle of the month today! Here are a few invitations for busy 2’s and young 3’s.

Sensory Invitation: Create your own fort/cozy corner. Bring in pillows, lovies, and soft toys. Experiment with how dark or light you can make it. Use flashlights to play with the light. Make shadows with the light.

Intent: This invites young children to explore with all of their senses. This activity focuses on what the child can experience through sight and feeling. Explore the differences in dark and light in the cozy corner/fort. Think about the softness of the toys. How does the soft toy feel in your child’s arms/hands?

Fine Motor Invitation: String beads onto string or pipe cleaners. If you do not have those items you could try putting rubber bands or hair ties around water bottles or similar objects.

Intent: The middlers enjoy playing with both the wooden beads and string beads in the middler classroom. This activity uses the small muscle movements to enhance fine motor development.

Art Invitation: Create your own paint brush and paint with it.

Painting with a variety of tools expands children’s ability to express themselves in this medium. It also asks children to be creative problem solvers as they create new tools and test them.

Intent: The middlers love painting and we want to give them an opportunity to explore painting with different materials. Have your child find some materials from inside or outside of the house and test out the different strokes each material makes that you paint with.

Music and Movement Invitation: Listen to calm meditation music while in your cozy corner fort. “How does the music make you feel?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhoIeqDJM6E

You could also choose other music that your child enjoys!

Intent: To explore a softer, calmer side of music and sound, to help children learn to relax.

Outdoor/Nature/Gross Motor Invitation: Work in the garden/yard. Pull up weeds, plant a seed, water plants, etc.

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.

Lakewood for PreK: April 14

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Good morning! We hope you made it through yesterday’s stormy weather safely. Here are a few invitations for your preschooler. We invite you to share your experiences in the comments.

Fine Motor Invitation: Shadow Tracings

Tape a piece of paper down to a table or the wall and turn down the lights! Using a flashlight (the one on your phone works great!) create some shadows with your hands, toys, and other objects. Invite your child to trace or draw the shapes they see. Do the shapes drawn from shadows look different than the real thing? What does an object’s shadow look like? How about the silhouette of many objects close together? Perhaps your child would like to color the negative space around the object instead?

The intent of this activity is for the child to be able to experience the perception of an object from a different point of view, strengthen hands, and to see positive and negative space with light and dark!

Sensory Invitation: Cornstarch Sensory Play

Mixing equal parts cornstarch and water creates a substance that looks and acts like liquid but is solid in your hands. Mix in food coloring if you desire!

You might ask: What does it look like? What does it feel like when you poke it? How about when you hold it in your hands?

The intent for this is to have sensory exploration with a material that is kind of magical in terms of sensation and inspires a lot of questions and investigation!

Art Invitation: Crayons & Leaves

Collect some leaves, petals, or stems from outside and set them out with paper. Ask what can be created if the leaves are underneath the paper they draw on? Can the leaves become part of the drawing? Or perhaps they would like to draw a picture about finding the things in nature/

Movement Invitation: More fun with Shadows

Invite your child to act out a story, dance, or make big shapes with shadows. Ideas include acting out their favorite book while you read it out loud, dancing to action songs, or acting out nursery rhymes.

The intent for this is to engage in movement and storytelling in a unique way!

Outdoor Invitation: Nature Shapes

Pick a few shapes to identify like circles, squares, diamonds or hearts and try to find or create them in nature. If you can’t find a heart, maybe you could invite your child to make the shape using things from nature.