In the month of September, we welcome new parents and children into the toddler room, with a couple of tears and sadness also comes excitement and laughter. Educators have been creating a relationship with the children by observing what their interests are.
We’ve been observing the children exploring their new environment by engaging in activities such as loose parts by stacking and transferring items. Another sensory activity they were extremely interested in was sand, children appeared to be focused on transferring sand into different cups and feeling the textured sand in between their fingers.
For the first week, we’ve been putting out activities for children to engage in, and we started off by putting paper along with crayons. Some children appeared to be confused on what to do and others sat down and immediately started to colour. Some toddlers would pick up the crayons and just observe the crayons, educator Kamryn would demonstrate to the children what it was used for.
Vihana and Arjan would point the crayons, Arjan started to make scribbles and Vihana shared she was colouring for her mom and dad. Another day, a small group engaged in a sensory activity with beads, inside the sensory bin were cups. Toddlers appeared to be very curious and would fill up the cup with the beads and others would pick it up with their hands and feel the texture bead. Later in the week, we decided to paint paper plates green to create a very hungry caterpillar as a birthday board. Chilotam appeared to be very curious and approached the table, he picked up the paint brush and started to paint his fingers. He was exploring with paint as he was feeling the texture of paint, his face appeared to be very focused as he expressed different sounds and made facial expressions.
During outdoor play this week, they have been wondering and exploring as they are making their way around the playground. Educator Gerri would take out drums for the toddlers to engage in musical instruments, Jacob would approach the drums and say”Blue, red and green.” Vihana would also jump in and also name the colours of the drums. A small group engaged in the sandbox with water ramp, they found the water button and would try to push down. They appeared to have a hard time pushing down on it, and they would sign for help. We observed the children’s interest with sand and water, many appeared to enjoy feeling the thick sand on their hands and on their feet. Allowing children to enhance their learning by exploring, enhances the development of children as they are demonstrating parallel play by playing in proximity looking with other children and focusing on the same toys and activities. With emotion children are able to express their feelings, such as expressing feelings in language by engaging in pretend play. With cognition, children are exploring containment by putting objects in containers and by dumping them putting things together and taking them apart, with physical development, children are using their fine motors skills by engaging in activities, such as painting, colouring and pushing on objects.
We will continue to support these opportunities and wonder where our toddlers exploration will take us to next?
