Fun Gross Motor Activities For Toddlers

Gross motor activities for toddlers are so very important! Please give them as many opportunities to move, jump, bounce, reach, throw, kick, climb, roll etc. as possible every day!

They NEED to move.

They NEED to develop the large muscles in their little bodies.

They NEED variety to make this happen!

We are getting ready for our fun Halloween crafts. Miss Molly and I are on the roll about making cute hand and footprint crafts with the toddlers. So your child might come home each night with their feet painted. We try and get most of the paint off but you all know how they squirm with us tickling their feet with our paint brushes. 

We decided to take a walk but the grass was wet, so we took a walk around the big playground instead. 

We love climbing next to the rocks and playing peek-a-boo, I just happened to get some really cute photo's of all of them! 

This afternoon we had fun playing in the fall sensory tub. We dug with our shovels and found lots of spiders we also got to feel the soft spider web.

I'd have to say I think they had a pretty good time considering the clean up! 

We love taking group photo's! They weren't quite sure about the tall bench though. Don't worry, Miss Molly was right next to them on the side in case we had any jumpers. 

Our Cutest Moments:

Lego Stamping and Inside fun!

This month we have been working on the color orange. We paint, scribble, and stamp with orange. This was a great fine motor activity we did today, I let them stamp their lego blocks in orange paint and create some fun masterpieces.  

Since it rained pretty much throughout the entire day, it was a great day for reading. Unfortunately for us teachers we read at least each book about ten times per book we have about 15 books in our book shelf. Lets just say we have a most of them memorized. Even though I have a group of little book worms I love to catch them reading!

This is Chance he just moved up from the Little Lambs Infant Room, He was great about finding books to put back on the bookshelf. Also at this young stage the key is dumping and refilling. 

This little lady is transitioning to our classroom from the Infant room. She mainly got a lot of hugs from Teagan, and a few others today!

Miss Molly made these cute little handprint bats yesterday with the toddlers. They are adorable and look great on our walls! I'm a sucker for hand and footprint art!

Even though Mason transitioned to the Fluffy Ducks Two's today, we couldn't forget his mommy's birthday! Lets us know if you have a birthday in the Family, we love making art!

I asked Lola to go find her shoes after naptime, I look over and see this. 

Our Cutest Moments:

Pumpkin Pie Dip

Ingredients

For the Dip:

6 oz Vanilla Greek Yogurt

1/2 cup light brown sugar, packed

1 can (15 oz pure pumpkin puree

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp ground ginger

1/4 tsp ground nutmeg

1/2 tsp allspice

4 oz Cool Whip

For the Baked Chips:

6 (8 inch flour tortillas)

1/4 cup unsalted butter, melted

1/2 cup cinnamon/sugar mix

Instructions

For the dip, whisk yogurt with sugar and pumpkin until combined. Add in seasonings. Fold in Cool Whip and refrigerate dip for at least one hour to allow flavors to mingle. Serve cold!

For the chips, brush butter on each tortilla and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar mixture. Stack until all tortillas have been buttered then cut into wedges. Bake tortilla wedges in single layer on a cookie sheet in a 350 degree oven for 12-14 minutes. Cool and enjoy. Store in an airtight container for up to 2 days.

Clean Fun!

I think we are still missing 2 families for our picture wall! We will also include family pets as well. We talk about our family quite a bit throughout the day including animals and the toddlers have fun pointing to them!

 

 

 

 

In the afternoons we like to scribble with crayons, I tape down their papers so they can really make marks on them. We are working on holding the crayons and not eating them. Please encourage coloring at home because it's a great fine motor skill.

 

 

To help settle down our busy toddlers after lunch  time, we come back to the room and read two night time books and sing twinkle little star. Today I decided to give lotion foot massages and let them rub their legs and feet. I was surprised how well they really liked this activity.

 

 

 

I couldn't resist when I saw this on Pinterest, I had to challenge myself and create the Spiderman handprints , I mean after all it was spider week!

 

 

A nice clean afternoon activity when we come inside from playing outside in the dirt. I also learned from this activity that Teagan is ready to transition to a cup at mealtimes! Way to go big girl!

 

 

If you haven't checked out our bulletin board outside our classroom, I encourage you to. I have a recipe of the month, some favorite books we are currently reading and our lesson plan for the week. I will start posting some coupons for diapers and wipes and a list of donations I need for the classroom. Also wanted to say, we are very sad Miss Beth is leaving our classroom but happy that she isn't going too far away she is moving to the 2's as lead teacher! We are excited about Miss Molly joining our room again, the kids have really missed her!

 

 

 

Our Cutest Moments:

 

 

 

 



spider web painting

Well the magnet board turned out great and very easy to hang with the Velcro strips the kids absolutely love hanging things on the board!

Today instead of using marbles to shake in the paint we used acorns. They had a bit of trouble rolling it so I had to help them shake the acorns around. We used glue instead of paint and then sprinkled glitter on top of it. I will post the pictures tomorrow, they turned out pretty cute!

We still have some spider hand prints from some of our toddlers that still need to be done, but here they are. We are working on the word "Spider" and really working on Itsy Bitsy Spider finger play this month. 

When we do our finger play for five little spiders spinning on a web, we have to make sure we wear our spider rings! 

Our Cutest Moments: