This lesson plan was created for the week of May 2-6 by Jennifer Szajna. Jennifer is the Lead Advanced Toddler teacher in the Maple classroom.
The Maple classroom began the month of May with a lesson plan centered around celebrating what else?...Mother's Day! Children were encouraged to practice their fine motor skills by stringing penne macaroni noodles onto yarn. After getting a little bit of help with the finishing touches of the necklace, the children delightfully gave their Mother's a hand-made, from the heart Mother's Day gift.
This month students have also been able to plant their own flowers while learning songs about flowers--perfect for spring! Some suggestions for furthering your child's learning at home include helping your child take care of their flower and practicing the songs that they will be learning in school this month; "Hurray for May Day," and "I Picked Some Flowers Just For You."
Learning objectives from this lesson are as follows:
Students will practice counting by using the calendar.
Activity: Counting days and dictating days of the week.
Students will discuss Mother's Day, holidays, and traditions.
Activity: Utilising vocabulary to learn about Mother's Day, holidays, traditions. Students were also encouraged to use their verbal skills to tell their classmates why they thought their mom was special.
Students will develop fine motor skills by tracing, cutting, pasting, coloring, painting, and molding play dough.
Activity: Students will create handprint flowers accompanying a poem and create their macaroni necklaces.
Students will develop rhyming skills through song.
Activity: Students sang the songs, "Hurray for May Day," and "I Picked Some Flowers Just For You." As a special activity, students also had the opportunity to play with instruments.
Students will recognize letters and numbers.
Activity: Not only did students have the opportunity to identify letters on blocks, they also were able to expand their knowledge of numbers by playing a game that asked a student to hide a number, allow other students to identify the other numbers, and then figure out which number was missing.
Students will follow a recipe.
Activity: As a special Mother's Day treat, students had the opportunity to make vegan, blueberry oat muffins to eat themselves and share with their moms.
Students will develop writing skills by dictation.
Activity: The children were asked to talk about why their mother was special for the teacher to write down. The children were then able to draw a picture on the sheet of paper that their words were on and give it to their mothers.
