Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Toddler Activities: Activity Time with Preschool Lessons

Here's the basic layout of our Activity Time these days, now that I have a preschooler. My two-year old participates in these as well, although I do direct most lessons to my three year old's learning level. One day I'll manage to swing separate activities for both girls (maybe), but for now, this is it:

1. We talk about the day of the week, month, season, and what the weather is like outside. For the songs we sing, click here and here.

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2. If there's an upcoming holiday or something special about that month, we discuss those. I've also been incorporating very simple lessons about time.
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3. We talk about our letter of the week (for ex, the letter C). We're learning both upper-case and lower-case. I start by writing both letters on our dry-erase board, describing what it looks like and how you write it. Then I invite my toddler/preschooler to come up and trace my letter or write her own--both upper and lower case. Then we sing "The "C" says "kuh", the "C" says "kuh," every letter makes a sound, the "C" says "kuh." We also talk about the sign for this letter.

I fill a paper sack with "C" words and have the girls pull them out one at a time.
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4. Then we read our books about the letter that we found at the library (or from our personal library).

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4. We do a quick math lesson, usually with fruit. ("If I have three oranges and take away one, how many are left?")

5. Then we end with a craft, activity, or game that has to do with the letter or holiday or whatever else we're learning about! (This is my favorite part). In this example, we covered our letter C's with cotton balls. Then we ate cheese pizza for lunch.

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My best advice (to my self included) is to not overwhelm yourself with ALL the information, preschool programs and websites and activities, etc that are out there.
Just have fun with your kids and keep it simple.

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2 comments :

  1. Your so creative, I'm excited to have activities for my little one when he starts learning about the alphabet.

    ReplyDelete