STEAM:

Science/ Technology/ Engineering/ Art/ Math/ Science

Choose an activity to work on over a couple of days or choose one activity per day

Examples of questions to ask:

What happens when ___? How do you think that works? How could you change that?

What does that remind you of? What would happen if ___? Tell me more.

*Remember to narrate play and ask questions; label objects, animals, parts of things (ie leaf on stem), colors, sizes, be creative!

*This is where you can use the items gathered during your nature/ neighborhood walk (ie branches, leaves, grass, dirt, flowers)

1. Feed the Baby Birds: Create a sensory bin with materials you found on your walk or you can also add ripped/ crumpled paper. as well as small pipe cleaners to represent worms for baby birds to eat. Supply small tongs OR clothespins for children to use to pick up the worms and place in the nests for baby birds to eat. You can also assist your child to pick up using pincer grasp )thumb and index finger) to pick up the "worms"

*Practice: scooping/ pouring, turn taking, following directions and labeling. This will help with fine motor, attending and problem solving. You can even count the items or label using colors (ie. green worm, yellow bird tweet)

2. Memory: Create a memory game from pictures of animal babies and adults. Assist your child to match animal babies to the adult or simply match sets of animal babies. Start off with only 1 or 2 pictures and build up slowly to more. See if your child can make the animal sounds or imitate your model

3. Hatch from an Egg: Supply small plastic eggs that open. Put various small plastic animal babies or pictures of animal babies (some that hatch from eggs and some that do not) inside and invite children to open the eggs and determine if the animal inside hatches from an egg or not and sort them into two piles accordingly. Remember to narrate and start off with 1-2 eggs, then build up as your child becomes successful. *You can even hide the eggs OR have your child find eggs by color. FREE Printable attached

4. Find the Animal Baby: Hold up pictures OR place images of animal babies on the floor. Ask your child to perform an action to reach the animal image. Model the actions for your child if they're having difficulty. Start with ONE animal at a time, this way, you can hold up an image on your phone or electronic device (ie iPad). For example, “crawl to the calf” or “run to the lamb.” *HAVE FUN!*

Books of the Week

Once finished with the book, go through it again and PAUSE video to get a better look at pictures; assist your child to identify pictures (focus on animal labels, body parts, animal sounds, verbs, colors, quantity).

Use this as an opportunity to talk about different types of animals and where they live (habitat). If you have any pets at home, assist your child to engage in play with the pet and explore its body parts, actions and sounds. Afterwards, you can engage your child in an art activity to draw their favorite animal and where it lives.

Videos of the Week/ Music and Movement

When exploring these videos, use this as an opportunity to talk with your child about baby animals, what's the same and what's different?You can also tie in things we learned during the plant unit to talk about how animals eat plants (ie cows eat grass, birds eat seeds) and use plants to make their houses (ie birds make nests). See if your child can identify the many animals in the videos and make animal sounds (you can have them point or label to animals).

I added a few classroom favorite songs, maybe have your child dance with the rattles they made last week!

The goal here is to HAVE FUN! Making noise is okay, it's all part of the learning process!