Activities

Daycare offers a variety of learning oriented activities designed by our very own School of Education graduate students, including but not limited to the following:

Yoga for Kids
Origami
Color Sorting
Nature Color Walk Search
Fable Reading
DIY Playdough
Creative Painting
Don't let it touch the floor!

Fable Reading

Purpose:

To increase the listing capability

Detail:

The teacher will read the tale out loud to the students. Throughout the course of the reading, the teacher will stop and ask questions such as:

What do you think will happen next?
What is this character like?
Can you tell me what happened so far in the story?

These questions serve to introduce students to the art of story- telling, as well as to the important aspects of listening and reading.

Once the story is finished, the teacher will introduce the concept of the moral or the lesson of the story by asking students the following question:

What did you learn from listening to this story?

A very brief lecture ensues in which the teacher explains the definition of a moral.

The teacher asks the students the following questions:

What are some other lessons or morals that you know?
What lessons or morals do you have in your home?
Have you read other stories with morals or lessons? What were they?

The students are asked to draw a picture from the story which shows the main character learning the lesson or moral. Underneath the story, students must write down what the moral or lesson that is being demonstrating in the story.

Learning Outcome:

Students will listen to an example of a fable.
Students will answer questions about the story and predict what will happen next.
Students will offer their own examples of morals and lessons to the rest of the class.
Students will draw pictures and write sentences demonstrating their understanding of the lesson.
Students will provide their own examples of stories or fables with lessons or morals in them.

Nature Color Walk Search

Purpose:

Children will choose their favourite color (prior to the class) and dress up accordingly. They will introduce their favourite color in class on the color day and say one or two lines about it. (The children will share their knowledge with each other).

Detail:

Resources: Pegs, Coloured A4 paper, String, Glue, Small basket

All students will be taken on a walk outside near the faulty apartments and the playground, under teacher supervision, where they will be asked to pick objects from the surroundings that they can turn into art.

Once back, students will be given sheets of paper of their favorite color along with some glue to create a card or display from the items they retrieved.

Learning Outcome:

Color recognition, mindfulness, increases knowledge of nature and surroundings, enhances power of observation, relieves stress.

Yoga for Kids

Purpose:

Yoga (meaning union or yoke) is the practice of accessing and integrating all aspects of our true nature -- body, mind, and spirit -- in the pursuit of inner harmony. Because children encounter emotional, social, and physical challenges or conflicts, a dedicated and intentional yoga practice that includes breathing techniques, behavioural guidelines, and physical postures can be incredibly valuable for them. I believe that yoga is something children can practice anywhere and that the breathing, the concentration, the poses, and the way kids learn to act or react to situations, will lead to constant self-discovery and inquisitiveness

Detail:

Each child will be given a yoga mat and ask to follow the instructions of the facilitator.

Children will be guided through basic yoga poses and asked to be conscious of the body parts and muscles that they are actively using to hold a pose.

The instructor will guide them through breathwork and narrate the importance of it in yoga and daily routine, how it helps us feel calm and worry less.

Learning Outcome:

Children will learn yoga flows and breathwork, something they can practice in their own time.

DIY Playdough

Purpose:

Color mixing and learning subtraction

Detail:

Material:

1 cup salt
½ cup flour
¼ cup of water
Paint colours (blue, yellow and red)
White papers

Procedure

Playdough Making:

Mix the dry ingredients.
Add water gradually to make it smooth.
Knead to make a dough.

Colour mixing:

Make 3 small dough balls
Add a drop of red, blue, and yellow paint colour in the dough balls (one colour in one dough ball)
Now children will mix any two colours together to see what colour they make.
Subtraction:
Write a few subtraction sums on a paper.
Children will make dough balls of the bigger number and will smash the smaller number of dough balls.
The smashed dough balls will be subtracted (put them away), the child will count the remaining dough balls and write the right answer on the paper.

Example:

Sum: 5 – 3, the child will make 5 playdough balls and smash 3. They will then be asked how many playdough balls are left behind / not smashed.

Learning Outcome:

Making playdough from readily available ingredients and practice subtraction.

Origami

Purpose:

To develop children’s thinking skills in a creative manner. It will also help kids develop, mental concentration, sequencing skills and eye hand coordination. The children will decorate the classroom with their artwork or take it back it home to their parents or to decorate their own rooms.

Detail:

Kids will learn to use colorful papers such as A4 color sheets or newspapers to make different things. These things can be used to decorate the classroom and have a friendly competition. Things that can be made using paper include - plane, boat, butterfly, flower, duck etc. Kids can also paint the same things using water paints. Once kids are done painting, they can paste these on walls to make their daycare center more colorful. In the case where students make airplanes, they can fly them and see whose plane flies farther.

Each child will be given papers from magazines, newspapers and/or A4 colored sheets. They will be asked to sit separately and will follow the instructions of the facilitator. The facilitator will then demonstrate how to make different objects step by step.

Learning Outcome:

Children will develop mental and creativie skills and they will have something to show to their peers and parents.

Don’t let it touch the floor!

Purpose:

The purpose of this activity is to let children let out their energies, develop their psychomotor skills and develop coordination between their mental and physical activity. Kids will have to predict where the balloon is going to fall and decide when to jump and where to move. And of course, have some fun.

Detail:

This is a physical activity. In this activity children will be given a balloon and they will be asked to not let it touch the floor. They will have to hit to keep it floating.

Children will be asked to stand far from each other. The furniture will be moved around so there is ample space for everyone to stand. The facilitator will throw the balloon at the children and they will have to keep it from touching the ground. The kid that drops the balloon will be out of the game and will rejoin when the game restarts.

Learning Outcome:

Practicing hand to eye coordination and physical activity.

Creative Painting

Purpose:

To recognize the colors

Detail:

Pebbles, flowers, cotton balls, paints, paper plates, and paint brushes.

Children will be asked to dip the small items (flowers, cotton balls, or pebbles) into paint and then stamp them on to their A4 sheet of paper. They will be encouraged to mix colors and create patterns and designs on their paper. At the end, we will be left with an abstract art piece which they can take home once its dry.

Learning Outcome:

Children will learn to create shapes and patterns through paint printing in a creative manner.

Color Sorting

Purpose:

The purpose of this activity is to teach kids how to differentiate between different colors. They do not need to know which color is which. They do not need to know the spellings either. This activity is to help students identify different colors.

Detail:

Cardboards of different colors will be rolled and given the shape of a tube. These tubes will then be pasted on the wall. Each kid will be given a bowl with mixed color buttons. They will then have to sort the buttons on the basis of their colors. They will use the cardboard tubes to sort these buttons by placing them in correct tubes. There will be small bowls placed at the end of the tube so the buttons can be collected in one place.

This is an individual activity where each child will be given a separate bowl full of mixed color. To share the instructions, the facilitator will act out the exercise so the children can know what to do. Children are not expected to know the names of the colors but to match the color of the button to the color of the tube. The exercise is to help children think faster.

Learning Outcome:

Children will be able to differentiate between color.

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