West Richmond Preschool

Around the classroom we put out some simple activities and watched the benefits children gained from them and how simplicity can progress into many learning opportunities that happen along the way. The benefits of giving children simple and less, helps in development of creating their own ideas.   And by transferring the creation into something, helps foster a proud child to be confident in their future development and learning.     Fine Motor Development The malleable properties of playdough make it fun for investigation and exploration as well as secretly building up strength in all their tiny hands muscles and tendons.   With strong hands, children are ready for pencil and scissors holding.   Below is a picture of Sofie, carefully cutting her cake creation.   As part of a simple tactile play, it can be squashed, squeezed, rolled, flattened, chopped, cut, and punctured.   As you can see in the picture of Jeffery, Jun, and Connor, the benefits of these actions pro

We welcomed our students back from the December holidays. On the first day of school, we were surprised by a snowfall. We were so excited to go explore and play with the snow before it all melted away.   We tried different ways of playing with the snow. We ran and stomped across the field, dragging our shoes across the snow to make marks. It was really fun! A few children were interested in how we made tracks with our shoes. The next class, we talked about how the snow felt and what we observed. Children observed that on the way to school there were tracks on the road, just like there were tracks on the field.      We decided to let the children explore more with cars and tracks. We made roads on the floor with painters tape. The children put cars on ramps to explore the relationship between the height of the ramps and the velocity of the cars. They discovered that the higher the ramp, the faster the cars would move. The children were very excited about

Painting has always been a hit at the art table. I decided to spice things up a bit by painting with a tool that we have never used before. We painted with HAIR COMBS. The children were so surprised and a little baffled at first when they saw the hair combs on the table.   Keira used the top part of the comb to scoop the paint out and she used the same part of the comb to paint on her paper. Michelle used the end of the bristles to get the paint and made single lines on her paper. Ruka was so particular in not letting the colors mix. She had red on top and blue on the bottom. She painted her paper the way she got her paint from the tray   Julia was fascinated with how the colors changed when they were mixed on her paper.     Adonis and Chloe F. used the bristles to make lines on their paper. Chloe F. put paint on her paper first then she moved the hair combs back and forth to make lines appear on her paper. It was interesting to

  The children in our Four Year Old Class recently experimented with felt pens, droppers and water.   They began by drawing a picture or an abstract design on paper towel. They spent a lot of time with this first step and were very conscientious with their creations. With the Three Year Old Class we adapted this activity and offered coloured bingo markers to the children.     After completing the first step, each child was given a cup of water and a dropper. The droppers took some practice to use, but the children very quickly learnt how to manipulate the dropper, sucking up water and squishing it onto their artwork.   As the children squirted water onto the coloured paper towel, they saw the effect was immediate. The children were intrigued while watching the colours seep along the paper towel and into other colours. They cheerfully called out each time one colour ran into another, subsequently creating a new colour (“blue and yellow