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Stepping Stone School
Supporting Families & Learning at Home
May 8th
At Stepping Stone School, our mission is to offer not only exceptional nurturing and education for our students, but also extraordinary support and care for all parents and families! Many families are finding new and creative ways to engage and educate their children while at home. We compiled a list of fun and educational activities and resources for you to use with your family.
WE ARE IN THIS TOGETHER!
Our YouTube Channel features over 60 videos of our beloved teachers reading stories from our Classic Literature Library, Teaching Daily Lessons, ASL and Spanish vocabulary!
Tune in to learn about S.T.E.A.M education, Superhero Movie Reviews, unicorns, and a variety of interesting topics chosen and produced by our School-Age classes!
Community & Cultural Awareness
Zoo Animal Hospital 
This activity can foster the development of compassion and caring for animals and for others in their community. Your children can brainstorm ways to make the area look like an animal hospital. You can let them make a sign and decorate the area themselves.
A few ideas for items to include:
  • stuffed animals
  • cotton swabs
  • empty milk bone boxes
  • cloth bandages
  • band aids
  • rubber gloves
  • white lab coats
  • stethoscope
  • scale
  • clipboards
  • paper
  • pencils
  • baskets with pillows and blankets for overnight guests
  • dog food dish
  • water dish
  • stuffed animals from home
  • telephone
  • thermometer
Kindness at Home & in Your Community
ANNOUNCING THE NEW KINDNESS CHALLENGE!
Here is a fun kindness challenge to help make kindness the norm™ at home & in your neighborhood. Your challenge (if you choose to accept it) is to complete a series of kindness activities to fill in 60 'hearts'. Each act of kindness is worth one, two or three 'hearts' based on how challenging they are: one-heart activities are quick and easy, two-heart activities are more involved, and three-heart activities are challenging & will take more time.
Art & Creative Expression
Zoo Art Activities

Coffee Ground Bear
Mix coffee grounds in brown paint, and have children paint a brown bear with texture.

Zebra Marble Painting
Place a white zebra cutout in a box or cookie sheet. Have children dip marble in black paint and roll painted marble over zebra to create a unique painting.

Zebra Tape Painting
Give children strips of masking tape to place as stripes on a zebra construction paper cut-out. Have them paint the zebra over the tape. When the paint is dry, tear the tape off to see the stripes.

Giraffe Spots Sponge Painting
Use a cotton ball, sponge, or your finger to dip into paint and dab spots onto a piece of paper or giraffe cut-out.

Here is a simple idea - paper plate animals! The sturdiness of a plate plate combined with the round shape gives it endless possibilities. Here are more than  20 Paper Plate Animal Crafts for Children for you to try this week!
Writing and Literacy Readiness
Curious George
Written and Illustrated by Hans Augusto and Margret Ray
Curious George is t he timeless tale of an orphaned monkey who is captured by the Man in the Yellow Hat. Together, they travel to America on a cruise ship, where Curious George proceeds to get into mischief. The fun continues when they arrive in their new home. Curious George just can’t stay out of trouble!
Curious George: Word List
This printable PDF includes the complete word list that supports this book.
Curious George: Opposites Activity
Complete the sentences to show Curious George-themed opposite words.
Curious George: Upper and Lowercase Concentration Game
Paste these three pages onto pieces of construction paper. Cut out each of the cards on the dotted line. Shuffle the cards and place them face down on the playing surface. The first player turns two cards face up. If they are the upper and lower case of the same letter they are taken off the board and that player goes again. The player with the most matches at the end of the game is the winner
Mathematical & Scientific Concepts
Blubber Experiment
Take two small plastic bags-turn one of them inside out and place it inside the other bag. Spoon crisco shortening or oil in between the two bags and seal them together. This makes a blubber mitten and the children can insert their hands into the mitten and put their hand into icy water and see the difference that the blubber makes in keeping warm!
Webcams: Bringing Observations to Life
A webcam can allow students to see and hear the subject they are studying! Instead of considering webcam viewing a passive activity, you can make it an engaging one by treating the webcam as the subject of your study! Here are a few zoo animal webcams that you can use to engage your children!
Character Development
As children grow, they often go through periods when they assume shifting blame and making excuses for their behavior will provide a defense in lieu of consequences. If parents want their children to thrive, they must teach children how to take responsibility for their actions.
To teach ownership, parents can take several steps:
  1. Choose Your Words Wisely. Children receive a mixed message about personal responsibility when they hear parents excuse their own behavior.
  2. Connect the Dots. Help children see the connection between their actions and their experiences. Tell them, “Because you practiced, you made the goal” or “Because you pulled at the page, the book ripped.”
  3. Teach Personal Responsibility. When children are upset, do not ask what made them act that way, but why they acted that way. Asking “what” questions, provides the child with a source for placing blame; whereas asking “why” questions allows him to reflect on his choices.
  4. Make Honesty Easy. Remind the child that everyone makes mistakes at some point, but you are glad she was truthful. Then, discuss how she can make better choices in the future.
  5. Stick to the Rules. Being consistent in expectations enables children to learn to accept consequences for words, actions and decisions especially regarding lying or blaming.

