Happy Mother’s Day!

A special thanks to you for being part of a child’s life.  If you are a child care provider, mother, stepmom, grandmother, aunt, foster parent, adoptive parent, neighbor, or friend the role you play in child’s life is very important.  Children watch you, learn from you, imitate you, and often want to be like you.  Each person holds a special place in a child’s life.  The moments you spend now will be memories for your future.  Thanks for being in a child’s life, no matter what your role.  You are changing lives everyday.  Your job is not an easy job, but pay greats rewards for all you the lives you touch.  Celebrate moms everywhere.   Honor the mothers that are fighting for your country and safety, honor the moms that try to best they can to keep their families together, honor the special women that make a difference daily in a child’s life.  A friend once told me ” All women should be celebrated on Mother’s Day whether they are a mother or not, all play a role in some child’s life”.  I agree!

 

Learning Math Skills through Food

Math is more than numbers.  Adding math into everyday activities can make it fun and more interesting for you and your children.  Food is something everyone can relate to and there are many math skills that can be taught through food experiences.  Children who enjoy themselves through discovery and experimentation are more likely to listen and retain information.  Food can be a fun way for children to learn and the possibilities are limitless.  Here are a few concepts to get you started:

• Counting
• Measuring
• Sequencing of Events
• An Understanding of Time
• Spatial Concepts
• Numbers
• Fractions
• Sorting
• Classifying
• Estimation
• Probability
• Statistics

Do you use food experiences in your classroom? Please share any additional ways you teach math concepts.  I like to use books to go along with any concepts I am teaching.  Visit your local library to find these or other books related to counting.

What is being Learned Through Food Experiences? Growing your Curriculum

To explore some of the ways that learning through food experiences can benefit your child or children in your care visit the document below.  Just click on it and you will go to a detailed page with information.  I encourage you to share this with your parents too.  It may encourage them to get their children involved in cooking activities and increasing family time.

Learning Through Food Experiences

The following areas are explored:

• Early Math Skills
• Science Skills
• Language Skills
• Pre-Reading & Beginning Reading Skills
• Social Studies Skills
• Nutrition
• Food Literacy
• Art Skills
• Socio-Emotional Skills
• Sensory-Motor Skills

Food experiences also help build connections for Brain Development.

• Experience shapes the brains wiring
• Nutrition offers windows of learning in everyday activities
• Stimulates all of the senses:  seeing, touching, tasting, smelling, & hearing
• Forms new connections & strengthens old connections through language
• Repetition forms connections
• Healthy eating & exercise are important for brain development.

Dramatic Play Ideas

Dramatic play allows children to assign and accept roles and act them out.  It’s pretending to be someone or something else.  Sometimes they take on real world roles of someone they know and other times they take on fantasy roles, such as a super hero.  It is important to encourage all children to engage in dramatic play.  Here’s some ideas for your classroom:

• Provide a dress-up area with clothes, hats, props, pretend food, shopping carts, arranging play scenes such as a grocery store, hair salon, restaurant, doctor’s office, etc.

• Observe carefully and ask questions such as “What will happen if the baby gets sick?”

• Add new props to expand play and encourage new challenges.

• Have a theme for an area, such as grocery store,  pizza restaurant and change it out each month.  Use the theme throughout the classroom with all activities.
  • Flower Shop
  • Bakery
  • Pirate Ship
  • Home Supply
  • Fire Station
  • Nursery
  • Library
  • Post Office
  • Vet Clinic
  • Ice Cream Parlor
  • Space Center
  • Mexican, Japanese, Chinese, India or any other Restaurant
  • Apple Orchard
  • Pumpkin Patch
  • Garden

There are many ways to create an area for dramatic play.  Check with your local grocery store or retail to see if they have items from their displays that they would donate.  Change out activities from time to time to challenge the children in their creativity.

Dramatic play can be very empowering to children.

To learn more about dramatic play visit  http://articles.extension.org/pages/25723/dramatic-play-in-child-care

What is my Preschooler Learning in the Dress-Up Area?

When children put on dress-up clothes and pretend to be grown up, they are discovering more than how it feels to stumble in adult-sized shoes.  “Pretend play” helps children to understand how other people think and feel.  It gives children the opportunity to discover new experiences or new places they can see only in their imagination. This is called symbolic thinking, and it is an important, complex skill necessary for many tasks in life, including language and communication, social skills, and even algebra and geometry.

When we watch children playing in dress-up clothes, we notice they often use problem-solving skills they see adults use.  Negotiation and shared responsibility become easier when children are pretending to be adults.  They are gaining a sense of adult rules and expectations.

Sometimes children may find the dress-up area a place to confront fears and work through stressful situations.  By pretending to be a doctor or a monster, a child gains a sense of power over the unknown.  By acting out a traumatic event and talking about it, the event becomes less scary to the child.

Often boys will wear dresses or girls might put on a necktie.  These are learning experience that help children explore what it means to be a boy or girl, and that our gender does not change simply because of what we are wearing.

Stay tuned on the next blog for suggestions for ways to encouraging dramatic play in your classroom.

 

Gingerbread in a Cup – English & Spanish Recipe

Here’s a great activity to do in your center.  It is good to strengthen both science and math skills, plus gingerbread is always good around the holiday season.

Gingerbread in a Cup    

First Step:  Wash Hands/ Primer Paso:  Lavarse Las Manos

Supplies & Equipment  

• Wash basin sink or water filled spray bottle
• Soap
• Towels

Suggested Learning

• First step in sequence
• Always was hands before handling food.
• Wash well with soap and water to prevent the spread of germs, colds, and other illness.

