Favorite Toys List

 In Preschool, we like toys that don't light up or do the thinking for you. Blocks, kitchen utensils and really boxes, cars/turcks/trains/tractors, puzzles, sorters, art.  Parents are always wondering "What toys are the favorites at preschool?"  Here you go:

The Kid Tough Recycling Truck from Lakeshore Learning.

What's Fun About It:  It's big.  You can put little things in side like dinosaurs, Matchbox cars, blocks, or (kid favorite) crumpled up pieces of paper to recycle. They also have a fire engine that is very popular.

Magnet Tiles from Amazon

What's Fun About It:  fun colors and shapes, great for problem solving as you try ways to put them together.  Also fun to stack.  We like to work on shapes and colors with these. The Magnet Tiles and various versions of them often go on sale on Amazon.

Train Set from IKEA

What's Fun About It:  So. Many. Parts.  Putting together encourages problem solving.  Be warned: many children don't want or feel the need to connect in a continuous circular pattern.  They may make a wavy line that is long.  No stress - this is okay.  Don't offer a better solution that may only be better for you.  Take advantage and talk about the long track, the beginning and the end.  Kids love the trains and also seeing what else they can put on the track that may not even go with it.

ART SUPPLIES:  markers, crayons, scissors, paper, paint, paper punch stamps, ink stamps, glue, yarn, beads, pipe cleaners, stickers, empty cardboard rolls, washi tape and colored masking tape. Oh, the color tape!  Do much fun to create with tape. A lot of local stores will have the tape and art supplies, but also look around your house.  Can you imagine a big box of different art supplies?

Snap Bots from Lakeshore Learning

What's Fun About It:  There are so many ways to create when putting together your own robot.  There is also problem solving when you realize that not every part will fit the way you first try it.  Out Snap bots are from Lakeshore. There are less expensive versions on Amazon.

Kitchen Items: Cash Register, Realistic Play Food, Pots/Pans, Dishes

What's Fun About It: When playing in the kitchen area, we try to use real utensils, plates and cups (unbreakable, of course) and realistic play food and containers.  The children love using the old cell phones to order food, cash register to pay for it, and the kitchen area to cook in.  There is also a pretend microwave, slow cooker, and waffle maker.  They all get used daily.  The kids love to pull out the wok and make the most amazing creations for the teachers to "eat".  Strawberry spaghetti, anyone?

Wood Building Blocks

What's Fun About It:  Your child's imagination is amazing.  There are so  many things they like to build.  Towers, race tracks for matchbox cars, zoos for the toy animals, tunnels, volcanoes.  And there is so much fun in building and wrecking.  Colors or plain wood, it doesn't matter.  Blocks never grow old.

Realistic Looking Animals

What's Fun About It:  It doesn't matter if they are zoo animals, ocean mammals and fish, farm animals, or dinosaurs, kids love playing with them.  They play with dinosaurs at the zoo, farm animals in Lego houses, sharks drive the tractors, and horses gallop everywhere. 

Those are some of the most popular toys.  You can ask your child's teacher to see if your child has a favorite.  

November Week 2: I Like It! I Don't Like It!

Transition Song: Gobble, Gobble song by Nooshi

Vocabulary and Basic Concepts: I like it/don't like it, labeling food items, He/She, Who questions, What questions, Where questions, hot/cold, thumbs up/thumbs down.

This week we looked at a lot of pictures of different foods.  Hot food, cold foods, foods that were very familiar, and foods that might have not been seen before.

Everyone could comment "I like it" and give a thumbs up, or "I don't like it" and give a thumbs down. We asked our peers "Do you like (oranges, doughnuts, scrambled eggs)?  Miss Carrie likes tomatoes.  She doesn't like peanut butter or peas.  But, Miss Carrie keeps trying a tiny taste of peanut butter or peas to see if she changed her mind.  Miss Carrie might change her mind as she grows up.

DO THIS AT HOME:  Talk about the foods you like or don't like?  Practice taking a tiny taste of foods you don't like or foods you think you won't like to see if you changed your mind.  I like using tiny spoons for this ala My Munch Bug SLP Melanie Potock.

 Instead of convincing your child to taste (which can put too much pressure on them), model it yourself and take a tiny taste to see if you like a certain item.

November Week 1: Food or Not Food?

Vocabulary and Basic Concepts:  familiar and unfamiliar food items (pizza apples, carrots, tomatoes, doughnuts, spaghetti, legos, markers, glue, toy people, cars, Potato Head feet, stacker rings), not, like/don't like, food/not food.

Transition Song: Gobble Gobble by Nooshi

Note:  We're only singing the first verse and much more slowly than this is sung.  We're also beating a pattern of knees-clap-knees-clap while we sing.  We show the foods that may be typical at Thanksgiving and talk about them.  I emphasize "If I don't know if I like it or I think I won't like it, I still try a tiny bit.  Just in case I changed my mind."

This week, Miss Carrie brought box full of toy food and toys.  We took turns pulling it out of the box with our eyes closed.  We talked about what it was and if it was food or not food.

If it was food: do we like it or don't like it?  It is okay if my friends don't like something but I do like it.  Everyone loved french fries and watermelon.  Some people didn't like eggs.  Some people liked pizza.  We learned that spaghetti could also be called noodles or pasta.  We still don't put pretend food in our mouths.  We hold it away from our mouths and pretend to eat it.

