Play Dough, Water, Pom-Poms, and Crayons

We made our own play dough with the toddlers' help.

We made red and blue dough. The kids mixed up the

colors and noticed a third color was made...purple!

He was licking the play dough. I'm sure it tasted salty!

Play dough is the perfect material to exercise little fingers.

Ms. Kris works with the play dough with two of our toddlers.

It is hard to tell, but this activity shows the toddlers using clothes pins to

pick up pom-poms. Then they drop the pom-poms in cups. It was challenging

 for most of the toddlers, but it is a great fine-motor activity.

These yogurt cups had holes for water to run through.

The toddlers watched the water run out of the cup and

they liked dumping the water back into the sensory table.

I couldn't resist taking a picture of this! He got one of our sunflowers

and was walking with it. He was using it as a walking stick.

We collected several different types of objects to see what would

sink and what would float. The shells, shower rings, and eventually

the pipe cleaner, sank. The ball and a piece of craft foam floated.

The clothes pin stood straight up in the water...that was cool!

This toddler is coloring with two crayons taped together.

He was making some interesting lines and shapes.

Walk The Line

On Tuesday, September 18th, we went outside on the wet parking lot to play.

I made lines on the ground for the kids to follow.

There were squiggly lines, zig-zags, curvy lines, straight lines, and spirals.

Some of the kids made their own lines. One child made lines for her friends to walk on.

Ohio Early Learning & Development Standards:

• Motor Development
• Large Muscle: Movement, Balance, and Coordination
• The child will coordinate the movement of his or her body in order to move and to interact with the environment.
• Cognitive Development
• Attention
• The child will be able to remain focused on a task.

Cleaning Up Our Gardens

On Monday September 17th, we went outside to clean up all of the plants that have

finished growing. The toddlers were given shovels to dig out the plants in the

pots. Then they helped gather all of the plants and took them to our

tall grass area. There we threw the plants in the tall grass

for the plants to decompose.

One of our younger toddlers digging out some weeds.

She used her toddler muscles to dig out our pineapple plant.

He dug out some thyme that we didn't water enough.

Our pile of plants.

We now have a pumpkin patch. It started growing in late June.

We picked three pumpkins from our patch. We still have more growing!

Ohio Early Learning & Development Standards:

• Motor Development
• Large Muscle: Movement, Balance, and Coordination
• The child will coordinate the movements of his or her body in order to move and to interact with the environment.
• Small Muscle: Touch, Grasp, Reach, Manipulate
• The child will coordinate the use of his or her hands, fingers and sight in order to manipulate objects in the environment.