Tag Archives: toddler

child drawing

Prepping for Preschool

1 Reply
child drawing
credit: photo by Erika Fletcher, Unsplash

When children are about to start preschool, parents may worry about how their child will adapt. Here are steps you can take to ease the transition.

Prepare Yourself

If you are anxious, your child will pick up on that, and they’ll be anxious too. So, before you start talking to them about preschool, do whatever you need to do to build your own confidence about it. Get support from others if needed. If your child does notice your anxiety, calmly say “I’m feeling worried now just because this is something new – here’s what I’m doing to remind myself it will be OK.”

Planning for Success

If you’re still trying to choose a preschool, think about what kinds of settings and routines work best for your child, and if possible, choose a program that matches their needs and interests. For example, while some children are ready for full day preschool five days a week, that can be overwhelming for some children. If your child gets overstimulated quickly with social activities, consider starting small with a program that meets only a few hours a week, and gradually build up to more, or consider a cooperative preschool where they can stay with their child in the new setting to help make the transition easier.

Teach Skills

In the weeks or months before starting preschool, here are some skills to work on with your child:

  • Teach self-help skills. It’s hard on a child if they have to wait for a teacher to help them put on their coat for outside time or wait for help getting their lunch containers open.
    • Help them learn how to put on their shoes, put on and take off their coat and put things in a backpack.
    • Help them learn how to open their string cheese or yogurt containers by themselves.
    • Teach toileting, handwashing skills, and also practice how to use hand sanitizer.
    • Make sure they know to cover their cough by coughing (or sneezing) into their elbow, and they know how to blow their nose and throw the tissue away.
  • Teach social skills: how to make friends, how to invite someone to play with you, how to ask to play with a toy someone else is using, taking turns, and so on. Set up playdates to practice skills.
  • Create routines. What routines can you establish at home to make it easier to get moving in the morning? If you’ll need to be up earlier than you’re used to, can you adjust bedtime? Learn about school routines and use similar practices at home. (e.g. wash hands before snack time.) If your child will use new tools – like a lunchbox or water bottle – get them early and practice.

Read Books / Watch Shows

One of the best ways to introduce the idea of preschool (before even talking to your child about the fact that they will be going to one) is to watch shows or read books about preschool and about starting school. (Here are my recommended picture books about preschool.) Choose ones with a positive approach. (If your child is NOT feeling anxious, don’t choose books that talk about how worried a child might be… that can actually introduce anxiety!)

Preparing them for Preschool

  • Talk about what to expect at their school. Visit the school if possible. Or look at pictures or a video tour, visit the outside of the building and walk around. Show your child pictures of the teacher. Get some materials like they’ll have in the classroom and practice using them at home.
  • Teach and practice how to interact with a teacher. Explain that the teacher is there to help them and take care of them. Explain that the teacher is in charge. Teach how to get a teacher’s attention (raise your hand, touch their arm) and how to ask for help. Teach that sometimes they have to wait for a grown-up to be available to help. Play listening games (Simon Says, Red Light Green Light, or Copy this Rhythm).
  • Pretend play. Pretend to be going to school – who will play the parent? The child? The teacher? Play at things like: waiting in line (with stuffed animals), doing circle time, taking turns, raising hands, asking the teacher for help, saying goodbye at drop-off time.
  • Set clear expectations about your role at preschool. If you will be dropping them off and leaving, talk about how the drop-off will go, what you will do while they’re at school, and when you will pick them up. Create rituals for drop-off and pick-up time. Reassure them that although this may be a new experience, and they may feel a little worried, you are confident that they will be OK.

