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.
We have had a wonderful day today and the children have really enjoyed the Island Treasure theme from Experience Early Learning (formerly Mother Goose Time).
Several of the children have had older siblings at home that are envious of the activities that we are doing in the Experience Early Learning classroom,
We had planed on going outside today to learn more about wind but due to rain, we had to stay inside so I had to adapt the day.
I had the children make their sail boats and we had a variety of looks for the boats. I had the older children start which helped the younger children get some ideas.
Due to Covid-19, we did not want the children blowing papers around the table so I got a fan down (that I worked) and we had sail contests with the boat.
One of the older children got a paper cup leftover from another day and it went flying across the table. I suggested that he use his skills and create a mast and sails, which he did.
It kept falling over so we extended the activity and introduced the term ballast. The older children were very busy working on finding things that were heavy enough for the "boat" to stay upright, but light enough for the boat to "sail" and not be weighed down. Plastic bugs from the science center did the trick.
By this point, the children were looking for things to blow in the "wind". The younger children got cars and the older ones got balls and they spent a good 45 minutes playing with the wind. We also played with wind speeds (that I controlled).
For the matching game from the boat building this week, I took them and added sticks and put them in a sand activity box.
This was another hit and the children were matching and playing for a good long time.
I happened to be in the toddler room yesterday and we had a great time with the alphabet book and the matching game also.
The children were able to match the pictures with the pictures in the book. It was so much fun as they would cheer for each other when a child found a match! Great team building!!
Another fun activity that we did was the mapping and directions. I had one of our school children get the room globe and he showed the younger children the globe/world and where we live and of course they already idolize him so they really were listening to him.
We also used magnifying glasses to discover islands on the map that we got from Experience Early Learning (formerly Mother Goose Time).
Then we played with the compass on my telephone and found north, south, east and west, put the corresponding posters on the walls and played the game. I had them hopping or some other movement to the walls as we couldn't get outside due to rain.
This all worked out perfectly with another activity that we have been doing is watching the new rocket ship Dragon take off and dock with the space station. After all, it is a ship with a captain!
We are really looking forward to more fun with Treasure Island this month!
