At Academy of Stars Child Care in Barrington, our teachers build activities, lessons, crafts. and incorporate books that relate to monthly themes that help children learn about the world around them.
This month, the children are learning the following themes:
Exploring My World: This theme invites children to become scientists as they explore their world through simple experiments, building, and cooking activities. They will be encouraged to tinker with gizmos and gadgets and perhaps invent something of their own.
Polar Pals: Children will journey to the land of ice and snow in this frosty theme. They will explore snow, ice, and animals that call the Arctic and Antarctica home.
Here are at home activities you can do at home to coincide with our monthly themes:
1. Does your child have a toy tool kit? Allow her to pound golf tees into Styrofoam blocks. If you own a real tool kit, compare your tools to your child’s kit. Name each tool and discuss its use. Review safety rules of tool use. With close supervision, allow your child to build a simple structure.
2. Practice counting to twelve. Save an egg carton and count together as your child places a small object in each section of the carton.
3. Reinforce the letter N with the following activities. Form an N with raw or cooked spaghetti noodles. Make a name collage with alphabet beads or letters cut from magazines that spell out names of family members. Circle N’s found in newspaper articles. This can be done with M and O, the other letters of the month, as well.
4. Make fingerprint penguins with black and white finger-paint and blue construction paper. Use the thumb to make a white body and a fingertip to make black wings and a head. With a toothpick, make two white dots for eyes. Stretch out cotton balls and glue them to the blue paper to make an iceberg.
As a follow on to activities, we always recommend reading time with your children to not only work on vocabulary and comprehension, but reading also doubles as a great quality time activity!
Here are a few book recommendations this month:
Machines at Work by Byron Barton. At the construction site, the workers gather. Their machines are ready and waiting. A busy day is about to begin. Rhythmic text and bold, graphic illustrations convey all the energy and excitement of the day.
Robots, Robots Everywhere! by Sue Fliess. Robots are everywhere in this bright and funny board book – and preschoolers are going to love it! Whether up in space, beneath the seas, or even under couches, award-winning illustrator Bob Staake’s bold and colorful bots make this book a must have.
How Ramps, Wedges and Screws Work by Jim Mazzanotte. Demonstrates how inclined planes are used to do work as ramps, wedges, and screws.
Cuddly Duddly by Jez Alborough. Lovable Dudley the penguin just wants to be left alone, but he is so cuddly that no one, neither his family nor the loud man that he encounters, can stop cuddling him.
