Easel Painting with Toddlers

 The Beetles were surprised to be led into the courtyard this morning for a fun class time activity. After getting smocks on all of them, we offered them paint and brushes and encouraged them to dive right in. Currently, most of the one-year-olds only have an attention span of about five minutes, but gradually as they grow and develop, they will begin to focus on an activity for longer amounts of time.

It's important to let toddlers explore art materials freely. After dipping the brush into the paint and showing Sam how to brush it onto the paper once, he followed right along and began to experiment with red and yellow paint. We pointed out that he made orange when he combined both colors together.

 Grant started the project with his paint brush but couldn't resist the urge to explore the paint with his hands. That's okay. Toddlers are naturally curious and are internally driven to take in experiences with all of their senses. Grant used his sense of touch to explore the colorful paint on his paper.

Katy was content to paint with the brush for a little while and eventually put the brush in her mouth for a taste! We re-directed her back to the paper, letting her know "that's not food, it's paint." but the yucky look on her face told us that she figured that out all on her own. :)

Random Acts of Kindness

 This week we have been discussing random acts of kindness with the preschoolers. On Tuesday, we presented our friends at the Kenney Home with homemade play dough. Today we brought cookies to the construction workers at a nearby construction site.

 Workers have been hard at work for over a month now, building a huge apartment complex one block away. Today they were using a huge crane to pour cement for the foundation.

 We stop by almost every morning on our neighborhood walk to watch them hard at work.

 When we brainstormed ideas with the preschoolers early this week for people in our community that we could do something nice for, the construction workers were at the top of the list! (Of course:)

 Randomly, as we continued on our walk, we met a woman who was collecting food to make gift baskets for "hungry people who don't have money to buy food". What a great opportunity to do another act of kindness!

 Each preschooler chose a food item, like peanut butter, rice, macaroni and cheese, or soup at the grocery store to contribute to the gift baskets.

Helping others makes them feel good, and it makes us feel good too!

Music and Movement with Bonnie Massey

It was Bonnie day today, a beloved part of our week in which we enter an interactive world of music that Bonnie helps bring to life for us. Sometimes it is fun classics like, "How Much is That Doggy in the Window?" or a fan favorite like "Take Me Out to the Ball Game". Often Bonnie makes our old favorites new, such as "The Wheels on the Race Car Go Round and Round".  Today we had an hour full of fun children movement. All of the children got involved and dove into imaginary worlds together, all cued by music.

Here the children are listening to a Charlotte Diamond classic, "Slimy the Slug" and slithering around the classroom. Wiley, not yet walking, got very excited that all of his friends were crawling too!

They then turned into Superheroes and flew through they sky in their red capes listening to the Superman anthem.

They entered a new world, where they pretended to be someone a little beyond their everyday selves.

The youngest children, like Katy, can have a strong reaction to the movement of music, listening to it, and letting their bodies go with its flow.

Wiley joined in with our Superman crew, walking around with some support from Victoria, reacting to what he heard and showing excitement with the changes in the music.

Preschoolers are Capable

 Allowing children to assist in classroom jobs helps them to develop feelings of capability. When we take time for training and allow them to learn from their mistakes they are typically eager to help with classroom tasks. Lena and Saige were excited and proud to help spray and wipe the chalk off the gate in the courtyard this morning.

Contributing to the group in a meaningful way helps build their self confidence and teaches them that they are capable.

 In our classroom, children as young as 18 months old enjoy setting the table, spraying the windows, wiping down the tables, and stacking the chairs.

The Science of Diapers and Underwear

 

 Many of our preschoolers are in various stages of potty training. Today we decided to do a science experiment together during circle time. We poured water into a pull-up and also into a pair of underwear and observed what happened.

 What happens when we fill the pull-up with water? Does it come out or stay in?

It's not coming out. It's staying inside. The pull-up holds the water inside.

 What happens when we pour the water into underwear? Does it come out or stay in?

It's all wet. Water is coming down into the bucket. Underwear doesn't hold the water.

 We discovered that pull-ups stay dry on the outside and hold the moisture in. Underwear doesn't hold liquid, like water or pee. It gets all wet!

What Should We Do in an Emergency?

Thankfully, we live our daily lives emergency free. While we hope that we don't ever have to deal with a real disaster, we do our best to practice with the kids so if one ever does occur, we can all react in the safest possible way. Every month we practice a fire, earthquake, and lock down drill. We spend the day reviewing what to do, what might happen, and how to take care of ourselves.  It is very serious business but we try to have as much fun with it as possible and get the children engaged, where they are eager to learn and feel a sense of control/ownership over how to be safe.

Our friend, Firefighter Jo, comes to visit and helps review fire safety with us each month.  Everyone was eager to shake Firefighter Jo's hand after he thanked them for all their great help in our fire drill today.

Everyone took a turn and practiced what to do if their clothes got caught on fire...Bodhi showed us how to Stop, Drop, & Roll!

