Movements with Cars and Music!
Play dough fun
We arrived this morning to find play dough at the table again. Today they explored the play dough with all the tools in the box. Some friends made snakes out of their dough, whilst others explored it’s texture. They poked at the dough, until it would break. When it did break, they would have the biggest surprised expression on their faces. Children also used the cutters to see how the dough would break off. Many children also enjoyed rolling them out and punching imprints on to the dough. All in all, a very sensory experience in the morning!
Carpet exploration: Cars and People
At the carpet, we laid out all the transportation toys and the people toys. Children gravitated more towards the cars as rolling movements are very satisfying for children at this age. Buds, loved racing the cars and seeing them crash and bounce off different things. They raced their cars towards Kiki, and Kiki would pass them back in different directions, which send them running, trying to catch them. We spend quite some time today play with the cars. Our younger buds even tried to be silly and catch the cars while they were going towards Kiki. They acted like an obstacle for the racing track...hehehe.
Carpet exploration: Wooden Blocks
After snacks, we had some time to play with wooden blocks. Building with blocks provides one of the most valuable learning experiences available for young children. Block play stimulates learning in all domains of development, intellectual, physical, and social-emotional and language. Building towers and knocking them down are all part of the learning process. We noticed some children making houses, bridges and towers. The interesting aspect was seeing the types of blocks they were picking to make their buildings. Zayna preferred to only use cylinder blocks, Jack used only yellow and red blocks, Adam used triangular and rectangular blocks, and Leon used a variety of blocks. Each child had their own, individual reason, which just goes to show you how differently each child thinks, to come to a similar objective.!
Circle Time: Music & Movement
We played a ton of music so much that Nimo’s fingers started to hurt! We sang all through the morning and after our snack time we sat together in a circle and began our music session. First we began with our classic “Good Morning” song. We handed out egg shakers to each child and we shook them to a rhythm that Nimo set, and gradually we went faster and faster. After introducing ourselves, Adam said, “I want to sing and dance!” Perfect! That’s what we will do! So we handed out one more egg shaker to each child so they hand one in each hand and had everyone stand up. We would sing a song with two actions in it for the children to follow, like jumping and spinning or shaking and nodding. It was a very energetic activity and the children were very excited! We then played our spinning game where the children listened to the speed of the music and spun however fast the music was playing, then when the music stopped they all had to stop. We then played the London Bridge game where Annie and Kiki would make a bridge by holding hands and Nimo played, “London Bridge”. The children would run under the bridge as the music played and when the music ended the bridge would fall down on them and tickle them. We ended our music time by doing some breathing exercises to help calm them down. We breathed in from our noses and exhaled from our mouths. We then gently sang the Do-Re-Mi as we exhaled.
We didn’t get a chance to go to the park today, but we sure had so much fun in our classroom!
Have a good evening and see you all tomorrow!
Lots of love,
Buds Class