A circle time rhyme, pretend play, and sensory fun...

Fridays are a day of give and take with the 0-4 age set. On the one hand, the children have have existed in the safety and structure of routine all week and so they are hungry for the break in routine that the weekend brings, but on the other hand they are tired from the week's activities and need to fit some restful play and extra reading into their day.

With this thought in mind, today we did our morning routine and incorportated some gentle pretend play and some sensory fun into our day.

The children have been particularly enjoying two circle time movement rhymes this January. One of them challenges the children's gross motor skills and ability to recognize when to change their bodies' position. It's deceptively simple and is sung to the tune of "Frere Jacques:"

Dance like snowflakes

Dance like snowflakes

In the air

In the air

Whirling, twirling snowflakes

Whirling, twirling snowflakes

Here and there

Here and there

The kids enjoy the extra variation of speeding the rhyme up or slowing it down.

The littlest people love to join in- they are always welcome to try things out!

After circle time, we did some active ball play to get the toddler "jitters" out and give our minds the chance to focus later on. The children love to have an assigned ball and chase just that one... though sometimes they will pick others up if they happen to find them. If this is the case, I encourage the child to bring the found ball to its "owner" and we simply continue the game.

Its' especially fun when the balls get rolled into tricky areas- a little problems solving goes into getting balls under tables or behind objects.

One of the children reveled in the novelty of rolling the ball between her legs- she liked the new perspecitve on the world.

Once our bodies had the chance to be active, we settled in on some deep pretend play. The children have been enjoying arranging farm animal famlies; the biggest cow is the daddy, the next biggest is the mommy, and so on.

Santa brought some extra farm animals at Christmas, so we've been able to extend the farm animal family circle.

I played along with the chilren, doing a little redirecting here and there and occaionally guiding the children through a scenario. Todays's scenarios revolved around helping someone in need. Whether it was a cow who couldn't find her calf or a goat who wanted to take a carrot to her friend the sheep but couldn't carry it, the children were always happy to help.

We wrapped up our daily activities with some sensory play. I brought in a pan full of snow for the children to explore. We made some observations about the snow when it was new and fresh- it was white, powdery, and sparkly.

After about ten minutes-and the addition of mittens- the children noticed that there were pools of water forming where the snow was. We wondered about why that happened and after some guessing, I helped the children come to the conclusion that snow is really cold water.

After that, we did some observations about the melting snow. We noticed it was becoming clear, stuck together more, and there was less of it. At this point, I brought in a dish of warm water and we made guesses about what would happen if we added a snowball to the warm water. One child thought it would float, another thought it would sink. We all thought the snow would change to water. Turns out it did!

It's tough to see in the photo, but there are small chunks of snow still melting in the bowl.

To wrap up our day, we enjoyed some storytime. We took a break from our themed books and read the one and only Curious George.

I hope you have a great weekend! See you Monday for more updates on what we're up to!

#homedaycare #blueskydaycare #pretendplay #earlyscience #stateofmatteractivities #sensoryplay #circletime