Activities

While holding the infant, do these motions:

 
Stand up tall (Stand infant on your legs.)
Hands in the air (Raise his/her arms.

Gather a small group of children and sing this song, encouraging them to do the motions:
Stand up, turn around,
Nod your head, touch the ground.

Use a wand with a star on top to sing this transition song to the tune of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star":
Twinkle, twinkle, little star,

stop and clean up where you are.

Time to put the toys away.

Teach this song, to the tune of “London Bridge,” to reinforce two important concepts about print.

Say a simple sentence to the children such as, “The cat ran.” Challenge the children to make it more complex by adding words and actions the cat did. Prompt the children by asking them questions.

During large group, give each child a hollow block to be used as a step and two cylinder blocks to be used as hand weights.

Let the children take part in preparing a fruit salad. When you are finished, ask the children to pretend they have to teach someone how to prepare this food, using a sequence of pictures.

Prepare paper plates with shapes drawn in different colors. During outdoor time, scatter the plates in a large area, making sure that all of the same shapes are not together.

During outside time have the children count the steps going up the slide. Then count how many steps it takes to go from the bottom of the slide back around to the ladder of the slide.

Collect sticks of various sizes, bells, beads, stickers, yarn and other decorative items. Encourage the children to create a bell instrument by decorating their stick and stringing various beads, bells and buttons to it.

Read In the Small, Small Pond by Denise Fleming. On another day, read the story again and provide several children with stick puppets to represent animals in the story.

Take the children outside. Give them small sticks and encourage them to write in the sand or dirt.

Read Stickman by Julia Donaldson.  Talk about the problems that Stickman ran into when he was carried away from his family tree.  Encourage the children to think of ways to help.  Show the children branches and give them a problem to solve.

Place a large square of contact paper on the wall, sticky side out. Have the children place different textured paper and magazine pictures on it. Try crepe paper, construction paper and tissue paper. Talk about what you've created together.

Secure contact paper, with the sticky side facing out, to a flat surface. Place objects, such as balls, rattles or rings, on the contact paper, and have the infant pull the objects off and stick them back on.

Assemble contact paper, 81/2" x 11" cardboard, tape and an assortment of real and found items such as fabric squares, yarn and small animal pictures. Tape contact paper to the cardboard, sticky side out. Remove the backing.

Give the children lots of interesting objects to encourage patterning, such as plastic insects, small fruits or sports erasers.

During outdoor time, make sand that sticks together with 5 cups of sand, 4 cups of fl our and 1 cup of oil mixed together in a sensory bin. Add loose parts such as glitter or gems. Give children spoons, golf tees and ice cream scoops to explore.

Tape a piece of clear contact paper to the table, sticky side up. Place craft sticks across the top of the paper in a variety of abstract shapes and configurations. Leave a space at the bottom for the children to work.

Read I Love You, Stinky Face by Lisa McCourt.