Hello Toddler 2 Families,
February was a short month for us, and it was a crazy month for us as well! We are so happy that everyone is back now. We really appreciate the families and we want to say thank you so much for understanding and being so flexible! We had a birthday this month. Happy Birthday to our friend Judah! Our focus this month has been in these areas: Self-help Skills, Gross Motor, Sensory Activities and Outdoor Play.
Encourage Self-Help Skills
We are practicing self help skills with the children. So we want to encourage you all to practice these skills as well. These skills include feeding, washing hands and dressing themselves. This helps them to develop their large and small motor skills. It’s also about learning the everyday life skills they need to gradually give them more independence. Keep it fun and simple!
Gross Motor Activities
We also introduced yoga to the children! Yoga benefits children and helps to manage their anxiety and improves children’s emotional regulation. Yoga increases children’s body awareness and mindfulness as well as develops children’s strength, flexibility, and memory. The children liked to do the poses, some of our favorite’s are the cat, dragon, gorilla, tree and of course airplane!
We also worked on our balance. This allows the children to have better control over their bodies. Balance helps things such as body awareness, attention, physical strength, gross motor, and sensory processing. It allows the children to move their attention and focus onto other things. We got to do things like jumping on a trampoline, rowing on a boat going back and forth, walking on stairs, and balancing on tree trunks. These are just a few activities we did!
Sensory Activities
We opened up the media table. The media table has been filled with sea animals and water, snow and artic animals, babies and soapy water and boats. The media table is set up to let children learn and engage with their senses by interacting with the materials inside the table. We change them all the time. It encourages the development of motor skills, scientific thinking and problem solving. The children especially love to play in the water and splash and make waves!
We explored different art materials as well for a sensory activity. This gives the children the opportunity to create whatever they desire. Also, it develops fine motor skills, improves hand-eye coordination, encourages self-expression and creativity. For example, we did yarn art with glue, sponge art with watercolors, spikey roller with gel paint, and watercolors on a paper Towel. We also got to make some Puffy Paint. We made some collages as a classroom adding different things into the contact paper. The children also got to make handprints and finger-paint on color texture paper. We had so much fun with art this month as we keep exploring different sensory art materials!
Outdoor Play
This month we also got to go on a lot of Nature walks! These nature walks help children be surrounded by nature by being outside. It will help the children to experience something different and be free flowing in their environment that stimulates all the senses. Going on nature walks can help the children learn to focus their attention and take in the details of things around them. The children loved the nature walks looking at cars, people watching and even walking through puddles. That was a favorite! We got to sit on the sidewalk on the playground and do activities outside with the children such as chalk and bubbles, and just enjoy the weather!
Reminders
- Please remember to sign your child in and out every day on the clipboard outside the classroom.
- If you have not done so already, please return your child’s ASQ-3 and ASQ-SE assessments and your Welcome Back Forms.