Material y Equipo                                                           

• Lavabo a botella con agua
• Jabón
• Toallas

Puntos de aprendizaje     

• Primer paso en secuencia
• Siempre recordar lavarse las manos antes de preparar los alimentos
• Usar jabón y agua para prevenir el  desarrollo de bacteria, resfrios y otras  enfermedades

Second Step

Put mix in paper cup                                                       3 Tablespoons Ginger Bread Mix

TERCER PASO

3 cucharas de la mezcla de jengibre (polvo) poner en una taza de papel

 Supplies & Equipment                                               

• Bowl of gingerbread mix
• 3 measuring tablespoons
• Name-labeled 5 oz.paper cup for each child
• all above items on one tray with chart

 Suggested Learning

• three: numeral amount
• meaning of level
•  measuring
•  tablespoon
•  observe  color, feel, taste & smell

3 cucharadas de Jengibre

Material y equipo                                                          

• hoya con mezcla de jengibre
• 3 cucharas de medir
• nombre la taza de papel para cada niño

Sugerencias de aprendizaje       

• el numero tres
• significado de nivel
•    medir
•    Observar color, tacto, sabor & olfato

Third Step                     TERCER PASO

 1 Tablespoon                CUCHARADA

Water                               AGUA

Add to Cup                      AGREGUE  A LA TAZA        

Supplies & Equipment                                                        

• 1 measuring tablespoon with handle bent at right angle to the bowl of the spoon.
• This simplifies dipping up a spoonful of liquid.
• Small bowl of water.
• All above items on tray with recipe chart.

Suggested Learning

•  Vocabulary: liquid
• Observe, liquid levels itself.Material y equipo                                                               Sugerencias de aprendizaje
• Science:DO NOT TELL THE CHILDREN LET THEM DISCOVER THE SCIENTIFIC                                 PRINCIPLES THEMSELVES!
• Ask open ended questions to help them think about this                                           “Characteristic of liquids.”

Material y equipo

• 1 cucharada doblada en forma de cucharón. Esto hará más fácil agarrar el agua.
• Plato hondo con agua.

Sugerencias de aprendizaje              

• Vocabulario: liquido
• Ciencia:
• Observar, niveles de líquido.

NO LE SDIGA A LOS NINOS. DEJEN QUE ELLOS DESCUBRAN EL PRICIPIO SCIENTIFICO         ELLOS MISMOS!  Pregunte preguntas abiertas para ayúdales a Pensar sobre las características de los líquidos.

Fourth step                                                      Cuarto paso

Stir Well                                                           MESCLE  BIEN

BAKE: 400 15 MIN. OR ‘TILL DONE          AL  HORNO: 400 15 MIN. O HASTA QUE ESTE

 Supplies and Equipment                                                    

• Teaspoons for stirring
• Electric skillet
• As soon as the gingerbrread is well mixed the teacher places sup in preheated dry electric skillet.  Cover.  Teacher checks for doneness- When done springs back from touch.

Suggested Learning   

• Stir; mix(rising in cup)
• Observe:   color, feel , taste, smell
• As lid is removed during baking,  note Change in size  (rising in cup)

Material y Equipo                                                       Sugerencias de aprendizaje

• Cuchara para mezclar                                                   mezclar, menear
• Sartén eléctrico                                                               Observar:

Encuanto el jingebre este bien mezclado                                   Cambio en: color                                El adulto pondrá el vaso en el sartén pre-calentado                                      textura                   Cubra. El adulto tiene que chequear si esta listo.                                           sabor                              esta listo cuando oprima suavemente y se regresa.                                       olor                                                                                                                                          Cuando quite la tapadera                                                                                                                                  observe el cambio  En tamaño en                                                                                                                   la taza

                                                                                

A Special Thanks To Teachers

Science Activities – Grass Seed Starters

The quickest and easiest sees to grow are grass or alfalfa.  They tend to grow almost anywhere as long as they are watered regularly and receive sunlight.  Here are some ideas for unusual planters.

Potato

Slice the top and bottom from a baking potato.  Scoop out the top, fill with moistened cotton balls, and sprinkle seeds.

Paper Cup

Fill a paper cup with potting soil and decorate it to resemble a face.  Sprinkle the soil with seeds and moisten it with water.  You children will enjoy watching the planter sprout hair.

Sponge

Soak a sponge in water, then sprinkle on seeds.  Moisten the sponge when dry, and soon it will be teeming with life.  Variation:  Try making sponge planters in different shapes.  Cooking cutters make excellent stencils for cutting sponges.

For more creative ideas visit the following websites:

http://sciencenetlinks.com/lessons/look-at-those-seeds-grow/

http://www.sciencekids.co.nz/experiments/seedgermination.html

 

What is My Preschooler Learning From Music?

Young children love sound!  They enjoy making sounds and hearing them.  Music can be soothing and comforting to young children.  (Remember how babies love lullabies!) Including music in your program builds an appreciation of this art form and serves as a way to help with listening, language, and coordination skills.  Music is a great way to regularly signal a transition form one activity to another.

Playing with musical instruments allows children to explore cause and effect (if I press the keys, they make a sound).  It also helps them to focus on the difference in sound (these keys have a deeper sound than those).  You may even consider inviting a guest to visit your classroom and play and instrument and explain it to the children.

Finger plays (songs with accompanying finger movements) enhance finger control, which children need for writing and handling small objects.

Music can help children to feel and learn about emotions.  When you listen to classical music you might talk about how it sounds scary, sad or happy.  You might listen to cultural rhymes and talk about how they help people feel a sense of community.

Learning the lyrics to songs is a particularly effective way to enhance language.  Have you noticed how you can remember the words to old favorites.  Children’s brains, like yours, retain poetry better when it is used lyrically.

Music and dance are fun and help children be playful with their friends and teachers.  Let parents know if they have music favorites at home to bring them in and you can share them with all the children!  So let’s go make some music.

Music and Early Childhood