Celebrating Week of the Young Child
Every year, early childhood advocates spend a week in April shining the spotlight on early learning and celebrating young children, their families and those who dedicate their lives to their care and education. This year April 1st - 7th was designated as Week of the Young Child. Last week our school prepared daily activities for our students to enjoy themselves during their week. We did activities like Dancing with Disney, Puppet Shows, Face Painting, and Movie Dance & Sing Along!
Dancing with Disney
Our Monday event gave children the opportunity to dance along to Disney music with special guests like Mickey Mouse, Elsa from Frozen, and Mirabel from Encanto! They got to enjoy Disney songs with some of their favorite Disney characters. This activity, while being super fun, gave our students the chance to build on their coordination and spatial awareness, which improves children's gross motor skills.
Puppet Show
Our Tuesday activity was a special puppet show for each classroom. They were told The Little Red Hen story which helped them develop many skills such as language acquisition, creativity, communication skills, storytelling and sequencing skills, and many more. The story was about friendship and had a very beautiful lesson that many of our students loved.
Face Painting
On Wednesday, our students were given the special surprise of face painting in their classrooms! They chose from Spider-Man to butterflies and rainbows to put on their faces. This activity helps support cognitive growth by developing neural connections that prepare the brain for learning. It's a great sensory experience, a fine motor experience, increases coordination and creativity, and best of all it's super fun and exciting!
Movie Sing & Dance
For the last school day of the week, we put some movie clips for children to sing and dance to. The movie many of our students have loved is Trolls World Tour, it has a bunch of diverse music that matches the diverse culture of our school. The dancing and singing activity helps children learn the sounds and meanings of words. Dancing to music helps children strengthen their motor skills while allowing them to practice self-expression. Music can also help strengthen memory skills especially since they got to watch the movie and they danced and sang along.
Overall, last week's celebrations were an amazing experience for every one of our students. The Week of the Young Child is a time to recognize that the opportunities for children's growth are all around us- in the little and big things we do every day. It is our responsibility as caring adults and educators to ensure those opportunities for early learning are available to all children- whether in the home, at school, or in the community. Our mission at Children’s Day Preschool is just that, to give our student’s the best environment with which to learn and grow. And to share our resources with others, so that the adults in children's lives have what they need to ensure children are learning and growing all the time.