Activities

Read Meet Einstein by Mariela Kleiner. Discuss with the children the tools Einstein used to explore light and gravity. Use items such as a feather, a small cube and a small ball and demonstrate dropping them from the same height.

Take some measuring tools outside and encourage the children to find ways to use them.

Play a matching picture card game of community helpers and tools they use. For example, a firefighter and a hose or a hairdresser and scissors. The children match the helper with the tool.

Read Throw Your Tooth on the Roof by Selby Beeler. Survey the children and ask if anyone has lost a tooth. If so, have them tell about it. Ask the children what are some other ways children celebrate when they lose a tooth.

Place a large piece of butcher paper on a table or on the floor. You will need small containers of paint and old toothbrushes. Have children practice up-and-down and circular brush strokes while painting with their old toothbrush.

Play or sing “Tooty Ta” by Jack Hartmann and dance along. Encourage the children to follow the directions in the song.

Divide a piece of butcher paper in half. On top, tape a picture of two books that have been read in class. Have the children place a star under the book that they would like you to read again.

Use songs during large group when teaching children about reading and writing from top to bottom and left to right.  Use your finger or a pointer to model as you read or write.

Gather a variety of books in the reading center on a topic or type of literature and place them in a basket.

Tune: "Frere Jacques" 
Tops and bottoms, tops and bottoms 
(rub top and bottom of hands) 

In between, in between, 
(rub fingers inside on both hands) 

All around your hands, all around your hands, 

Give the infant baby food tops. Encourage him/her to pick up the tops and place them in a box or to simply pick them up and explore them.

Create a tornado bottle using oil and water. Secure the cap with hot glue. Have the children rapidly shake the bottle. Discuss what they see going on inside it. Say, "This looks like what happens when there is a tornado.

During small group, have the children create a tornado. Give them a plastic bottle and have them fill it with water, then take turns adding a squirt of child-safe dish soap, one teaspoon of vinegar and food coloring.

Read Aesop's fable, "The Tortoise and the Hare."  Emphasize the different rates of speed of each character.  Play music, such as "The William Tell Overture," to represent "fast" and a lullaby to represent "slow.

Toss a large, bright ball back and forth to the children during outdoor time. When one catches the ball, the child calls out something he/she saw happen in the class and gives a solution.

Hold the infant and look at pages in Touch and Feel: Farm or Animals: Baby Touch and Feel by DK Publishing. Encourage the infant to touch the different textures on the page. Say, “You're touching the baby chick. It's so soft.

I touch my hair, my lips, my eyes. 

I sit up straight, then I rise. 

I touch my ears, my nose, my chin, 

And then I sit back down again.

Place a variety of objects with different textures in a box, such as a soft blanket, rough sand paper or crinkly tissue paper. As a prompt say, "I see that you found a soft blanket." Then ask the child to tell you about the blanket.

Give the children a cookie sheet with a small amount of sand in the bottom. Encourage them to write the first letters of their names. You can also do this activity with a sealed plastic bag of hair gel.

Encourage the children to work together to build several towers in the block center using a variety of blocks.