What another splendid day in the toddler room! Today we sang "Row Row Your Boat" in our friendship boats while holding hands with a friend and rocking back in forth. Than we read Owen and Mzee, this a true story of a friendship between a baby hippo named Owen and an old tortoise named Mzee. The toddlers loved to hear about all the things these two friends do together. We made an  obstacle course in the Motor room. This really got our toddlers moving! Later, we filled and empty bottles with cheerio's. Some of our friends ate the cheerio's as they went.

Picnic basket

 Today we had a pretend picnic tea party with our friends. This was so much fun for the children and us teachers! Everyone enjoyed pretending to pour tea out of the tea pot. Later in the day we built with blocks. We also sang "Circle of Friends" and  read The Rainbow Fish. This is a great book about sharing and making friends. We had a fantastic day!

Tea Please

More Tea

and more tea

Building with blocks



Beautiful Marble Paintings

Today was another great day for our friends in the toddler room! We put marbles into a container with paint put the lid on and; then, we shook it and  made the marbles roll around. This was so exciting for us! The kids loved shaking the container and listening to the marbles roll back and forth.  The final results from doing this was, “beautiful”. We also blew bubbles and chased them around the play ground.  As you can tell from the pictures below…it was a very fun filled day.







 Marble Panting

Blowing Bubbles

This week is Friendship week. We started off the day by reading a book called My Friends by Debbie Bailey. Friends play together, help each other, and make each other laugh. There is so much to do with your friends!  We made friendship bracelets by gluing paper flowers and colorful paper to  paper towel tubes. This was such a fun activity. We also sang and made music to the tune, "The More We Get Together"  We are very happy to have so many great friends in our class!

Friendship Bracelets

Making Music with Friends

Best Buds

We looked in the mirror to discover how we are the same and how we are different. These two girls discovered that their hair is the same color!  Our class is now doing family style meals and dishing out our own food. This helps with development of motor and social skills. We practiced using tongs and spoons to dish out wooden blocks from a bowl into a plate. We also counted blocks as we dished them out.  Then, we shared and discussed what we did and what we learned and our friend’s successes!

Our hair is the same!

Practicing with Spoons and Tongs

Looking at what we did!



During Circle time we read, Here Are My Hands by Bill Martin Jr and John Archambault. This book helped the children identify their body parts and functions. As an example, "Here are my teeth for chewing and brushing." Later, we finger painted pictures. The children said the pictures were, "for mommy and daddy"


Circle Time Reading Here Are My Hands

Finger Painting

Fun in the Sensory Table

Rolling and cutting our play dough



Playing dress up!

 

Rubber band snapping painting

Today was a very eventful day! Our toddlers enjoyed rolling out  yellow play dough and cutting it with play dough scissors. This was a lot of fun and helped build our fine motor skills. We played dress up. Then we did art with rubber bands; first we painted the rubber bands, then we snapped them on our paper trays. This made a really neat art project and helped with fine motor as well. 

Today we read Eyes, Nose, Fingers and Toes and sang "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes." We painted with our feet and looked at all of our different footprints. We measured ourselves with blocks to see how tall we are, but as you can see from our picture our activity turned into knocking down the towers and rolling on the blocks. We also had our first Nutrition Education activity with Miss Stacy. She came in with the "my plate" poster and talked to us about food groups.

Footprint painting!

Block measuring!

Calling Mommy!

This week is "All About Me" week. Today we sang "I Looked in the Mirror" and read Toddler Two. We looked at our faces in the mirror and discussed our features, emotions and expressions. We drew faces, went on a picture hunt to gain name and face recognition, and played game where we said our friends name before we rolled the ball to them.

We tried a new kind of painting today. We used droppers to put water drops on paper. It was an amusing fine motor and cause and effect activity. All week we have been doing a new daily activity that the children have really enjoyed. We have been stretching and doing yoga! We have been using it as a wind-down activity and the children are very interactive in it. They could probably even show you some of the moves! We had a great week back to school and are ready for a great year!

Kissing knee pose!

Thirsty Lizard and Sea Turtle poses!

Final relaxation pose!

Today we practiced cutting with loop scissors. This is a good activity to exercise those fine motor skills.  We went on an apple hunt in our classroom, read Learning with Teddy and sang "Ten Little Apples." Our friends have really enjoyed singing lately so ask them about the songs they sang at school to see if they remember them. 

This morning we played dress up with our new dress up clothes. We sang "The Wheels on the Bus" again, read School Bus and talked about how we all get to school. We painted with cars and paint scrapers, made yellow play dough, played on the playground and drove cars in our sandbox. 

Today we read Time for School, Mouse! and talked about us being back at school and the new concepts of our room. We sorted pom poms by red, green, and yellow and by big and little, built with blocks to make schools and did a color hopping activity. We also sang "The Wheels on the Bus" and did the hand motions. Our little friends really enjoy singing!

Sorting pom poms

Building schools

We love to color

In the house with Miss Natalie

Locking the door

Welcome back to school! Monday was a new and exciting day for the toddler room. We have a new classroom setup, new schedule and new lesson plans. We explored our new room and tried out circle time for the first time. Our day revolved around our new classroom concept of keeping our shoes on instead of taking them off and putting them in our cubbies. We read Shoes and played a matching game with our shoes.