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The long stretch of days spent indoors finally came to an end, and we were very, very happy about it! We headed outdoors right after calendar and weather and took a sled trip around the neighborhood. We greeted a few of the residents who were outside shoveleing snow, and everyone agreed it was a lovely, sunshiny day to be out and about.
Once we completed our rounds in the neighborhood, we played for a bit in the back yard. It was nice to have a fluffy new layer of snow to waddle through, but when the wind picked up, we headed back inside.
After snacks we had some free play time and I worked with the littles one-on-one. The littles and I practiced stepping up and down on the stool. They are doing very well and have little fear of stepping up, but it was good to practice stepping down as that needs some work.
When the littles were ready to move on, we played out another grocery store scenario. This is the children's favorite activity these days, and it's a great one for working on literacy skills, practical life skills, math skills, and is a fun physical activity for them as well. There's lots of moving, speaking, counting, and laughter when we play grocery store!
Even the littles love to take on the role of bagger or restocker.
The big kids were tasked with figuring out appropriate choices for specific meals or occasions- breakfast, pasta dinners, lunches, or shopping for toiletries/medicine. They did a great job picking out appropriate items like waffles, cereal, milk, butter, and eggs for breakfast.
We learned where bar codes were and talked a little about what they were for. I think the Blue Sky Daycare kids would make great checkout workers!
The children welcome a change in roles and we switch between them to make sure everyone gets an even chance to exercise the various skills of this pretend scenario.
Later in the day, we worked on some letter tracing. The big kids get so excited when the tracing sheets come out and they are getting better and better at them. I'm so proud of them!
Last, we revisited the books of shapes and colors for the littles and we read Jan Brett's The Hat and The Mitten again for the big kids. We looked at the side panels in Brett's books and talked about how they help readers predict what is going to happen next in the story. It's just impossible not to love her sweet stories and gorgeous illustrations, and her books make it so easy to teach early literacy skills!
See you tomorrow!