Even our bitty ones get to build those little pincer grasps, create with colors, mix paints, and experience Creative Arts through play.  We simply put them in their highchairs and let them determine how long and how much they want to participate.  This is vital to proper development and our mixed-age approach to learning provides LOTS of sensory awareness and practice through play.  

Our curriculum partners at Mother Goose Time understand and promote this approach to learning and provide materials for every child in our group ages 9 mos-5 years!

We couldn't resist the opportunity to create some baking soda volcanoes with our home made dough, vinegar, and baking soda! This is the recipe we use for our ever popular homemade dough.  We add glitter, sparkles, confetti, food coloring, etc. depending on our current monthly themes.  It is by far the very BEST recipe we have EVER used!!

Materials

• 1 cup water
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 1/2 cup salt
• 1 tablespoon cream of tartar
• Food coloring
• Saucepan
• 1 cup flour

Directions

1. Combine water, oil, salt, cream of tartar, and food coloring in a saucepan and heat until warm.
2. Remove from heat and add flour.
3. Stir, then knead until smooth. The cream of tartar makes this dough last 6 months or longer, so resist the temptation to omit this ingredient if you don't have it on hand.
4. Store this dough in an airtight container or a Ziploc freezer bag.

This week we studied the letters "V" and "E: for volcano and we practiced using it in our word puzzles.  We found the letter sounds at the beginning, middle, and end of the words.  This helped us understand the how the letters sound and what it means for a word to "start with" a certain letter.  

Our Dino Make and Take game began as a fine motor skill building activity that was quickly embraced as our little learners excitedly understood that they would be taking THIS game home to share with moms and dads!  We carefully cut along the dotted lines and asked the teachers and our friends for help when we felt we needed it.  We worked diligently to create our rectangular pieces.  Some needed a bit of tape, but that just makes the process even more fun!!

"Tic-Tac-Toe: A Game with Competing Goals
While the game of tic-tac-toe is really old, dating back to ancient Egyptians at around 1300 B.C., the underlying principles of the game have endured the test of time. The game seems simple enough. Two opponents, one using X and one using O, use a 3 x 3 grid to mark their symbols. The first one to get all three of his/her symbols in a row, whether it’s diagonal, horizontal, or vertical, wins the game. The ingenious catch here for children, which adults find trivial, is that the game is designed to end up in a draw. Only when one opponent makes a mistake will the other opponent win. This is where the simple game of tic-tac-toe gets a little more complicated.
​
When playing a game with only one opponent, you ultimately have two goals: to win and to not lose. As an adult, you know that the game of tic-tac-toe will result in a draw so you follow a strategy where neither you nor your opponent will win. You’ll think that this is a flawless combination of your two goals. But for children, they go for either and both goals. For example, in a 1993 experiment from Carnegie Mellon University, the researchers let a 5 year old girl play tic-tac-toe against a computer program. The results were that every time the child aims to win, she loses due to failing to block her opponent, but when she aims to not lose, the games result in a draw. This continued in alternates for 16 games. This experiment showed that what you thought as a simple integration of a goal was not always so stable.

But you might wonder what has this got to do with children’s cognitive development?
Think-Tac-Toe: The developmental values of the game with a brain
The game of tic-tac-toe is a game of predictability. The moves that are believed to be important are highly predictable. This also makes it a game of opposites in a way, because this goes against the definition of an “important move”. But this predictability is what helps foster strategic thinking in children. They can learn through observation what their opponents’ next move is and think ways on how to block them, a simple but effective version of chess. In order to figure out what else they can do in the game to win, the children are encouraged to think more logically. They, therefore, naturally develop their logico-mathematical thinking, which can help them in subjects such as math and engineering in the future.

Another good intellectual quality of tic-tac-toe is that it’s a game with rules. According to Fromberg & Bergen in their book “Play from Birth to Twelve” (2012), children playing games with rules can help in their intellectual, sociomoral, and personality development. This helps develop an advanced interpersonal understanding which result to better negotiation of conflicts with other children. They recommend that these educational games with rules be a vital part of children’s early education. But of course, the educational value of games such as tic-tac-toe become efficient depending on what you, the adult, will do. To help them develop their skills, you shouldn’t be giving them the answers outright. Let them figure it out and aid them by asking questions that can help direct them to the answer. Also, activities such as these develop the bond between you and your children.

