This week we have been enjoying the ever-changing weather from warm sunny days to chilly, cloudy, and rainy ones. No matter the forecast, the children have certainly found plenty of ways to get their energy out!

Outside, the children loved:

• running around with the dump trucks
• swinging
• drawing with chalk
• chasing and playing with friends

There has been lots of movement, laughter, and fresh air as we embraced all kinds of spring weather.

Inside the classroom, we focused on activities that help build hand strength and coordination. The children practiced:

• scissor work
• peeling and sticking different-sized stickers
• gluing felt clippings onto a caterpillar to create a fuzzy little friend

These activities support fine motor development while also allowing the children to be creative and expressive.

We have also been spending time practicing communication skills and encouraging the children to use their words and voices to let friends know what they need. Learning how to communicate with peers in kind and respectful ways is such an important part of growing together in the classroom community.

For food tasting this week, we tried cantaloupe, and the children really enjoyed the sweet, juicy fruit. There were lots of happy faces and requests for more!

It has been a very productive week full of movement, creativity, learning, and growing friendships. Very busy hands and busy bodies!

Cars, Trains & Planes… Oh My! 🚗✈️🚂

This week, we began learning about different vehicles and community helpers, and the classroom has been full of movement, building, and creativity!

The children have been especially excited about our wooden train tracks and new Magna-Tile roads. They worked together to build tracks, roads, and pathways while using their imaginations to create busy little worlds filled with vehicles and transportation.

We also explored different ways to “paint” and decorate vehicles:

• Dot stickers were used to decorate cars
• Yarn was used to create textured busses
• Red paint helped bring fire trucks to life

The children loved experimenting with these materials while strengthening fine motor skills and creativity.

For food tasting this week, we explored a watermelon. Before cutting it open, the children knocked on the outside and wondered why they couldn’t smell anything yet. There were lots of smiles and excitement when we finally sliced it open and revealed the bright red inside, instantly filling the classroom with that sweet watermelon scent. The children enjoyed eating triangle slices, carefully noticing where the juicy red part ended and knowing to stop biting once the fruit was gone. It was such a fun sensory and tasting experience!

It has been a wonderful week full of building, creativity, and curiosity. We can’t wait to continue learning about the many helpers and vehicles that keep our communities moving!

Happy Mother’s Day to all of our wonderful mamas! We hope your weekend is filled with love, snuggles, and special moments with your little ones.

Toddler Activity Day is almost here! Art. Water. Sunshine. Thursday, May 28, from 9-11. Start thinking about where you packed that swimsuit and towel!

The last two weeks have been busy, busy, busy in our classroom! The children have been exploring nature, celebrating special moments, and engaging in so many hands-on learning experiences.

We celebrated Earth Day by reading stories about our planet and talking about how to care for it. The children created different Earth-inspired crafts, using a variety of materials to represent the world in their own creative ways.

We’ve been learning how spring brings the Earth back to life with baby animals being born, insects emerging, and nature becoming more colorful. The children explored this through art, using stickers, paint, and tissue paper to create different creatures and spring scenes.

One very exciting highlight was visiting the Primary classroom’s baby chicks. We were able to watch them hatch and, once they were ready, gently touch and hold the chicks. This was such a special and memorable experience for everyone!

Food tasting has been a big hit! Last week, we tried asparagus, which was surprisingly loved by many of the children. This week, we explored blueberries, cutting them open to observe the difference between the inside and outside. The children practiced mindful tasting, eating them one at a time and noticing how some were sweet while others were a little sour.

A favorite moment was making fresh-squeezed lemonade. The children helped press and turn the lemons on the juicer and add sugar. Hearing their excited slurps and gulps as they tasted their hard work was so much fun!

We also celebrated a second birthday in our classroom! Our birthday friend took two trips around the sun and enjoyed blowing out candles with all of their classmates cheering them on.

We ended the week with Grandparents Day and invited special guests into our room to work with the children and explore their favorite things. They loved showing off everything they could do, and the Grandparents were filled with pride and love watching them. It was a very sweet event.

It has been a joyful couple of weeks filled with discovery, creativity, and celebration.

What a busy and exciting week we had! The children explored many new works and continued to grow in independence and curiosity.

A favorite this week was our insect object matching work, which included a magnifying glass for close observation. The children loved taking a closer look, noticing details, and carefully matching each object.

We also introduced sea creatures preserved in acrylic, and this quickly became a high-interest activity. The children enjoyed holding them, turning them, and exploring them from every angle with curiosity and wonder.