As we got ready to go outside, we got the "call" that "Jesse James" was out and about.  Jesse James is our teacher code word for needing a lock down. This is a drill that we unfortunately needed to use this past May, as a precaution, when an armed murder suspect was on the run in West Seattle . Luckily, during the scare in May, we only needed to "shelter-in-place", which we don't need to tell the kids about. The teachers just lock the doors, cover the windows, and we all stay inside. For a full lock down, what we have explained to the kids is that when the police call for "Jesse James", we need to be very quiet and not move around.  We told them that we are part of  a huge game of hide-and-seek and no matter what we hear, we need be quiet so no one knows we are here.  The character "Jesse James" may bang on the doors or shout but we need to stay silent and still until we hear that the game is over. 

One might think it would be impossible to have a group of preschoolers stay quiet and still for such a long time but when promised the reward of lollipops, they are remarkably capable.  The kids were quiet for a whole ten minutes today - and thought it was fun! :) 

 

  After all of our hard work, we went back to being carefree kids. Hopefully, we will never experience a fire, an earthquake, or a another lock down but we are always ready just in case we do.

A Morning of Play and Adventure

Zoe was delighted to find that Layla had left her mechanical puppy in the Beetle play room. He barks, pants, snores, and makes chomping noises when you give him a bone, just like a real puppy. Zoe carried him around, cradled him, fed him his bone, and smiled.

 Chloe wore the construction goggles as she played. She concentrated on putting a chain of pegs together. First she used the base to hold the pegs up but she soon discovered she make her tower taller if she held it in her hand.

 Katy spent time stacking multiple peg towers and then pulling them apart, stacking them again, and then pulling them apart. Toddlers love repetition.

 All of the Beetles wanted to sit in the waiting spot, just like the big kids do before we headed up to the buggy for a neighborhood walk.

 Grant loved the yummy gluten free bread that we bought at Great Harvest Bread Company on our walk. Jena loves having Great Harvest is so close and that they have such an awesome selection.

 Chloe made Wiley laugh and smile from his perch in the buggy. She held his hand as we walked along and they both laughed.

Today's Visit at the Kenney Home

 

Making playdough with our friends, for our friends

This week the Centipedes are exploring how they can help out in their community. One of the points that we are exploring is how they can work together and do things that are beneficial to their community and can bring a smile to their and others faces. Today, we made play-dough together.  We worked in groups taking turns and finding how it is fun to do the different steps.  We had two groups so we could make some play-dough for our classroom and some to give to our friends at the Kenney Home tomorrow. 

Here's Lena pouring the salt all by herself, stopping when it got full.

The Centipedes could reference recipe cards like this one to know what they needed, be it ingredients, cooking tools, or how much they would need of each ingredient. 

Saige knew she needed to put in two 1/2 cups of Salt into the bowl and then marked that she had done so on their card. We are integrating fun math concepts into our everyday activities.

Anna Lee enjoyed taking a turn stirring together all the ingredients her group measured into the bowl.

Eva was great at taking turns and loved getting to measure all the flour for her group.

Myla used her fine motor skills to carefully and slowly pour just the right amount of oil into the measuring spoon.

One of the fun science elements to making play-dough is adding the food coloring. Kaya picked yellow and everyone watched as it moved through and mixed with the water, yet stayed separate from the oil. Saige picked blue to be their second color and that made a really nice green, Saige's favorite color.  

  Be sure to keep an eye out for posts showing all the fun and creative things we do with the homemade play-dough we made for our friends! :)

Beetle's Sudsy Sensory Table Fun

Soapy, sudsy, sticky, soft, squishy, slippery, gooey, dry, heavy, bumpy...that's what sensory experiences are made of. Sensory activities offer children many avenues for learning. Sensory tables can be filled and rotated regularly with many different wonderful sensory materials, like suds, sand, birdseed, beans, rice, shredded paper, or ice. Sensory tables are great for learning, exploring, and just for open-ended fun. 

 Today the Beetles entered the kitchen for class time to discover that the sensory table was filled with suds! Katy didn't hesitate to jump right in.

 Zoe watched inquisitively but chose not to explore the suds with her hands. Some waddlers enjoy exploring all types of different textures and others are more cautious and prefer to watch for a while.

Sensory experiences provide open-ended opportunities where the process is more important than the product - how Chloe uses the materials is much more important than what she makes with them. Using creative thinking skills and expressing one's creativity are important self-esteem builders.

Busy Bodies!

 Class time for the preschoolers is a calmer, more individually focused time of our day at Tiny Tribe. Each day the preschoolers choose from many different blocks, small manipulates, puzzles, and games.

 Saige has mastered this alphabet puzzle but she loves to do it anyway. She knows all of her letters and says them as she puts them into the puzzle.

 Puzzles are great for strengthening fine motor skills, problem solving, and hand-eye coordination.

 Zoe joined the preschoolers for class time today. Even though she's not quite ready to understand how to play the game, "Connect Four",she spent most of class time putting the tiny circles into the slots in the top.

 The rubber band peg boards are a popular choice for everyone. The pegs and the rubber bands are very small and take some concentration and fine motor skill to attach to the board.

 Lena is quite comfortable fastening the rubber bands to the pegs and now focuses her time on creating patterns.

 Eva was determined to finish every single letter of our alphabet puzzles. With a little help matching the letters to the corresponding image, she got the job done.

Chase explored the gears, tiny animals, and pegs in our fantasy park game. He created a merry-go-round and a zoo.