Milestones

Happy New Year, Preschoolers!

Our first week back after the holidays, we engaged in several new year's activities as well as simply transitioned back to school by enjoying favorite endeavors and catching up with one another.

Colin and Jack were back into their block building, using
our new, bigger blocks to create constructions that
require a lot more balancing...they were great at
putting the blocks away later, too.

I put a little glitter in the paint to make it more new-year's-esque...

Colin really wanted to use the water table, BUT it still had a lot of cornstarch stuck in it, so he initiated cleaning it out. Thanks, Colin! Taking care of and valuing the materials in the room...

The MWF kids also added sparkles to a new batch of play dough. Below, Sinh spent a good half an hour or more in stages of experimentation . . .

Smoosh, add more glitter, add feathers and pipe cleaners, Oh, now its a bear's home!

Colin's became a 4-year-old's birthday cake.

Let's practice our scissor skills by cutting up some confetti . . .

And how bout a new year's hat? The MWF group practiced writing 2014.

It was fun throwing the confetti up in the air!

Dancing in celebration of 2014...

Balloons too!

Lucas' balloon became more of a passenger on the trike...

And for Sinh, a buddy to play with outside.

The MWF group played with their's in the hallway.

New Year's wishes with a penny in Jill's special "wish box."

The T/Th group had fun painting a 2014 mural. Even though the children are just grasping this realm of time, the changing of a year, I try to make the exposure to what that represents meaningful to them. If anything, they will begin to recognize the numbers together: 2, 0, 1, 4, and know this is a time for reflection.

Nice green color you made, Sinh!

And orange!! Molly is becoming more comfortable
messing in paint and other sensory items with her hands.
As I mentioned in that article I wrote for the facebook
page, messes at this age are good, if not essential for
properly developing certain areas in the brain that
receive this important sensory information: "the messier a child is being, the more they are engaging their somatosensory skills. Somatosensory is a big word that combines the connections of several skills that involve touching, motor planning, cognitive and social skills!"

A Masterpiece!

Gosh, you kiddos are doing great in getting your snow gear on!

In anticipation of studying dinosaurs, Sinh, built a "cage" for our plastic dinos . . .

Our Friday group welcomed Colin's little brother, Liam to the table for some shaving cream fun.

And Ava, Welcome to Fridays at Milestones!

Look! Colin constructed an "IT" out of blocks!

We did a little experiment with a bowl of milk and food coloring.

We used an eye dropper to drip drops of dish washing liquid, which interacts with the lactic acid and creates little "explosions" in the milk, visible by the food coloring - cool!