As an Experience Early Learning Blog Ambassador, we receive the Experience Early Learning preschool curriculum in exchange for sharing our honest and authentic stories resulting from our personal experiences. As always, our opinions on amazing things for children are 100% our own. Keep in mind that all preschoolers do things in their own time and on their own terms. What one is ready for, another might not be. Please use your best judgement when planning activities for your children.
This week, we've been learning about Garden Vegetables with Experience Early Learning (formerly Mother Goose Time) and Thursday and Friday meant a focus on peas and tomatoes.
Learning about peas included a fun game of finding peas, which the children absolutely loved. This activity was the Community Challenge and the children walked around the room finding "peas" (beads or pompoms).
The preschoolers also practiced counting their peas to determine how many could fit into their "pod" (envelope).
The creative art activity was Peas in a Pod and the children made their own peas and pods using paper strips and tissue paper to practice fine motor skills and number sense.
Each month, we also get a puzzle, and today's math activity was building problem-solving skills while exploring our gardening storybook puzzle.
Our snack for today was peas. What a tasty treat! I love how easy it is to expand on our themes in the classroom.
Tomatoes were another popular topic this week. We decorated the covers for our portfolios, made tomato drawings, and explored different types of tomatoes.
Every Experience Early Learning theme includes a portfolio project. The children decorate the memory page and then look back through their work samples from the month and select their favorites.
We take turns showing and telling about favorite memories and experiences from our thematic study.
This activity is great for giving children experience with history and a sense of time as well as self-awareness and of course communication skills.
Today's math activity included tracing around containers to make tomato-like shapes and then decorating them.
And last, but not least, the preschoolers examined a variety of different types of tomatoes, which all look very different. This was a wonderful sensory experience for the children as well as a hands-on opportunity to learn about produce.
Don't forget to check back next week to see what we're up to with our new theme from Experience Early Learning (formerly Mother Goose Time).