Educational Games and Their Effect on Spatial Ability
By encouraging logical thinking, tic-tac-toe helps children develop their spatial skills. This skill is important for their problem solving abilities—from everyday simple chores to complex mathematical equations"

Seriously?  Do they make them ANY cuter??  I get to spend my days filled with the most DARLING Wild Things!!  

Our dinosaur hats set the pace for this fun filled and educational week.  This week our dinosaur studies focused on Dinosaur Bodies and we learned about their heads, bones, habitats, and foods.

We learned that some dinosaurs had heads as big as a car and some were very small.  As we further discussed the types of foods they ate, we discovered that their heads and teeth were larger for the the meat eaters and seemed smaller for the veggie eaters.  We hypothesized that maybe it is because it is harder to chew up a burger than a lettuce leaf so maybe they needed those big teeth to help them survive!  

These haute hats were courtesy of our education partners at Mother Goose Time and went along with our weekly lesson about dinosaur bodies.  We discussed the things that all dinosaurs had in common which were eyes and teeth.  Some dinosaurs had noses on their heads and some had big teeth while others were quite small, but they all had them.  As we cut and pasted and placed our dino's facial features where we thought they should go we were learning about the proper geometric placement of facial features which is a developmental milestone in young learners.  (Chalk up another win for the team for making learning into play!!  Way to go team Woolsey Academy!!!)

Our education partners at Mother Goose Time sent us some simplistic puzzles that went along with our newest book, "Jurassic Jam".  Our students excitedly recognized the  characters and went to work building each three piece puzzle back into it's proper single unit form.  Keeping fresh materials (like new puzzles) available for our little learners is vital to development as it "Allows children to learn that a whole is made of parts. Develops hand-eye co-ordination and fine motor skills. Builds visual-perceptual skills. Develops attention, concentration and thinking skills such as recognizing, remembering, matching, sorting and problem sorting." - https://www.lifeslittletreasures.org.au/prematurity/support-for-families/prematurity-articles/how-puzzles-can-help-your-child-develop/

I think the backward cap says it all when it comes to how seriously this crew takes it's card playing!  We LOVE card games and this one was a dinosaur card game based on the old favorite "War".  The cards each had a differing number of dinosaurs on their face from 1-10 and the children had to count the dinosaurs quickly as a card was drawn to determine who had the card with the "most" dinosaurs on it.  The card with the most took the all the cards with "fewer" dinosaurs.  This is a complex math concept for young children that is easily mastered when put into a game format.  During this game one of our teachers sat in to aid in "following the rules" and "recognizing more and less."  

In the article, "Using Card Games To Teach Basic Math Skills" by Sheldon Soper states that cards are a great way to teach children math skills utilizing a social format that is FAR more fun than worksheets and I AGREE!!!  

"There are three reasons I love this approach:

• Playing cards are cheap and readily available.
• Card games are timeless, portable, and fun (read: way more fun than practice worksheets)
• Card games incorporate family members and fellow students in the learning process making it collaborative and social"

This simple game of Dinosaur War requires our students to recognize the number of dinosaurs on each card and then to compare their numerical value.  Games that teach are one of my very favorite methods for helping my little learners naturally increase their math skills through the power of play.

Using LOTS glue of differing types of noodles was a fun and effective way to compare the different types of bones in a dinosaurs body.  This activity was part of our S.T.E.M. and discovery provided by Mother Goose Time.  Our children determined what types of noodles they felt best looked like legs, spines, and heads!

Our Dinosaur Emergent Reader books from Mother Goose Time have been read again, and again, and again.  Repetition gives children predictable outcomes that lay solid foundations for learning complex concepts.  These books are now memorized and predictable so the next steps can be made from holding and hearing the books to beginning reading and writing.  Since our students can follow along with each word and count the number while recognizing the types of dinosaurs it is a natural progression to show them which words, names, and numbers go with the pictures.  This information is easily retained as it is predictable.  We can then move to writing the numbers and words as pictured here. 

We picked a page and some writing strips to focus on two to three words of the sentence.  We recreated those words as we carefully recognized the name "Stegosaurus" and the number "4" in the sentence.  We worked diligently to copy the text as written in the book. 

This provides excellent writing practice, word recognition, and a sense of pride upon completion!

Regular writing opportunities in the classroom also allow us as teachers to assess in real time how our students are progressing along with their emergent writing skills.  These skills begin as a child's first scribbles and progress along a predictable path.  