Physical Development
Animal Charades
Place a picture of different animals in a bag. One at a time, let children pick out an animal and act it out for others to guess.
HOW TO PLAY ANIMAL TRACK JUMP
Different colored sidewalk chalk is the only item needed to play!   Find a section on the sidewalk or on your driveway to draw a line of animal tracks. Draw tracks down the sidewalk in colored groups. In each color, draw a different number of animal tracks.
Have your child start at the beginning of the line of animal tracks. Now it’s time to play!
Counting Tracks  â€“ Jump from track to track while counting. Your child can count the tracks in the first color and then start at one again when jumping to the next color, or your child can jump and count from the first to the last animal track to find the total!
Track Colors  â€“ Jump from track to track while naming the color that is being jumped on! â€śBlue, blue, blue, blue, red, red, red, yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow!”
Just Jumping  â€“ For the younger learners who are not counting or recognizing colors quite yet, this game can be played by jumping from track to track! Jump forwards and backwards. And while your child jumps, you can say the colors or count along!
Cognitive & Phonological Development
Zoo animal puzzles encourage children's problem solving skills and cognitive development!
Animals Included:
  • Tortoise
  • Rhinoceros
  • Polar Bear
  • Elephant
  • Seal
  • Giraffe
  • Camel
  • Hippo
Simply print, cut, and challenge your child to complete the puzzles.

Tips: 
For younger children , give them the pieces to just one puzzle at a time.
For older children , give them a few puzzles to complete so they will have to sort through multiple pieces to find the ones that belong to the animal that they are putting together (great for visual discrimination skills.)
Other Ideas:
Laminate the pieces (optional) and put magnets on the back to turn these puzzles into an activity to work with on a vertical surface such as your refrigerator or magnetic easel.
Origami Elephant
Origami is a great activity for children. It involves hand-eye coordination and intricate fine motor skills.
It is important to follow these four folding steps!
  • First, cut out the elephant template.
  • Then lay paper in front of you so the elephant trunk is pointing at you.
  • The paper will look like a diamond on its point, rather than a square. 
  • First, fold the paper in half to make a big triangle.
  • Then fold along the dashed lines along the tusks to make the trunk of the elephant.
  • Next, fold down the sharp pointy ends above the head. These will become the backside of the elephant ears.
  • Lastly, fold along the forehead of the elephant and you are done!
Emotional & Social Development
Looking for ways to support your child's social emotional development? Here are some helpful tips!
  1. Encourage your child to make choices. For example, Let your child choose between two different outfits to wear to school or pick out an afternoon snack from a selection of a few healthy options. 
  2. Establish and follow a predictable, daily routine. For example. Talk about the next day’s schedule with your child when you put him to bed at night so he knows what to expect the following day. Your child may enjoy posting a daily schedule on the refrigerator that includes waking, breakfast, school time, play time, bath time, dinner time and bed time. Refer to the schedule as you transition your child from activity to activity to help him/her prepare for the changes throughout her day. 
  3. Identify and name feelings with your child so he/she can practice using words to identify emotions. Help your child recognize his/her own feelings and how to identify feelings in others. For example, Play “Guess that Feeling.” Take turns acting out a feeling and trying to guess what feeling is being shown. Make a face that shows the feeling. Move your body to show the feeling. Act out something that could happen to make you feel that way.
  4. Teach your child strategies to calm down when he/she is upset. For example, sing “If You’re Happy and You Know It” with your child. Choose a new feeling, and ask your child to think about something he or she does when feeling that way.  Develop a cozy corner in your home with books your child may select to read.
  5. Create a simple chart of activities your child can do to calm down such as counting to 10, humming a song, doing a simple exercise, or striking a yoga pose. 
  6. Respond with inquisitiveness and specific praise when your child shows pride in an accomplishment. For example: Inquisitiveness: I see that you drew lots of red and blue circles on your paper. Tell me about it. Specific Praise: You cleaned up the spill all by yourself. When the paper towel didn’t work, you figured out a different solution – you got the sponge. Thanks for cleaning up the spill so that nobody slipped! 
Dolphin Bananas
These are an excellent, fun snack as they require hardly any effort!
Ingredients
• 1 banana, unpeeled, sliced about halfway down
• 1 goldfish or cheddar cracker
• A handful of blueberries
• A black marker
• A small paper cup (I used paper coffee cups and cut the tops off.
Carefully slice the “stem” of the banana and insert the cheddar cracker. Draw an eye with the magic marker and place the banana in the cup. Add blueberries for the “water.”

Kiwi Hedgehog
This recipe will give you a reason to introduce your children to kiwis.
Ingredients
• 1 kiwi slice
• 1 piece of apple cut into a triangle
• A food marker
Slice the bottom of the kiwi slice, creating two “legs.” Slice the right side off as well creating a straight line. Stick the apple triangle up against the kiwi and draw a face on it.