Little Hands Home Daycare Activities

Dr Seuss

3/6/2015

To celebrate Dr Seuss' birthday we had Dr Seuss week and read a different book each day.

We started off the week with One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish. On Monday we tore up red and blue tissue paper and make one red fish and one blue fish (to make two fish). We graphed colored goldfish and counted how many of each color we had at snack time and organized them into fish bowls by color and number.

On Tuesday we read The Cat in the Hat. I made a hat out of an oatmeal container and a paper plate and the children took turns throwing bean bags into the hat. We talked about fun ways to clean up our messes.

On Wednesday we read Wacky Wednesday. So we colored underneath the table instead of on top of it. We also made a collage out of anything the children wanted, I put out glitter glue, elmer's glue, glitter, pom pom balls, feathers, crayons, chalk, stickers, and letters. The children also got to wear whatever wacky clothes they wanted. I also moved things around the room and hung up shoes around the room for the kids to discover.

On Thursday we read Green Eggs and Ham. I made "green eggs" for snack- yogurt with green food coloring and a nilla wafer. We practiced our number recognition/counting with green plastic Easter eggs with numbers on them and we placed the correct amount of pom poms in each egg.

On Friday, we read ABC. Our preschoolers also practiced matching, prewriting skills, using scissors (under very careful supervision) and number recognition with a few fun worksheets. We've been working on the letters A-I so we also played a rainbow alphabet game to recognize those letters and their sounds.

Polar Animals

1/23/2015

For our polar animals week we waddled around the room like penguins, flew around the room like snow owls and crawled around the room like polar bears.

I took a wipes container and turned it into a polar bear and we took turns feeding the polar bear fish. The older kids organized the fish by size and categorized them by shape and color.

I made sensory table with cotton balls and put penguins and fish made from cardstock with the cotton. The older children matched the number on the penguins belly to the dots on the fish. The younger children just sifted through.

I put white paint into a ziplock bag and let the children practice tracing their letters in the snow.

We talked about camouflage. I took a picture of a polar bear, penguin and snow owl and placed it against a white, black and blue construction paper to show the children how the animals use their camouflage to hide from other animals.

For our art projects we stretched out cotton balls and glued them on our polar bear and talked about how polar bears have fur. We also took various polar animal cutouts and taped it on our white paper and then painted the whole paper blue then removed our cutout to reveal our animal silhouette.

New Year

1/2/2015

This was a very short week and only a few children showed up so we didn't get to do too much for this theme. We did create our own fireworks for New Year's Eve.

We practiced counting down for the New Year from 10.

We made a noise maker using a pringles container, which we decorated as a class and each child took turns putting beans in the container.

We sorted bells by size and put them in categories by color and shape.

Christmas

12/20/2014

For our Christmas theme we read a few books about Christmas. And sang some Christmas songs. We marsh around the room with bells while singing songs.

We worked on our fine motor skills by lacing foam Christmas trees and weaving strips into foam shaped ornaments. We also tore up pieces of construction paper and tissue paper and glue it on to a paper plate with sequence to make a wreath.

We used Christmas shaped cookie cutters to paint.

I painted the children's hands white and drew on a snowman face on each finger to send home for their parents as a keepsake.

We colored a picture of a Christmas tree and the kids were able to decorate however they saw fit.

We used shaving cream and red food coloring to paint candy canes on construction paper. After that the kids played with the shaving cream and we talked about snow and Santa's beard also being white and the kids were able to use cookie cutters with the shaving cream to make shapes as well.

On Thursday we had our Christmas party and the kids came in their pajamas. During our Christmas party we played a Christmas version of corn hole where I took a cardboard box cut holes in it and painted a Christmas tree on it then we used plastic ornaments to throw into the holes. I also took a giant box and wrapped it with gift wrap and we played a game to try and guess what was in the present. The kids took turns hiding objects and themselves in the box and guessing what was in it. For the party, I made cookies and the kids each took turns the decorating their cookie with icing, sprinkles and chocolate chips.

The children also colored Christmas stockings and glued cotton to the top of the stockings. On the back of the stockings I wrote down each child's answer to what they wanted for Christmas, what their parents wanted for Christmas, and what their sibling(s) and/or grandparents wanted for Christmas.

Last but not least, we elfed ourselves. I took pictures of the children and let them color the bodies then I helped them glue everything together so each child had their own elf that looked like them.

It was a very fun week!

Letter B

12/13/2014

We bounced a blue ball in blue paint on our letter B. The toddler also wanted to participate so I let him bounce a ball on a letter B. To try and reinforce the sound the letter B makes. We also made Bumble Bee B's.

I made a 3 piece puzzle of the letter B for the children to assemble.

There were various worksheets for the children to complete based on their abilities.

We used play-doh to make letter B's.

We used a toy car to trace the lower and upper case letter B street.

We practiced writing the letter B in shaving cream and on the chalk board.

We played in our bean sensory table. We built with blocks.

The children love hide and seek and enjoyed our hide and seek with the letter Aa so much we repeated it this week as well.

We read various alphabet books and went around the room looking for the letter Bb on posters, on the names on our cubbies and on books.

Thanksgiving

11/28/2014

The children colored and read an emergent reader book about Turkeys for Thanksgiving dinner.

We made turkey's using our hands and our feet to give to our parents. Even the infant and toddler took part in this. I am not a huge fan of teacher lead activities with little to no individual creativity so after we made our turkeys I let the children finger paint whatever they wanted to make.

