DYNAMIC WORK

FRIDAY, 26 FEBRUARY 2016

Color Exploration

The toddler and two's have been extremely observant of colors; "boo, lellow, wed, and geen." Some of the older children know quite a bit, while others are still learning. After discussing with Karen, the other toddlers & two teacher we decided to explore colors a little further. We wanted the children to learn colors not memorize them by repeatedly quizzing them. We decided to pick a different color each day and set up an invitation that was engaging, meaningful, and fun.

We started things off with a red discovery basket. We gathered a variety of different materials that were red and let the children go to town. Some of the materials in the basket the children were familiar with while others were new. The kitchen timer was the most popular of all. The children would twist the timer and eagerly wait for it to ring.

We filled a sensory bin with lentils and other orange objects. The children scooped, poured, and filled containers. Once they spotted the clementines we worked on opening them up and enjoyed a delicious snack!

If there's one thing our little ones love it's cars, trucks, trains, etc. For yellow we gathered the construction vehicles and put it in our sensory bin with corn meal, and yellow craft sand.

By the end of it they had their socks and shoes off and were feeling the sand with their bare feet.

To incorporate the arts we decided to do green paintings with evergreen branches. The room was full of the scent of pine, and the finished products were beautiful green paintings.

We introduced scissors a while ago, but what better way to practice our skills than cutting purple spaghetti?!

Not only have we been practicing with our scissors but we've also been using our glue sticks more!

Chocolate cupcakes are what the munchkins whipped up for brown!

We put shaving cream, blocks, and few white objects out on the table for the children to build with. We've done invitations including snow so we decided to try something else.

Our color exploration went on for about two weeks. Like I mentioned at the beginning of this post the children were not sitting looking at flash cards and being quizzed; the children learned new colors through play!

-Leslie Dionne

FRIDAY, 8 JANUARY 2016

Winter Sensory Ice

This past summer a parent gave me a bag of brand new petri dishes. I love getting things that have endless possibilities, are reusable, and something I cannot find at the dollar store or my junk drawer. As I sit here and write I'm still thinking of what else I could do with them... (Future blog post!?)

Because we live in Canada and because it's winter we have a little thing called ice. The children have been particularly interested in it in our toddler room, and let us know whenever they see it. Petri dishes.... ice.. petri dishes.. ice.. aha!

I grabbed some pine needles from outside, a bag of cranberries, and an orange we had in the fridge and sliced them up very thin. Next, put them in the petri dishes, filled them with water, and stuck them in the freezer.

A couple hours later they were frozen and time to play with. I placed them all in the sink and ran the hot water over them so they would come out easily.

I was quite surprised to find the aromas were quite strong, which was an added bonus.

I put the ice disks in a sensory bin and threw in some regular ice cubes and cranberries with it. I knew once the children started playing with it the ice would melt and give some water in there as well.

The children got their hands right in there despite it being cold. (They told me right away, "Cold Leslie...cold..") They held the disks up to their noses and told me what they smelt, they stacked the ice into towers, and they even tried to break them to get the stuff in the middle out. They weren't sure what the cranberries were so we investigated them a little further. Some of them ate them and were not impressed.

Because they continue talking about the ice we are currently providing icy invitations for them.

We froze a bunch of different size containers and balloons and set them outside to freeze. We added colors to the balloons to make them a little more fun.