When Classes Begin

  • Don’t make too big a deal of the first day. That anticipation and excitement can turn into anxiety. (No big photo sessions!)
  • Don’t introduce all new clothes and shoes and backpack on the first day. Let them wear familiar and comfortable items. Pack their favorite foods and pack the exact same lunch for the first several days so they know exactly what to expect. Ask your school’s policy about “transitional objects” – having a toy from home might help them adjust to all the new things around them.
  • Allow extra time to get there – you want time to relax beforehand and remind your child what to expect. (Note: this is especially true if you have a child you think of as shy – I call them “slow to warm up.” These children do best when they can arrive a little early, before most of the other children, and settle in. They don’t do well running in frantic and late to a full and busy classroom.)
  • Build a relationship with the teacher(s), other kids, and other parents. When your child sees that you feel comfortable interacting with them all, they will feel comfortable too.
  • When it’s time to leave, keep your goodbyes brief and radiate confidence that they will be OK. DO say goodbye – don’t try to sneak out when they’re not looking. Tell them what they will be doing while you’re gone, and when you’ll return. (Be sure to honor that promise.)
  • Make your goodbye ritual simple and sweet. Make sure your child is either settled into an activity or knows that to do next, or hand them off to an adult for care so that when you walk out the door, your child has something else they’re focused on other than the sight of you leaving them behind.
  • Lots of children have moments of separation anxiety at first, and may be sad or crying when it’s time for you to go. Resist the rescue. Be caring and validate their feelings but stick to the plan and leave. Trust the teachers to be the professionals they are and manage common challenges of separation anxiety. Typically a child who cries at drop off will cry only briefly and soon calm down.
  • After class, give your child a chance to debrief and talk about how the day went.

Handling the Challenges

Even if you “do everything right”, your child may have bad days, with separation anxiety, biting or hitting, not sitting still for story time or other challenging behaviors. That’s developmentally normal!

Some things that help: if your child is having big feelings, acknowledge them, don’t just try to distract them away. Regression is normal – for example, a child who was potty trained may have accidents. Don’t punish or shame, just acknowledge the issue and say “let’s try to do better tomorrow.” If your child is really clingy, maybe they just need more snuggling for a while – soothe and reassure them.

Children who know they are loved try hard to be good. If they’re misbehaving, ask yourself – is there a skill or support they’re lacking? If so, help them build it. Ask yourself: could they have an underlying need that is driving the misbehavior? If so, meeting that need may resolve the issue. Be patient and remember that any challenges are just a phase. Just keep doing your best every day and encourage them to do their best, and you’ll make your way through to the other side of this big life step.

Note: if you’re in the Seattle area and looking for a great part-time preschool option, check out the co-op preschools offered by our local colleges’ parent education programs. I teach at Eastgate Co-op in Bellevue.

Let Your Child Explore Fine Motor Skills

2 Replies

Introducing Playdough

Today in a Facebook group, a parent of a 12 month old asked for the best playdough for a child who still puts everything in their mouth. Lots of parents and teachers in the group had great advice:

They recommended edible options like

Note: just because they’re edible doesn’t mean you should let your child eat them! The point of using these, in my mind, is to help children learn NOT to eat their art supplies, but if they do mouth these, you don’t have to worry about it.

Many preschool teachers said to just use any good homemade playdough recipe with no toxic ingredients. (Here’s my favorite playdough recipes.) Some of these have A LOT of salt in them, so it wouldn’t be good for kids to eat much of them, but they won’t, because they taste nasty. A couple tastes and they’re done, no harm done.

But a few respondents to this Facebook post said things like “I wouldn’t recommend playdough till they are around 3 or 4 when they know not to eat anything you put in front of them.”

There are so many benefits for young children in playing with playdough. (Read about the benefits of playdough and more on the power of playdough.) I think it’s ridiculous to deprive them of years worth of that experience because of the worry that they’ll mouth or maybe swallow a few tablespoons of non-toxic ingredients.

And besides, learning not to eat non food items is a good thing to learn! And playing with non-toxic playdough is a great place to learn that.

