Snowmen

One of my favourite things to do at STA is to go downstairs at the 3:15 when all of our peanuts have gone home and take a look at all of the art that has been created during the day.

Many school readiness skills can be practiced through art and craft projects. Skills like cutting and gluing require more than just scissors and glue. The kids need to understand concepts like spreading glue or how much glue to use, then they need to be able to sequence picking up the glued paper, turning it over, and pushing it onto the other piece. Cutting requires a lot of hand strength, hand-eye coordination, and motor skills to cut on a line. Rather than having our kids sit at tables and practice cutting boring shapes and lines we turn them into art and craft opportunities.

Lately, the trend seems to be snowmen. Perhaps our staff were inspired by the recent and upcoming weather in Calgary.

These snowmen have all involved cutting or drawing circles, gluing objects, and following instructions from an adult or teacher. The interesting thing about all of these snowmen is that each turns out totally different from the rest. It could be googley eyes, cotton balls, glitter, real branches, or hand drawn details but every snowman is different from the next.

In the end, each kid practices a skill that every teacher who has ever had to hand back work before can appreciate; they write their names somewhere on the sheet! Not all of the kiddos are quite ready for printing so they get some help from their staff but in the end all of the art work gets a name and the kids get to practice taking responsibility for and labeling their work.

Eyes, Ears, Mouth, and Nose

An important part of All About Me is learning about our bodies. A lot of our kids are still learning to identify their body parts so this has been a perfect opportunity to practice that skill. Most of our crafts have been focused on faces lately, this allows the kids to sort out where eyes go in relation to mouth, or that ears go on the side and a nose goes in the middle. In Kids Club we've been singing Head and Shoulders... and Elephants Have Wrinkles to help with identifying all parts of the body. For gym time we've been doing a lot of the Hokey Pokey to work more on identifying and also body awareness.

My name is ____ and I like...

• dinosaurs
• animals x2
• the water table
• cars x2
• crafts
• letters
• bubbles
• music x3
• chocolate
• to sleep
• Play-doh
• Wolverine
• tickles
• drawing
• my brother
• Angry birds x2
• Buzz Lightyear
• colouring
• elephants
• my friend
• to sing songs
• hats

Last week in Kids Club we made self-portraits! Below each we included a box where the kids could practice writing or identifying the letters in their name and then pick one thing that they like. For the kiddos who have stronger language skills we were able to ask them "What do you like?" or "What do you like to play with?" and for the kiddos who aren't quite there yet we had the staff identify one highly preferred thing. The kids got to reflect on their physical appearance by selecting hair and skin colour and then adding on eyes, nose, and a mouth. Most of our faces came out happy, a couple were undecided or sad, but all of them were beautiful!

 

This week we are making collage faces that show different emotions. We have prepped eyes, noses, and mouths for happy, sad, mad, and surprised faces. The kids get to build each face and practice making expressions themselves while they glue and piece together the pictures.

 



Pink and Purple Play-doh

 

We have started working on incorporating Animated Literacy into our days at STA. Every two weeks we will introduce a new letter and focus on activities that promote exposure to that letter.

 

Currently we are playing with the letter P. Today we used pink and purple Play-doh to talk about "P" and the sound it makes and words that start with it. We passed out Play-doh, picked a colour, and started to play. We used our fingers to poke and pinch it. Then pulled, pushed, pressed, and patted it and finally put it back in the pots.

 



November Obstacle Course



Our big gym has received a make-over too! Thanks to our amazing Occupational Therapy team we have a fun new obstacle course to play on.

 



Our obstacle course continues with the All About Me theme and targets body awareness in general. The different areas work on building strength, coordination, and balance in a fun and engaging way for the kids.

Start off by balancing on stepping stones...

Then climb the gym mats and jump into a crash mat...

Next is more climbing and then rolling down a ramp...

Jump up and high five the wall!

Balance on this curvy balance beam...

Crawl or walk through the rainbow tunnel...

Then finish it off with some throwing practice, try to hit the bad piggy from Angry Birds.

As always, our gym activities allow us to target more than just motor skills. There are lots of opportunities to talk about different colours or practice counting and we encourage the use of action words (run, jump, walk, hop, step, roll, throw, crawl, etc.) to help develop vocabulary and an ability to follow directions.

All About Me!

Our November theme is All About Me!

 

This month our classrooms will focus on activities, games, toys, and lessons that teach the kids what makes each of them special and unique. We are starting out by talking about body parts and identifying personal characteristics but will also explore concepts of preferences and activities and even differences in each of our families. Over the next month we hope to help our kiddos learn how to identify all of what makes them so special.

We have changed over the toys and added some fun new activities to help explore the new theme.

Our sensory table is full of beads of all shapes, colours, and sizes. Our kiddos can search for a tiny person that shares their hair colour, the first letter of their name, or a handful of beads that they find appealing.

We have a self-portrait studio where the kids can use a mirror to examine their features and then re-create what they see on the artist's easel.

Our imaginary play area has been turned into a dentist/doctor's office where we can learn about health and self-care.

And we have doll's and houses galore for the kids to explore different roles (mom, dad, baby, etc.) and play.

It's going to be a fun month learning all about ourselves!

#3

Theme rotation is happening downstairs today. Come Monday, we will have a brand new November theme to play with and explore.
Our number board is complete for this month though. So today, we introduce you to the number 3.

The concept behind the number board is all about exposure to a new number each month. We try to represent the number in all the ways that our kids may come across it in their daily play or school activities.  This board will (hopefully!) target all the levels that our kiddos are currently at with their numeracy skills. Some of them will be extremely adept and will benefit from the addition in the upper left corner while others will be working at identifying their numbers and can see the big yellow 3 and pair it with the hand showing three on the opposite side. We have a couple that might be able to read "t-h-r-e-e" and a lot that are practicing counting using one to one correspondence so they will benefit from elephants, base ten cubes, and tallies.

The board is just a visual exposure that our staff can use to spark a conversation about the number. When we pair it with songs like Three Blind Mice, or stories like The Three Little Pigs, we can allow out kids to learn through multi-sensory play and interaction. This will help them establish a greater understanding and stronger meaning of their numbers.

How many ways can you think of representing the number 3?