The preschool years are essential for a toddler's development, growth, and discovery, at all levels. It is the period that marks the beginning of a child's great adventure in school, and therefore, this first contact must be pleasant and interesting.
Offering engaging activities for preschool children not only plays a huge role in developing their psychomotor skills and social relationships but also helps them adapt to the daycare environment. As daycare providers, we have a huge role in the development of preschoolers and in helping them have a good image of the school.
Below we bring you the top engaging classroom activities for toddlers to offer in your daycare that will complement the Toddler Curriculum to stimulate their motor skills, enhance learning and make them love their school:
Painting or Any Art Activity
Art activities stimulate fine motor skills and artistic communication in toddlers. Plus, with art activities, preschoolers can express their personalities, how they are through their gestures and their way of doing things.
Activities that involve paintings making collages, creating shapes with play dough, etc. help the fine muscles of the toddlers' fingers and hands acquire skills. Also, producing a piece of art creates a sense of greater achievement in children that they value as their own and reinforce their self-esteem.
Reading and Inventing Stories
Classroom activities for toddlers cannot be completed with a story-reading session. Read with them to allow them to discover the pleasure of reading and make them look forward to learning on their own. This is important because reading facilitates all learning in every aspect.
You can also make them invent stories based on everyday objects, such as toys, food, everyday objects, etc. The idea is very simple: put different objects in front of them and ask them to make up a story in which all these objects appear. This activity will make their imagination run wild and is also very fun.
Movement Activity with Music
Music and movement are not just fun activities for children but also build their core body strength. Toddlers love to wiggle and move. Incorporating a 5-minute music and movement session in the classroom will work on their stability and strength and will also act as part of a sensory diet to evoke their adaptive responses and attention.
Some of the core strengthening rhymes you can play in the classroom:
● If You’re Happy and You Know It
● Head Shoulders Knees and Toes
● Teddy Bear Teddy Bear Turn Around
● I’m a Little Teapot
● Row, Row, Row Your Boat
● The Wheels on the Bus, etc.
You can also play brain break songs in the classroom that will serve as a 'wake up' movement when children are feeling sluggish or need a brain break.
Some of the brain break videos that will get the whole classroom up and moving are:
You can find a lot more brain break videos on YouTube to add to movement activities in your classroom.
Experimentation
Daycare teachers cannot limit themselves only to images and can take all that content of the stories to experimentation trays, where the toddlers touch, mix and play by taking out and putting in objects, feeling through touch, discovering the rough, hard, smooth, soft textures, hard, etc.
Experimentation stimulates discovery-driven learning in children, in which they use their own intuition, experiences, and knowledge to discover new things.
According to the concept of discovery-based learning, the curriculum must include problem-solving activities enabling children to seek solutions on their own from the material they learned.
Exposing them to the discovery of colors, shapes, sizes, and subjective concepts such as up, down, inside, outside, near, and far, and problem-solving activities help grow their reasoning and logic parallel to their physical appearance, emotion, and language.
However, all of this must be done by respecting the child's instinct and never exposing them to situations and positions they have not reached by themselves. In this way, we will avoid generating fears or insecurities in toddlers and enable them to evolve according to their instinct, muscles, and strength.
Cooking Activity
Cooking activity is very fun and enriching. It stimulates learning and coexistence. Enabling them to make salads, fruit salads, cookie dough, etc., can train their creativity as well as enhance other skills and abilities such as reading, writing, mathematics, volumes, weights, and fine motor skills.
Join Hands with Standout Daycare for Cutting-edge Learning Solutions!
These were our top engaging activities for toddlers that daycare providers can incorporate in their classrooms. While you make classrooms fun and exciting, do not forget to update the parents about the activities their little ones do at the daycare. To keep parents updated and communicate with them effectively, you can use Daily Daycare Schedules and Daycare Daily Report Forms.
For more personalized teaching methodologies, learning materials, and cutting-edge solutions to employ in your daycare, join hands with Standout Daycare and provide the best care and learning to children.
To learn more about our services, contact Standout Daycare.
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