Activities

Collect a variety of child-sized suitcases, children's clothes, shoes, jewelry, props, baby dolls and travel brochures. Encourage the children to pack their bags to go on a trip.

Provide the children with a tub filled with mud, water and rocks. Paint some of the small rocks with silver and gold paint.

Place lots of small, plastic animals in a sand tub. This can be done inside or outside. Give the children slotted spoons and encourage them to find all the animals. To boost counting, tell them a specific number to find.

Give a group of two or three children directions to a treasure hidden in the classroom such as, “Take three steps forward, take two steps left, look under the red table.

In a dish pan, freeze an assortment of small plastic toys so they are suspended throughout the ice.  On a warm day, dump the ice on a solid surface.  Provide eye droppers with salt water and small plastic hammers as tools.

During outdoor time, wrap the base of a large tree with butcher paper and provide children with art materials such as paints and brushes, pastels or markers. Encourage them to use the tree trunk as their easel and create their own works of art.

Cut triangles out of different colors of tissue paper. Make sure that the triangles are different types – a right triangle or a tall, thin isosceles triangle, for example, not just the traditional “roof top” triangle.

Count the tricycles with the children. Compare the number of tricycles to the number of children. Ask, “What can we do when we have more children than tricycles?” Explain to the children that sometimes we have to wait and take turns.

Give the children sponges and a large bucket of water with some child-safe soap added. Encourage them to work together to wash the tricycles on the playground. They can also wash the slide or other playground equipment.

Read The Bike Lesson by Stan and Jan Berenstain. In this book, Small Bear learns how to ride his new bike from Papa Bear. After reading the book, talk about the children's experiences with tricycles and/or bicycles.

Gather a small group and sing this song as the children trot and move to the tune of “Hush Little Baby”:
Trot little pony, trot to town,

Trot little pony, don't slow down.

Using pictures/toys of the types of trucks listed in the story, Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site by Sherri Duskey Rinkin and Tom Lichtenheld, have the children sequence them according to the book order while in the block center.

Read Where Do Diggers Sleep at Night? by Brianna Caplan Sayres. Provide a variety of trucks, fire engines, tractors and monster trucks.

Add a variety of trucks to the sand table, such as dump trucks, bulldozers, delivery trucks or steam rollers. Have the children talk about all the different jobs trucks can do and who uses the trucks.

Fill a tub in the sensory center with letters of all sorts and sizes. Try magnet letters, large bathtub letters, small foam letters, small letter beads and alphabet pasta. Add rice or beans to add volume.

Using a paper towel tube, put one end to the infant's ear and talk softly into the other end. Say things such as, “Hello, happy boy,” or “Somebody is getting sleepy.

Give each child a paper towel roll to talk through. Model quiet, loud, squeaky and laughing sounds. Select a leader to make a sound for the other children to imitate. Give turns at leading.

Using a cardboard paper towel tube, show the children different things they can do with it, such as talk into it as a pretend microphone or hold it to their eyes as if it were a telescope.

Cut cardboard tubes into a variety of lengths. Show the children how to lay them side by side in a box lid, from shortest to tallest. Say, “You put the tubes in order by size.

Add cardboard tubes of different lengths and some masking tape to the block center. Encourage the children to use the tubes in a variety of ways. Show them how to use tape to attach the tubes to blocks or to each other.