Now, I wouldn’t introduce playdough for the first time by setting some on their high chair tray and walking away. Of course they would eat it! (Maybe especially if it’s made of marshmallows…) However, you can absolutely introduce playdough to a young toddler – one year old is perfectly appropriate. The first few times, you sit right there with them, showing them this exciting new thing and showing them how to interact with it. Role model – tell them what to do. (Don’t even say “don’t eat it” because they may not even think of putting it in their mouth till you say the word eat. Children are new to language, and may hear “eat” and not hear the “don’t” part of the sentence.) Play with it, explore it, then put it out of reach when you need to walk away. If they do begin to move it toward their mouth, that’s when you would say “oh, yuck, don’t eat that. It tastes icky.” And make your icky taste face. That usually does the trick. If they end up with it in their mouth, just say, “oh yuck – let’s spit that out.” And then gently say – “let’s put this away for now, we’ll try again another time.” (It’s a good time to put it out on a tray or plate the first time so if you need to remove it you can.) With clear guidance, toddlers can learn to use playdough appropriately, and then have access to all the great learning that can come from playdough activities.

This whole topic just brings me to a larger topic.

Building Fine Motor Skills

In order for children to learn skills, they have to be able to have hands-on experiences with things. Almost everything they interact with could potentially have some risk. But often the chances are small. And with supervision and playing alongside, we can reduce the risk of severe injury to extremely unlikely.

In order for children to learn fine motor skills, they have to be allowed to use them! That means they need to be allowed to explore small items that they have to use the pincer grasp to pick up. Some of that happens with eating finger foods – peas and cheerios and slippery diced peaches all provide lots of pincer grasp practice. But children also need to be able to practice things like threading beads onto a pipe cleaner and once they’ve mastered that, threading beads onto string. They can practice things like dropping pompoms into a water bottle or putting buttons into slots cut in a plastic lid.

I do developmental screenings with parents – the 9 month old questionnaire asks if the child can pick up a string, the 18 month old asks if they can draw a line with a crayon or pencil, and the 22 month old asks if they can string beads or pasta on a string. I can’t tell you how many times the child hasn’t met that milestone and parents have said they just have never done anything like that with their child where their child handles small objects. Often they have avoided this because of fear of choking.

What about choking?

Yes, it is well worth being aware of the risks of leaving your child unattended with small items that they could choke on. And, it’s absolutely a good idea for all parents and all caregivers to be familiar with choking rescue. (Here’s a video.) And it’s good to know infant and child CPR too, just in case. (Videos of infant CPR and child CPR.) But this doesn’t mean that you should never let your child touch anything smaller than their fist.

Introducing Fine Motor Activities

Toddlers can do all sorts of fine motor activities with small objects. Like with the playdough, do a really good and intentional job of introducing the item under close supervision. Use role modeling and demonstration to be sure they know what to do with the items, and if they start to do inappropriate things with the items (like put a bead in their nose or in their ear), then we correct that. (Note: I do sometimes count how many of an item I put out, so that when I clean up I make sure I can account for all of them – if not, I search the floor to see if one just rolled away.) After they’ve interacted with an item safely multiple times, you can let them play with it more independently. I also do this approach with food – I don’t slice up grapes for my child. Instead, the first time I introduce grapes, I sit down with them and show them a grape and show them how I take one little itty bite out of the grape and chew it up, then take another itty bitty bite… Once we’ve practiced this multiple times, they can eat grapes independently.

Why Fine Motor Skills Matter

If we don’t let our children have this fine motor practice, then they’re going to be missing important development. Children need fine motor skills and finger strength to be ready for kindergarten tasks like writing, using scissors and turning pages in a book. They need them for self-care tasks like: buttoning a shirt, tying shoes, eating with a spoon, and opening food packaging. They need them to play with toys at preschool and not be frustrated by their inability to do things other children can do.