If it wasn't food, we discussed if we could still put it in our mouths.  NOOOOO! Miss Jeana and Miss Kazia would have to wash it and they do not want to wash any more toys.

DO THIS AT HOME:  talk about the foods at dinner and if you like it or don't like it.  Do you want to try a little bit to see if you changed your mind?  That's what Miss Carrie does.  She keeps trying peanut butter or peas to see if she changed her mind. (No, she hasn't changed her mind yet.)

 

October Week 4: Rex Wrecks It and Halloween Fun

 This week, in Miss Jeana's classroom, we read the book Rex Wrecks It by Ben Clanton.

In this book, Rex keeps wrecking all of his friends block creations.  (We have this problem in our preschool classrooms, too.)  Rex's friends DON'T like him wrecking their projects.  They have to problem solve together to come up with a solution.

Then we pulled out all of the blocks and started building.  We took turns asking if we could wreck it. (We learned that the word wreck  means to knock it down.)  Our friends could say yes or no.  If they said no, we had to build our own or wait. (Since this was only at the beginning of the week, we didn't have a chance to do this in Miss Kazia's classroom.  We will plan to do this in her room another week soon.

DO THIS AT HOME:  Pull out blocks or collect cardboard boxes to build with.  Build together.  Don't encourage wrecking it.  Practice asking if you can knock it down, either verbally or sign 'please'.  Sometimes the answer is no.  Sometimes the answer is yes.  Talk about feelings if someone knocks it down when you didn't want them to.

At the end of the week, miss Carrie was in Miss Kazia's room.  We had a lot of Halloween fun. We practiced Trick or Treat and knocking on doors.  We talked about our costumes or what we were wearing that day.

What did the teachers wear?

Miss Carrie was Pete The Cat with his Red Shoes

Miss Traci was dressed like Minnie Mouse

Miss Jeana was dressed like a witch

Miss Meagan was a Giraffe

Miss Kazia dressed like Auna from Frozen

Miss Misty was a pumpkin.

October Week 3: Miss Carrie LOVES to sing!

 This week, we focused on favorite songs and introduced new ones.  Of course, we started with Five Little Ghosts.  Other songs included Jim Gill's Stick To The Glue.

Just follow along with the words.  Get stuck together.  This caused a lot of laughter and talking about WHO and WHAT was stuck together.

Another favorite was Wave Your Hands High from Preschool Action Songs:

We talked about what we were moving or shaking.  Children showed teachers and teachers attempted to copy the move.  

DO THIS AT HOME:  Follow your child's lead and sing and dance.  Talk about WHO and WHAT and WHERE.  Narrate your child's actions and make a big deal about following their lead.

October Week 2: Out In The Jungle

 

Vocabulary and Basic Concepts: jungle, animal, grasshopper, bug, gopher, eagle seagull, penguin, dog, goat, goldfish, gecko, glow worm, gazelle, grouse, earwig, grisson, sea slug, wart hog, gorilla, pig, frog, flamingo, loud/quiet, Where questions, What questions, like/don't like, ocean, farm, zoo, mountain, outside, my house.

Transition Song: Five Little Ghosts by the Kiboomers.

This week we played Out In The Jungle.  Miss Carrie would call out:

Binoculars Up!  

Out in the jungle, What did I see?

I saw a.......

Now, here is the catch: we had a lot of pictures taped around the room at kid eye level.  Each picture was an animal we might be familiar with or not.  But they all had a /g/ sound at the beginning, middle, or end of the word.  Everyone moved around the room to hunt for the pictures with their pretend binoculars held up to their eyes.  Everyone had fun trying to find the animals.  Sometimes we had to ask Miss Carrie "What is that?!"  No one had seen a glow worm or a sea slug or a grisson before. The teachers would mark the sound and we practiced the words.  We talked about what is was and where we might have seen it before.

(Miss Carrie was so busy during the activity, she didn't take pictures!)

DO THIS AT HOME:  find some magazine pictures of animals and put them up around your house.  Go for a hunt to find them.  Let your child lead. If you're working on articulation, model the word slowly once and let it go. Don't make your child repeat it.  If they do repeat it, it gives you another opportunity to say  "You found a _________!" and model one more time.  If your child is working on language, label and ask What and Where questions.  If your child is working on communication, give them a chart with matching pictures so they can find it and circle or mark the picture on their chart as they go.

Miss Carrie's wore a crown and funny things kids say.....

 

Juts in case your children try to tell you about this, I wore a crown this week for my birthday.  It is so much fun to see what communication I get from a child when they see me wearing a sparkly crown or just something different from the usual.  The same concept happened when I dyed my hair red one year, when I wore new glasses after not wearing glasses at all, or even if the children spy a bandage on my finger.  

Of course, any excuse to wear a sparkly crown, right?  

Funny things children in the classrooms said this week:

____________

Miss Kazia's classroom:

Boy: (pretended that his dinosaur farted)

Girl: Hey! Don't do that!  (holds up the cow she is playing with) Only cows fart!

(girl turns to me and says) Cows really do fart.

***

Girl playing with peers and attempting to problem solve during a conflict) "He have the mom and you have the sweetie (baby).

____________

Miss Jeana's classroom: 

Miss Jeana was going over classroom rules during Greeting Time.  One of the rules is using nice words in the classroom.

Girl: *pouts* My brother doesn't say nice words.  *pouts more* My brother doesn't ever say I'm pretty.

***

Boy (turns to me during Greeting Time)  I want to go home.  My mommy miss me.

_____________