These activities are just a small part of the fun we have had learning all about dinosaur bodies!!  From songs to stories, heads to toes, we are singing, dancing, reading, and writing our way as petite paleontologists all month long at Woolsey Academy!  

As always, we wish you well and we hope you get to play today!!

-L

I just LOVE the photo-bomb cutie is the background of this sweet pic!  My little One'asaurus in the foreground is busily painting her Triceratops with greens, browns, and white. 

Look at that developing grasp!! Swoon...

But my little Three'asaurus in the background is focused in his explorations with our "Eye Spy" paper glasses provided by our education partners at Mother Goose Time that came as part of our dinosaur themed Emergent Reader book, 

This week we focused on 5 popular dinosaurs similarities and differences.  

We learned the words "herbivore" and "carnivore" and what those meant.  We also discovered that we, as humans, are "omnivores" since we eat both meat and plants.  We discussed the different types of plants that we eat like apples, oranges, and lettuce.  We wondered if the dinosaurs might have liked those pants too?

NO preschool day is complete without LOTS of singing, dancing, and wiggling to the music 

From Music and Movement to Science and Discovery this week has been FULL of opportunity for dinosaur discovery and education through play!

As always, I wish you well and I hope you get to play today!  -L

We began our week discovering what the word "Paleontologist" means - a person (scientist) that studies the history of life.  In this history we are studying dinosaur bones.  We then discussed what an "Excavation Site" was as we made our very own dirt dough to excavate and imprint fossils in to take home and share with our families.

Our dirt dough was made with coffee grounds, flour, salt, and water all measured and mixed to create a soil like consistency.  This provided full sensory immersion into our fossil review as our Paleontologists pressed dino feet, heads, and bodies into mounds of "mud" then placed them into the oven to harden, simulating the solid fossils like those found in real digs.

These child-sized rubber dinosaur math manipulatives and counting cards are set up on one of our math shelves and allow our students to independently add and subtract their way to 10.  We also use these as game pieces in our new math game, Dinosaur Dig!  

Dinosaur Dig provided excellent opportunity for math skill enhancement through self directed game play.  We loved this easy to follow game and I wrote a bit more about it here...

https://www.woolseyacademy.com/blog/math-magic

Many of our S.T.E.A.M. activities are intertwined and provide for learning through play on 
multiple planes of achievement and skill levels that fit our mixed age group. This is just one of many that we accomplished this week. We stamped with browns, and whites as we mixed and swirled our stampers to look like dinosaur feet in the dirt.  We discussed how a dinosaur made imprints in the soil with their feet that could last for a very long time as they hardened in the sun.

Week 1 of this month's Dinosaur Dig provided a strong foundation for our budding Paleontologists to discover with friends while building connections with creatures from long ago to their own backyard.  

As always, we wish you well and we hope you get to play today! -L

 Dinosaur Dig has all the necessary components of a skill builder at a research level.

As the children move their dinosaurs along the board they begin to recognize key words and letters that clue them in to what the upcoming instruction square is going to say.  Some stated, "Find 1 bone," or "Subtract 2 bones."  These are Emergent Readers striving to learn so they can independently play a game (Language Arts).  

FORGET flashcards!!  Who has time for that???

As they roll the dice they excitedly count from 1-5 along the squares toward an instruction square.  We carefully add and subtract as instructed. Rounding the last square we tally each child's total (math).  

By the end we are BEGGING to reset the board and play again.  We are pointing out the "add" and "subtract" squares and giggling about how many bones we are going to collect THIS time!

This game is built on subject matter that our children love (dinosaurs) with game pieces that easily fit into their hands.  They pick out a new color dinosaur and we discuss it's name each time (science)​.  We have fun conversations about whether it is a "veggie" or "meat" eater as we recall the words "herbivore" and "carnivore".  (Language Arts, Social/Emotional, Science) and we are pretending to be baby birds eating the bones we have collected as we roll and recognize, then put into practical application the numbers displayed on our dice. 

Research is FULL of evidence (just google "how to best teach a preschool child math concepts" and you will find page after page of articles filled with doctoral dissertations about the "how to's" and "why's" and it all boils down to one concept.

Play games...specifically board games with your child.  Have your child attend a preschool that teaches complex and abstract math concepts through stories, songs, and playing board games.  This is what we are proud to promote each day for our little students.

Your child's math brain will grow.  Your child's social/emotional resilience will grow.  Your child's language skills will grow.  

Now...stop reading this wonderful little blog and go play :) !

​As always, I wish you well and I hope you get to play today!  -L