Fine Motor Development

These sample activities offer ideas for what sorts of things your child should be capable of at each age;

  • 3 to 6 month olds – give them small toys that they can practice passing from one hand to another or hold them and shake them. Hold your baby on your lap and place a toy on the table in front of you that they need to reach for.
  • 6 to 9 months – show them how to clap their hands or give high fives, they start “raking” things toward them, so try something like ping pong or whiffle balls or baby toys or finger foods like cheerios, take toys out of a container
  • 9 to 12 months – continue to offer finger foods, encourage them to try picking up a block and putting it into a cup, encourage them to try picking up a string or a noodle, show them how to bang two toys together, wave bye-bye
  • 12 months – build simple towers by stacking two or three items, let them scribble, practice eating with a spoon, turning pages in a board book, take off socks and shoes
  • 2 years – practice using a fork and drinking from a cup, put on lids and take them off, string beads on yarn, show them how to draw a line, build a tower 8 blocks tall
  • 3 years – button and unbutton clothes, use scissors, draw shapes, make a cheerio necklace, place coins in a piggy bank

Fine Motor Activities for Toddlers to Preschoolers

The pictures above are a random collection of activities we have done at our parent-toddler class for children ranging from 12 – 24 months old. Here are more ideas:

  • Play with playdough: for the youngest child, this is smushing it with their hand or poking it with a finger. Then pulling it apart into smaller pieces. Then you can introduce tools to squish it flat (rolling pin), or cut it (plastic knife, cookie cutters) and so on. Hide small toys inside the playdough that they have to unearth.
  • Shape sorters and puzzles: start with big and simple shapes, get more complex as they are ready for that.
  • Build with megablox, then Duplos, then Legos.
  • Twist pipe cleaners into shapes. Insert pipe cleaners into the holes on a colander.
  • Dress-up clothes: put on gloves, zip zippers, fasten snaps, button buttons
  • Stringing Beads (or pasta or cheerios): first, putting BIG beads on a stick or dowel, then medium beads on a pipe cleaner, then small beads on a string.
  • Drawing: first scribbles, dots, lines. Later: Draw pictures, trace letters, color inside the lines.
  • Collage: For a one year old, I use contact paper – take off the backing and leave the paper sticky side up – they can stick on pompoms, feathers, small pieces of paper… As the child gets older, have them practice putting glue on paper, then carefully sticking on small items like gems and googly eyes.
  • Painting – first, just glop paint (or shaving cream or an edible substance like pudding) onto paper or foil or a plate and let them smear it around with their whole hand. Later show them how to paint with one finger. Then with a brush with a large handle, then a small handle.
  • Filling containers: pick a small item (baby socks, pompoms, cotton balls, plastic lids, clothespins, dried beans, dowels, straws, q-tips, raw spaghetti, etc.) and a container to put it in (muffin tin, ice cube tray, jar with a big opening, water bottle with a small opening, boxes, a cardboard box with a small opening cut into it, a container with a plastic lid with a slot cut into it, a spice container or parmesan cheese container with small openings in the lid, a colander turned upside down). For one year olds, you’ll choose larger not-chokeable items that are easy to pick up and containers with large openings. For older children, smaller items and smaller openings. Once they’ve mastered putting items in with their fingers, let them use tongs or tweezers.
  • Pick berries. Pull weeds or pick carrots – you need to pull just hard enough but not too hard, so it’s good for practicing how much strength to use.
  • Sensory bin play – read my Ultimate Guide to Sensory Tables
  • Water table play – read my Ultimate Guide to Water Tables
  • Just go to pinterest or Instagram or google and search for “fine motor activities for toddlers” and you will have thousands of ideas. Don’t be afraid to try them! With you alongside as they learn, your children can safely explore and discover all sorts of wonderful things.

Stretchy Band Play

8 Replies

On a recent day at preschool, we weren’t able to go outside due to air quality issues from wildfire smoke, so I pulled an item out of our music/group time cabinet for some fun large motor music time. My co-teacher said she had no idea what the item was or what it was for, so I thought I’d write a quick post on it and how it works.