We made turkey's out of toilet paper rolls. The children all glued the pieces on themselves. We talked about what we were thankful for prior to making the turkeys so some of the paper feathers had what each child was thankful for written on the feathers. We also used real feathers as well.

We made pilgrim hats and talked about how pilgrims came here and why we celebrate Thanksgiving.

We pretended to have a thanksgiving dinner and we talked about all the yummy things we get to eat.

I made a mini Thanksgiving lunch for the kids on their last day here and we had a little party.

Fruits And Vegetables

11/14/2014

Did you know technically the way to tell if something is a fruit or a vegetable is whether or not has seeds? Yeah, me neither. So cucumbers, squash, tomatoes and pumpkins are all technically a fruit. Seedless fruit has been bred to be that way, but is still fruit. Needless to say I did not share this with the kids, talk about getting confused. Below are some of the activities we did throughout the week.

This week we made peaches using tissue paper and paper plates.

We painted using fruits and vegetables.

We washed the plastic fruit and vegetables with soapy water in our sensory bins. Later in the week, we put toy vegetables in our sensory bin, which was filled with beans.

We sorted pictures of fruits and vegetables and then we completed a fruit and vegetable collage.

We sorted fruit and vegetable toys.

We played grocery store and pretended to go shopping using our shopping cart and cash register.

We read the story Vegetable Soup by Wendy Rose Baldinger and Growing Vegetable Soup by Lois Ehlert.

We played with Mr. Potato Head (kind of a stretch but the kids love Mr Potato Head).

We tasted various fruits and vegetables throughout the week.

Letter A

11/10/2014

This week we discussed the letter A. We talked about the letter, it's sound, and words that start with the letter A.

I started the week off showing the kids the letter A, both uppercase and lowercase, and we talked about its sound. I had a letter A card that was made with sand paper and had them trace with their fingers. I told the children a few words that started with the letter A, such as astronaut, alligator, apple, and apricot.

I thought it would help the children remember sound if we could associated it with an action or a story. So I asked the kids if you they were walking and saw an alligator what would they do and then we all screamed "ah".

We would look around the room for books or posters and point out the letter A. We would talk about words and which ones started with the letter A. Periodically throughout the week I kept asking them what does the letter A say.

We stamped a giant letter a with an apple cut in half. We made alligator A's, where the children colored in the letter A green and colored in the eyes then glued the eyes and teeth on our letter A.

We completed various worksheets regarding the letter A. Each child was given worksheets based on their skill level with tracing and coloring. Only the older children were allowed to use scissors for their worksheets. We started an alphabet binder where we are going to put all our letter worksheets.

I hid a lot of lowercase and uppercase letter A's around the room, which I made from construction paper. The children had a blast looking through the room to find them.

I made a giant letter A street for the children to either trace by walking on or by riding their bikes.

I made a uppercase and lowercase letter a puzzle for the children.

When we got the chance we made the letter a with our food or any thing we could find. We had Play-doh mats for the children to make their own letter A.

Halloween

11/3/2014

There was no0 shortage of activities for us to do this week. We had Halloween themed number matches, mazes, books, songs, play-doh mats, and finger plays. Below is some of what we did. Everything is not pictured below, it's becoming too distracting to take pictures of everything.

We painted with plastic spiders. The children dragged them, stamped them and then eventually forgot all about them and just used their fingers. They turned out great!

We used fine motor skills by tearing up the tissue paper and placing them on the contact paper to make ghosts. Then the kids glued on their eye balls with pompom balls.

We used our fine motor skills again to tear up toilet paper and glued it on to our mummies. It was adorable to hear the kids talking about their "mommies" and then hear them disagreeing saying they wanted to make "daddies" not "mommies". We discussed the placement of the eyes prior to the kids gluing them on and to my surprise all the kids put them on in the correct place.

We painted brown paper bags orange (the kids had no idea why), then let them dry and the following day we glued on jack o'lantern faces. The bags were later used as their goodie bags for our Halloween party (no candy was given, much to their disappointment just goldfish, little toys such as kazoos, play-doh, crayons, tattoos and so on).

The kids were also given coloring pages and blank paper to color poor draw pictures.

We walked around the room like mummies and pretended to fly around the room like ghosts. We also walked like a spider.

We used the inside of a pumpkin for a sensory bag.

We had a spider walk race, which is exactly as it sounds.

We made spider webs using yarn on the chair legs.

We talked about Halloween safety.

I had a pumpkin seed shaker to add to our music area.

I made Halloween sticker patterns and a Halloween match up game also using stickers.

We had a pumpkin sorting game we played as a group.

Monsters

10/27/2014

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This week our theme was Monsters.

Our first art project was making paint monsters by squirting paint on to paper and folding it to make a mirror image then gluing arms or antennas with pipe cleaners and eyeballs.

The children colored pictures of monsters and drew pictures of monsters. The children also used black construction paper and chalk to draw monsters.

We also made monster masks using watercolor paint and paper plates.

We had monster number cards one through 10 to reinforce number recognition.

We had numerous monster finger plays and songs such as "5 Little Monsters" with our monster puppets.

We read several monster books such as Another Monster at the End of This Book by Jon Stone and One Hungry Monster by Susan Heyboer O'Keefe.

We marched around the room stomping like monsters.

I made felt board monsters and the children placed different facial features on each monster and acted out stories with them.

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