Our day begins with the children arriving. We have set aside a few specials toys that we bring out in the morning when the children are arriving, we may use these items again at the end of the day when they children are leaving. This will help to keep the children occupied, so they are not acting up or running wildly through the daycare while your busy trying to talk to the parent's and other children who are arriving in the morning or when the children are leaving at the end of the day. We have found that if we only set these items out for a short time each, the children will enjoy them longer and not lose interest in them so quickly. It helps to maintain order if the children are busy and happy. If you are by yourself in the morning when the children are first arriving it helps a lot to put out toys that you know that they like and then put them away as soon as they loose interent in the toy or activity.
Toddler – Fine Motor Activity
Some of our special toys are table toys or sometimes referred to as manipulatives. These toys work best when the children use them when they are sitting down at the table.
We have peg boards for the toddlers to use which come with giant sized pegs, we also have round wooden circles, with a hole in their centers, that fit down over a wooden dowel. We also have other types of manipulatives for the preschool children, they would have smaller pegs and more challenging peg boards or other types of manipulatives such as, latch boards, zippers, lacing, chopping toys and puzzles. We have a lot of manipulative toys for both age groups, along with a large variety of puzzles, one of the cute puzzles we have comes with a fishing pole and the children catch the fish or ocean animals from the puzzle and then put them back into the puzzle and then go fishing again (with the puzzle). Foam puzzles with pegs are great fun for the children and it also teaches them hand and eye coordination.
Preschool – Fine Motor Activity
Fine Motor Preschool Activities Want to add fine motor activities to your daily schedule all of the activities just mentioned would make great fine motor activities for the children to do first thing in the morning, just make a schedule and set out different types each morning, such as on Monday give them beads to lace, on Tuesday give them puzzles to put together and take apart, on Wednesday give them peg boards, on Thursday give them food chopping toys, these are usually either wooden or plastic fruits and vegetables which are held together by velcro, the children have a wooden toy knive to chop the foods in half (kids love these!) and on Friday give them play dough with rolling pins, cookie cutters and small pans to pretend to make cookies.
Preschool Activity – Creative Art: We also offer crayons, markers, colored pencils, stickers, scissors, tape, glue, paper and envelopes. This is a great way for the children to use their imaginations and make anything they want, they can color, or cut, make pretend mail, make play money, or anything else they can think of.
Toddlers Coloring
Toddler Activity – Creative Art: For the toddlers in your group, you may want to start off by offering them each a piece paper and some markers or crayons and let them color their papers, when they start to get board with the coloring, it is a good time to offer them some stickers to put onto their papers, you may want to offer them an envelope to put their paper into and show them how to fold it and stick it into the envelope.
Art Materials – Free Play: We try to offer the children diffrent types of materials to color with such as on markers on Monday, chalk on Tuesday, paint in bottles on Wednesday, water paints on Thursday and bingo dabbers to dab onto paper on Friday. Try to keep their interest perked up by offering fun and different activities each morning. These are just a few of the morning choices we offer throughout the month, we also offer sensory tables with sand or water and play dough as a fun creative way for the children to express themselves.
Sensory and Tactile Experience – Sand Table
Sensory Activities such as water or sand play: Children just can't seem to get enough of water or sand play. Both toddlers and preschoolers love these two activities. THis is a great fun activity to offer the children first thing in the morning is water or sand play. We place rice or oatmeal in the sand table for pretend sand and then place different items in the sand table for them to use; such as small toy dishes such as toy pots, toy pans, sturdy toy plastic spoons, small bowls, measuring cups, small sturdy plastic cups, small clean washed out milk cartons, ketchup bottles with the tops removed, mustard bottles with the tops removed, small water bottles with the tops removed and anything else that the children would have fun using in the sand table that is of course toddler and preschool safe.
Breakfast Time: The children have free play, play with table toys, color, put together puzzles, play with peg boards until 8 AM. Then we get ready for breakfast, we have all the children line and wash up. Each day we pick a few children to help with breakfast, one child will help a teacher to wash off the tables, another child will pass out the cups, and another child will pass out napkins and after breakfast one child will help a teacher to sweep around the tables.
Free Play: After breakfast the children will have free play where they can play in different areas with the toys, or they can choose to do play dough, color or practice cutting with scissors and then at 9 AM we begin our circle time.
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