News for Black Hills Early Learners

Early Childhood Connections is a weekly contributor to Early Learning Activities

At the end of each activity domain and goals for the activities are provided. For a copy of the Early Learning Guidelines click on the photo.

Infant Corner Activities for children under 1

Development How your child plays, learns, speaks, and acts offers important clues about your child’s development. Developmental milestones are things most children can do by a certain age. Link to CDC Learn the Signs. Act Early Milestone checklist From Zero to Three's Magic of Everyday Moments series watch how to nurture your baby from birth to 12 months, teaching them how to feel safe and secure in the world while encouraging developmentally appropriate growth. Link to Video Here Play Your baby can hear before he's even entered the outside world. In fact, his hearing is almost fully developed by the time he's born. Babies use the sense of hearing to take in an enormous amount of information about the world. The following article shares strategies to stimulate your baby's hearing during the first year of life. Link to Article Here Construction of Knowledge: Thinking and Reasoning Goal CD-1 This article shares 10 sweet baby songs to sing to your little one from “Baby Shark” to “Down by the Bay,”. Link to Article Here Communication and Oral Language Development Goal CLL-1

Busy Toddlers Activities for children 1-3

Physical/Outdoor Add movement to a Scavenger hunt to find objects for all the colors of the rainbow. Link to Activity Here Motor Development Goal HPD-4 Make a stamp from a potato and encourage your toddler to use it to make rainbows! Potato stamps are easy for toddlers to grab and use to build those fine muscles. Link to Activity Here Motor Development Goal HPD-5 Science/Sensory There are so many different ways to have fun with the reaction of baking soda and vinegar. This fizzing rainbow experiment fits the bill perfectly and is so easy for toddlers to do! Link to Activity Here Scientific Exploration and Knowledge Goal CD-8 For an easy to put together St. Patrick’s Day activity, try this shaving cream sensory coin dig! Toddlers will have fun digging with their hands to find the leprechaun gold. Be warned – this is definitely not a mess free activity! Link to Activity Here Construction of Knowledge: Thinking and Reasoning Goal CD-1

Literacy/Math Toddlers are curious and always learning. One milestone they hit is when they are able to label parts of their body. Use a sticker to make a game out of labeling their body parts. Link to Activity Here Communicating and Oral Language Development Goal CLL-3 Go on a green scavenger hunt in your home or classroom. Practice counting and see how many green objects you can collect. Mathematical Thinking and Expression Goal CD-4 Social Emotional Toddlers live large, play hard, and love big. When they get upset, they can act irrationally. They often have emotional outbursts to clear out the bad feelings – which can be difficult for you to endure without erupting yourself. Before losing your cool, remember that your child's lack of self-control is normal. He'll eventually learn what's socially acceptable by the way you and others react. Try to respond calmly and enforce the limits you've set so things don't intensify. Link to Article Here Self-Regulation and Pro-Social Behaviors Goal SED-4

Hands-On Preschoolers Activities for children 4-5

Physical/Outdoor Did you know there are 52 bones in our feet? Wow! That let's us move our feet in different ways! Count to 52 with the children! Now, encourage the children to each show a way that they can move their feet while sitting down! Then, encourage the children to stand up and show ways to use their feet (stomp, tip-toe, walk on heels, etc.) Motor Development Goal HPD-4 What’s the best part of Lucky Charms cereal? The marshmallows! Fill large bowls with Lucky Charms, then see who can sort out the marshmallows fastest. To make the game more challenging use a tool like a spoon, tweezers or chopsticks. Motor Development Goal HPD-5

Science/Sensory Give children black construction paper, white chalk and encourage the children to draw pictures of themselves and what they think their bones might look like. This is a tough concept for them as preschoolers are so concrete and discussing something that they can not see that is under their skin is a bit abstract for them. But, just let them go at it! If possible have some x-rays to show them. Scientific Exploration and Knowledge Goal CD-9 Have you ever tried to catch a leprechaun? Leprechauns are mischievous and magical little guys, so we have never actually gotten a good look at one. Work with your preschoolers to design and build a St Patrick's Day leprechaun trap. Link to Activity Ideas Here Construction of Knowledge: Thinking and Reasoning Goal CD-3

Literacy/Math Our fingerprints are unique and part of our body. This is a fun and easy alphabet learning activity involving finger printing. This pre-writing activity is a great way to get preschoolers more familiar with writing letters of the alphabet. Link to Activity Here Foundations For Writing Goal CLL-9 This game was so simple you might want to pack it up in your bag as a go to game to use anywhere. First lay out 20 cotton swab “bones” on the table. Then take turns rolling a die and taking that many bones. The winner is the one that rolls the correct number to take the final bones. Mathematical Thinking and Expression Goal CD-4

Creative Arts This pom pom painting rainbow craft for kids is a great project for spring and St. Patrick's Day.  Link to Activity Here Creative Arts and Expression Goal CD-12 These adorable mini shakers can be fun to shake and dance along with music. But there’s lot more learning activities you can do with them, and you can even leave them out for any leprechaun visitors you might have on St. Patrick’s Day! Link to Activity Here Creative Arts and Expression Goal CD-12