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There was a slight chill in the air this morning, so we focused on some big-body movement games to warm us up today. After our morning routine, the children and I had lots of fun setting up a pretend grocery store. There was so much wonderful cooperation from the children involved in this- the children worked together to clean up all the toys and put them in the proper baskets, then to move the baskets to an area away from where we'd be playing grocery store, and most importantly, taking turns between pretend roles.
The shoppers had lots of groceries to unload on the "conveyor belt..."
... and money exchanged hands. This involved quite a bit of practice counting numbers from 1-20.
Occasionally there were "spills" in the aisles that needed cleanup...
...or shoppers needed help shopping. There were many opportunities to practice social skills like asking for help, saying "please" and "thank you," waiting in line, and the conventions of paying for items.
Even the littlest shopper had lots of fun experimenting with the variety of boxes, containers, and bags, and worked on his understanding of size, shape, heft, in, and out.
Once the grocery store was all shopped out, we cleaned up together and moved on to a game of Simon Says. This is a wonderful game to work on listening skills because it makes listening fun. Considering the ages of the players, our game was simplified and no one stopped playing if they performed the task wrong. Instead we just waited until everyone was doing the right thing.
Later in the day we had lots of fun playing a silly game where the children and I moved like a variety of animals. This was another great game for both gross motor skills and listening.
To cap the day off, we had some one-on-one reading times. The children and I read books ranging from books of words to involved picture books based on their development.
See you tomorrow!