Ours is just a red elastic band loop – the elastic is maybe 1 – 1.5″ and about 12 feet in diameter. The products I see on Amazon are called stretchy bands, and look like they would work in a similar way. Or you can purchase from Bear Paw Creek. Or Elastablast from Let’s Play Together (they offer a booklet of ideas with a companion CD). On a 12 foot band, you could fit up to 8 adults or up to 16 children. On an 18 foot, you could fit up to 11 adults or up to 22 children. You can also find DIY instructions, including info on how to make one from pantyhose.

The basic idea is that children take hold of the band in a big circle, and then they move it up and down together or in and out together. It’s a little like how they use the parachute in parachute play but without all the extra fabric to get tangled up it can be easier for younger children (toddlers) to manage.

See a video of a stretchy band in action:

Or this stretchy band song shows how children can all work together as they raise it up and lower it, go side to side, and more. (I would do a simpler, shorter song for younger children!)

What makes this an interesting activity is that everyone works together. They are all encouraged to do the same thing at the same time, and they can tell if it’s working if they’re doing the same thing and the band is going the same way for them as it is for everyone else. Tuneful Teaching points out that this is helpful when you have a child who has a hard time keeping a beat – put them between two children who have mastered that skill, and the band moving in rhythm will give them the sensory experience of the beat.

There are lots of activities you can do with the band – many parachute play activities and rhythm activities can be adapted to work with it. But here are some specific suggestions:

Start when they’re sitting in a circle – tell them you’ll put something in front of them but don’t touch yet – and then lay out the band in a circle. Or lay it out in a circle BEFORE they come into the room. Then they sit around it and pick it up.

Have them raise it up, lower it down, go up, go down. Do that several times. Go in and out. Shake it fast and slow. You could do a wave where when you point at them, they raise the band – go around the circle where one raises, then the next, then the next. Play a game where if you play/sing a high note, they raise it high. If they hear a low note, they hold it down low.

From https://musictherapymoves.wordpress.com/2013/08/23/using-a-stretch-band-to-move/

Walk around the circle to Sousa march music or the Nutcracker March. Or to Mulberry Bush, where when you get to the “pop” part, everyone quickly lifts the band high and lowers it. Or to Ring Around the Rosey, where everyone falls down, still holding onto the band. Or I sing “Let’s go round and round the circle, go round and round the circle, go round and round the circle as we have done before. Go in and out the circle…”

Do a counting song – like 5 little monkeys if you have five children – at the beginning, all are standing and holding it and moving it up and down in rhythm to the music. When you say “one fell off”, you tell them which child should let go and sit down. They have a visceral sense then of how four is different than 5. And so on down. (Idea from Music and Movement Products.)

While sitting:

  • sing Sing Row Row Row Your Boat while making a rowing motion with the band. (Video)
  • Wheels on the Bus go round and round (rowing motion); wipers go swish (back and forth); driver says move on back (lean back), people on the bus go up and down. (Idea from Pre-K and K Sharing.)
  • Play a piece of classical music, and have them move the band to match it (might be slow and gentle waves, or fast and marching, depending on the music!)
  • Say “trot trot to Boston, trot trot to Dover, watch out baby or you might fall over” having children move hands up and down (trotting) and then fall / lean backward while holding onto the band.
http://strongstart.blogspot.com/2011/12/music-time.html

Keeping the beat. Count together as you move the band 1-2-3-4. Once they get the hang of the rhythm, go around the circle saying each child’s name on the first beat. Peter-2-3-4, Ben-2-3-4, Isabel-2-3-4. Or do animal names or colors or shapes or whatever.

If you have a multi-colored band, then you can do things like “everyone who is holding onto blue, lift it up. Everyone who is holding yellow lean back to stretch it out.”

Stretchy Band Train: make one person the engine, and one the caboose. They walk around with the band stretched between them to make a train car – other kids can board the train car and walk with them. Watch this video.

