Activities

Write all of the children's names on index cards and place them in a basket. Sit in a large group circle and pass the basket from one child to the next when the music begins.

Read Dr. Seuss's Foot Book. Emphasize the words relating to amount: "Feet, feet, feet. How many, many feet you meet." Use different words to comment on the feet.

Choose two or three children to come and stand in front.

Ask for french fry containers from a local restaurant. Make “french fries” by cutting yellow kitchen sponges into strips. Give each child a container and four french fries.

Fill the sensory center table with sand, small gravel or other pourable materials. Provide small scoops and cups and larger containers such as milk jugs and soda bottles.

Encourage the use of non-standard measuring by investigating how many steps it takes to go from one structure to another on the playground.

Provide a collection of pattern blocks for the children and pose questions such as, “How many ways can you make a bird using only five pattern blocks?” or “Show me how you can make three star patterns with your pattern blocks.

During small group, provide children with counters and verbally give them a sentence.  Have the children repeat the sentence, then repeat it slowly, breaking apart each word in the sentence.

Provide the children with a simple sentence of three to four words written on a sentence strip. Encourage the children to segment the sentence by cutting the words apart.

Ask children an open-ended question about an attribute of an animal or object and encourage them to provide as many responses as possible.

When the children come to the carpet for large group, count the number of girls and say, “There are ___ girls here today.” Then count the number of boys and say, “There are ___ boys here today.

At mealtime, encourage the children to count out servings of food as they place the food on their own plates. Say, “Rosie, you're getting more carrot sticks. Let's count them together. One, two, three carrot sticks.

Have a tub of sand at the small group table along with containers and scoops for each child. Fill one container as the children watch. Count the scoops as you fill the container.

Use this activity to introduce the concept of "zero.

Read Good Enough to Eat: A Kid's Guide to Food and Nutrition by Lizzy Rockwell. Focus the discussion on how much of each nutrient does a child need to eat each day to be healthy.

Encourage the children to explore real items, such as flowers, pine cones, twigs and leaves, using tweezers and magnifying glasses. Provide balance scales to weigh items.

Read It's My Birthday by Liesbet Slegers. Talk about how old the children are. Hold up one finger and say, "You are one year old; can you say one?" Assist the child in holding up one finger.

During large group time, provide weather-related props such as rain boots, umbrellas, mittens, sun visors and scarves. Encourage the children to choose props that match the day's weather.

Have the children use yarn to measure themselves. Then have them measure a friend. Use scissors to cut the yarn to their body length. Tape the yarn to a long piece of butcher paper and add a photo of each child to the top of his/ her yarn piece.

Have a height chart posted in the classroom and have the children stand at the chart and make a mark to see how tall they are. You could also use yarn to measure height and tape the yarn to the height chart.