We've had parents asking which toys their children like to play with in the classroom. Here are some of the popular ones:
Snapbots. The children love snapping these together in different combinations.
Turn & Learn Magnetic Gears. Put them together and problem solve so all the gears turn when you manipulate just one of them. These are played with a lot.
Every day kitchen items. Yes, the kids love the wok, pots and pans, dishes, utensils, big spoons and whisks. Toasters, hand mixers, realistic looking plastic foods, and empty cartons of brand name items. Those brand name items? Those are great for logographic skills which is part of pre-literacy.
The little LED flashlights you can get for a buck or two? Perfect size for little hands. Great for exploring, making patterns, and playing hide and seek. We sometimes turn the lights down to play hide and seek with them. Kids LOVE these!
Cash registers and pretend money are great for playing store and restaurant. We don't worry about denominations, but count the number of coins and paper money.
MotorWorks. It comes with a screwdriver , drill, and screws to help put together cars, planes, and motorcycles.
Counting Cakes. Each cake has a number that corresponds with the number of holes for candles.
Not only do we have fun counting, but we work on More and Less. We also sing Happy Birthday.....A LOT! For some reason the kids always want us to sing Happy Birthday to them so they can blow out the candles. It never gets to be the teachers' birthdays. For something so simple, this is played with every day.
Old cameras from secondhand stores. Even though most people take pictures with their smart phones, the children know that these are cameras and love playing with them. Teachers are asked to pose and "Say CHEESE!"
Marble Runs. This is a great STEM toy for problem solving. The children pull it out nearly every school day.
Plain wooden blocks. This is another toy pulled out every day. The children build buildings, tracks, walls, and use them to delineate space.
Regular therapy ball. The children love to bounce and roll on it, or bounce and roll it to teachers and peers.
(Note: we do not bounce on bouncy balls, but we do bounce our legs, knees, elbows, noses - that is hard! -, shoulders, heads, and whole body. The children pick what to bounce next.)
Materials: music, laminated letter B, glitter, sheet, sanitizer, hand washing items
Vocabulary and Basic Concepts: clean/dirty, top/bottom, up/down, front/behind, First and Next, fingers, thumbs, rub, wash, rinse, bounce, knees, shoulders, toes, head
Pre-literacy: Let's look at the letter B! First we found the top and the bottom of the letter be. We noticed straight lines and curved lines. We practice the bouncing sound b-b-b-b-b-b. We shared words we knew with the /b/ sound: banana, baby, bubble, Boston Baked Beans (seriously, one of our preschoolers threw that one out there!), bounce, bathroom, back, behind. Then we practiced tracing the letter B with our fingers. Miss Carrie handed everyone a letter B to practice. "Start at the top and draw down. Go back to the top and bounce around."
Practice this at home. What objects can you find that have the /b/ sound?
Next we talked about germs. Germs are like little bugs, too tiny to see. They get on our hands if we put them in our mouths, if we sneeze or cough into our hands, or if we use our hands to pick or wipe our noses. We did an experiment to see how germs spread. Miss Carrie pretended to sneeze and her hands were covered with glitter! We pretended that the glitter was germs. When Miss Carrie high-fived everyone, the glitter spread to their hands.
Then we learned how to wash our hands. We practiced with hand sanitizer and washed the tops and bottoms of our hands (the backs and palms of hands), in between our fingers, and then rubbed them all over. Afterwards we practiced with soap: FIRST wash hands with soap all over. NEXT put hands under the water to rinse germs away.
Miss Carrie DOES NOT want to get sick so it is important to learn to wash our hands. Miss Jen and Miss Jeana do not want to get sick, either. We learned a song to the tune of Frere Jaques:
"Tops and bottoms
tops and bottoms
in between
in between
rub your hands together
rub your hands together
now they're clean
now they're clean."
And just for fun, here are some of the activities chosen during Work Time, which is really play time. For children play is work. Learning through play is the interesting topic for another time.
Playdough
Building car ramps
Gluing, cutting, and drawing
Building tall structures
The sensory table is very popular in Miss Jeana's room. Right now it is full of beans.
Playing house is serious business.
We have a lot of animals.
Someone decided to make a dinosaur zoo.
Miss Jen wanted to demonstrate to the children what could happen if they ran in the classroom. She planned and performed the most glorious, epic prat fall ever seen. Unfortunately, her demonstration did cause an injury. So if you children are talking about Miss Jen's owie, it wasn't serious but still painful.