Use it as a resistance band to stretch out and away from each other – the children can face outward and put it around their bellies, or face inward with it around their backs as they back away. (See pictures on Music Therapy Moves.) Try this pattern: Holding the band from the outside of the circle: Take four steps out, take four steps in. Then get inside the circle, facing out and wrap the band around their bellies. Take four steps out to stretch the band. Take four steps in (going backwards).

Find more ideas:

Benefits of Multi-Age Programs

3 Replies

multi-ageL

In the U.S. most programs for children tend to be limited to children who are all close to the same age – for example, the children in a kindergarten class all turn five somewhere between Sept 1 of that year and August 31 of the next year. But some programs (like Montessori schools, Sunday school programs at churches, or scout troops) are multi-age, with a broader age range. (For example, I teach a multi-age STEM enrichment class for ages 3 – 7). Here’s why I love them:

Benefits of Multi-Age Programs

  • Knowledge and Skill Development: Younger children learn from older children. Older children reinforce and deepen their own understanding of a topic or skill by teaching it to the younger kids. This knowledge is passed on in a variety of ways:
    • Unintended modelling – when an older child is just doing something they want or need to do, (like using the potty or drawing a picture of a dog), they may not even be aware the younger child is observing and absorbing. But young children love to learn about what the big kids are doing.
    • Social play: The younger ones are exposed to things like better emotional regulation and more sophisticated problem-solving which helps them learn these skills earlier. The imaginary play is also richer as the older ones give ideas to the younger ones and have to figure out how to articulate those ideas so the younger one can play along.
    • Casual mentoring. When an older child is slowed down by the younger one’s lack of knowledge, sometimes they move in to help rather than waiting for an adult to help. (Like helping a child put on boots so they can go outside for recess.)
    • Support Desk: Younger children learn which classmates they can go to for help with various tasks, and may seek out their help before asking a teacher. (At one lunch, kids were given fortune cookies. All the non-readers went straight to the kids who could read to ask for a quick answer to ‘what does this say?’)
    • Intentional teaching. Sometimes teachers will ask a child who has mastered a skill to teach it to a child who hasn’t yet mastered it. The learner benefits by gaining information in a way that may be more fun and more confidence-building than learning from an adult. The child who is teaching has the chance to review their own knowledge from a new perspective.
  • Individualized curriculum, tailored to children’s unique skills, not just their age
    • Some kids are really advanced in some areas and a little behind in other areas. Being in a multi-age classroom makes it more likely that they’ll find peers to fit in with in both those areas.
    • There is a broader range of information being covered, so children are more able to learn at their own pace, making continuous progress rather than having to “wait till second grade, when we cover that.”
  • Children may stay with the same teacher for multiple years.
    • The teacher gets to know the child’s strengths and weaknesses, and is better able to tailor the lesson plan to meet that child’s unique needs.
    • There is a stronger parent-teacher relationship.
    • For the child, there’s the benefit of consistency, and a sense of safety and security in the classroom which enables better learning.
  • Less competition / labeling.
    • In a single age classroom, it’s easy to compare kids and say that some are gifted, some are delayed. In a mixed age classroom, it may be clearer that there’s a range of development: the one who does best in math class may have the hardest time in music class, regardless of age.
    • A child who struggles more with social skills might be ostracized by their age peers, but might find companionship in the younger kids in the classroom.
  • A more cooperative, caring learning environment.
    • Older kids learn to be patient, nurturing, responsible. (With guidance from adults!)
    • Role-modelling. The older children learn how to set a good example. If the teacher asks older kids who don’t always behave well themselves to remind the younger children what the rules are, the older ones behave better.
    • In group time, I find that the younger ones are better at sitting still and focusing because they see the older kids do so. The older kids like to show off their knowledge and can often answer the questions the younger ones ask – this builds confidence for the older ones and the younger ones are more excited to learn things from the big kids than they are to learn from a teacher!