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A Portrait of Our Day
At Tiny Tribe we believe that children are motivated by feelings of belonging and significance. Our main goal each day is to ensure that each child in our care feels accepted and loved unconditionally.
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Cutting Excercises
The preschoolers enjoy challenging themselves with some cutting practice. Just a simple sheet of paper with three different lines drawn across; a straight line, a zig-zag line, and a wavy line can be more challenging to a preschooler than it looks.
Three year old, Reid, concentrates on keeping his hand straight and his paper steady as he cuts along a wavy line.
Quinn, four years old, experiments with different methods for turning her paper while cutting a zig-zag line.
Three year old, Reid, concentrates on keeping his hand straight and his paper steady as he cuts along a wavy line.
Quinn, four years old, experiments with different methods for turning her paper while cutting a zig-zag line.
Our Sensory Table
What is a sensory table and why is it important?
It's a place that is perfect for smashing, squishing, sifting, sorting, filling, dumping, burying, digging, and pouring. It's a learning experience that allows children to make discoveries, get messy, socialize, and play freely. It's called a sensory table, but any big tub will work, and you can probably find one in most preschool classrooms. We have ours filled with birdseed in the yard. If some of it ends up being dumped on the ground, which it inevitably will, the birds can just eat it. :)
Children are wired to receive and utilize sensory input from birth. That's why babies put everything in their mouths; their sense of taste is one of the most direct ways they can explore the environment.
The senses are our most basic way to understand new information. Each time we experience feeling different sensations; like hot, cool, sticky, wet, hard, and bumpy, we sharpen our ability to learn through our senses.
Toddler Playtime at the Kenney Home
The sun was shining on us as we headed out for the Kenney Home this morning. We were quite the colorful sight walking down the street.
John and Layla insisted on pushing the buggy together the entire six block walk. They worked together to push it up and over all of the bumps in the sidewalk.
Once there, we enjoyed a lovely hour of playtime with our neighbors. Today we had fun singing songs, playing catch with balloons, and reading books.
Meaningful Jobs in the Classroom
Our preschoolers are responsible for one classroom job each day. As you can see in the following video, they really are capable of contributing to the day-to-day responsibilities required to run our little school. By helping in a meaningful way, they develop confidence in themselves and in their own abilities.
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The Centipedes Rainy Walk
The Centipedes love to explore our neighborhood on foot. They have had lots of practice walking as a group so even though they are all only between the ages of 2 and 3, they are very aware of their surroundings and the dangers of cars and streets.
Walking freely allows the preschoolers the opportunity to stop and notice all of the little amazing things going on in nature every day. This morning the preschoolers found water running into drains, puddles to jump in, sticks and pine cones to collect, snails, worms, and spiders.
Ella found this worm washing down the street into a sewer drain. She rescued it and placed it safely in some dirt nearby so it could find it's family.
Grace rescued another worm from a puddle. She was sure it was a daddy worm because it was very big. She found a rock to keep it up safe out of the water where it might drown.
In our search for the "biggest puddle in the whole wide world" we found many. We jumped and splashed and sloshed with reckless abandon.
The Beetles Rainy Walk
Spring is definitely here and the toddlers love getting out to explore during the days of sunshine and the days of rain! Today we bundled up in our rain gear and headed out in the buggy with Carrie for our usual morning walk.
We saw lots of cars, buses, trucks, people, and dogs along the way.
We strolled through Thriftway and enjoyed sampling some cheese and checking out the seafood in the meat department.
We liked looking at this dead fish and noticing all it's different parts; it's eyeballs, gills, scales, and fins.
We took turns holding some different kinds of fruits and vegetables in the produce department. This watermelon was big, round, and shiny!
There were many different types of squash to explore. This huge one felt smooth, cool, and heavy.
A simple walk through the grocery store can be a wonderful experiential learning lesson in language. Any experience can be an opportunity for language development if we just take the time to notice what they are interested in and give them the words to describe their experiences.
Here Comes Peter Cottontail!
Here comes Peter Cottontail,
Hoppin' down the bunny trail...
Hippity hoppity,
Easter's on its way
Bringin' every girl and boy
A basketful of Easter joy
Things to make your Easter
Bright and gay
He's got jelly beans for Tommy
Colored eggs for sister Sue
There's an orchid for your mommy
And an Easter bonnet too.
Oh!
Here comes Peter Cottontail
Hoppin' down the bunny trail
Hippity hoppity
Easter's on it's way
Here comes Peter Cottontail
Hoppin' down the bunny trail
Look at him hop and listen to him say,
"Try to do the things you should"
Maybe if you're extra good
He'll roll lots of Easter eggs your way
You'll wake up on Easter morning
And you'll know that he was there
When you find those chocolate bunnies
That he's hiding everywhere,
Oh!
Here' comes Peter Cottontail
Hoppin' down the bunny trail
Hippity hoppity
Happy Easter Day!
Our New Tiny Tribe Mission Statement
I recently received a call from Jenny Mischock, a Provider Resource Specialist at Child Care Resources, asking me if we'd be interested in free on-site training. If you aren't already familiar with Childcare Resources, they are an amazing organization committed to helping families find quality care, and to working with providers to continually improve the quality of early learning experiences for children in Washington state. www.childcare.org
Even though I have worked in the field of early childcare now for sixteen years, I am always eager to find new ways to expand my learning in all areas of teaching and directing. So whenever I am offered trainings or receive information about new education opportunities, I typically jump at the chance to be involved.
Over the next five weeks, Jenny will visit Tiny Tribe and provide an assortment of excellent resources for myself and the other caregivers. Today she came with an armload of teaching books, games with learning objectives to use with the kids, our laminated mission statement, and portfolios for each of the preschoolers.
Our goal will be to work with Jenny on learning new ways of taking observations and using photos, writing samples, drawings, and staff anecdotes to build each child's individual portfolios. This is an area of our program that I have been wanting to focus more attention on for quite some time, so this opportunity is perfect!
Spreading Compost in Our Garden
Our children's early years are a crucial time of physical, emotional, and social development. Children learn best when they are participating in hands-on projects that allow them to explore at their own pace and engage in experiential learning.
We believe that toddlers and preschoolers learn best when they can get their "hands dirty". Our main goal is to help them build feelings of belonging and significance in their world and to develop self-confidence in their own abilities.
We focus our attention on helping them learn about their emotions, their senses, their families, their community, life cycles, nature, relationships, and personal self care.
Gardening offers a wonderful experience for toddlers and preschoolers. They will help prep the soil, plant, water, weed, pick, and eat a variety of fruits and vegetables over the summer. Imagine how proud they will be to contribute to our Tiny Tribe community in such a concrete way!
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