For art, the children created spring trees by crumpling tissue paper into small balls and gluing them on as “leaves.” This connected beautifully to nature, as we’ve started to notice the first signs of green on the trees outside on the playground.

We spent lots of time outside enjoying the warm, almost summer-like weather. The children were excited about the new swing, which has quickly become a favorite spot to relax. Our mud kitchen also got a fun update with painted food rocks, and we’re so grateful for the creativity and generosity of our families! I think even more are coming!

With their growing maturity, the children practiced more independence by carrying their own snacks and water bottles outside. We even enjoyed a picnic-style snack together, which was such a special way to spend time as a class.

Food tasting this week included lemon and lime. The children loved them! They devoured the wedges. I was hoping to get some pucker photos, but this class loves citrus.

It’s been a week full of exploration, creativity, and growing independence. We are so proud of the children and all they are learning each day!

 

Reminders:

– On the very sunny days when the children have a lot of skin exposed, make sure to apply sunscreen before coming to school.

Spring was truly in the air, and in our classroom, this week! The children were busy exploring seasonal changes through art, science, and hands-on activities.

We worked with six different paint colors, using Q-tips to carefully dot and match colors on a rainbow. The children also finished their egg decorating with fabric, continuing to build creativity and fine motor skills.

We began talking about how spring brings baby animals, and introduced a new chick project. The children painted glue inside a chick outline and used tweezers to pick up yellow yarn “feathers”, placing them one by one. This activity was great for strengthening hand muscles and coordination while connecting to our spring theme.

We’ve been reading many books about spring weather, growing plants, and insects returning. To go along with this, we introduced bug-themed 4-piece jigsaw puzzles, which the children have been loving. They are feeling so proud as they complete them independently!

We did some exciting planting this week! Together, we planted mint, celery, and carrot seeds in a special root viewer so we can watch how roots grow underground. Each child also planted their own tomato seeds in a small pot. We’ll care for them in the classroom before sending them home to be planted outside.

Food tasting was a big success this week! The children really enjoyed trying hard-boiled eggs and kept asking for more. This led to a wonderful conversation about how store-bought eggs won’t turn into chicks, but eggs that stay with mama chickens can grow into baby chicks and hatch.

It has been a very busy and exciting week full of discovery, growth, and curiosity. We love seeing the children so engaged and can’t wait to continue exploring all the wonders of spring together!

This week, coming back from spring break, we’ve seen such a beautiful shift in the classroom. The children are truly showing that they are ready for more responsibility, and it has been amazing to watch their growth.

The children have been eager to help with real classroom tasks like folding laundry and even helping with the washing process. They are also taking pride in putting away their cots after nap time, helping Miss Patty load the cart, and getting their backpacks ready. These everyday routines are building independence, confidence, and a strong sense of responsibility.

We continued focusing on colors this week through a variety of activities, including puzzles, sorting, matching, and building. The children are becoming more confident in recognizing and grouping colors, all while strengthening their fine motor and problem-solving skills. We also got to do a magic science experiment and watched marker spread across a paper towel to finish making a rainbow.

One of the most special things we’ve noticed is the increase in teamwork and kindness. The children are choosing to play together more often, using kind words, and supporting one another. They are also taking initiative in caring for our classroom by cleaning, mopping, and wiping down surfaces.

It has been a week full of very mature progress, and we are so proud of how the children are growing, not just in skills, but in independence, cooperation, and confidence. We can’t wait to see all the wonderful things they continue to accomplish!

Reminders:

• No school Friday, April 3rd

This week, we welcomed March by refreshing our classroom shelves with new activities focused on colors. The children have been exploring many new puzzles and fine motor works that encourage color identification and matching.

One of the most loved new activities was filling a wooden rainbow with pom-poms. The children used their pincer grasp to pick up small pom-poms and carefully push them, one by one, into the matching colored arches. It was so satisfying to watch the rainbow slowly fill up and become a bright, fluffy masterpiece!

Another activity that sparked lots of curiosity was matching colored locks with their keys and unlocking them. The children worked patiently with the tiny locks, trying different keys and figuring out how to turn their wrists just enough to make them work. When they finally heard the little “pop” of the lock opening, their faces lit up with excitement and pride.

It has been wonderful to watch the children persevere, focus, and celebrate their successes as they explore these new materials. We are looking forward to continuing our colorful discoveries when we return from break!