The leaves are changing colours, chilly mornings are here, and fall themes have made its way into our classroom too. Our decorations have changed to the fall season and the classrooms are feeling cozy.

With the change in season, we are also introducing fall activities to our little ones.

Our toddlers have been seeing so many acorns around our playground so we decided to go on an acorn hunt to see how many our toddlers would be able to find.

When we finished they all looked at how many acorns we were able to find and together we practiced our skills counting them. We looked at the different colours and noticed that some were green and some were brown. Some of our toddlers were even able to peel off the outer skin of the acorns revealing the nut inside. Along with our big acorns we were able to find some tiny ones as well that had hats and stems.

We also have changed our sensory table into apple crumble. This theme was introduced during our circle time with the book called “Hello! My name is Apple”. This book is about the lifecycle of an apple and fits the fall themes perfectly. Making it the inspiration for the apple themed sensory table.

As always, all the children were so excited to play with this new activity. They all used it in different ways. Some enjoyed scooping the oats into bowls, while others loved playing with the apples. This simple fall sensory experience has helped develop our children in many ways. Notably, by practicing language skills alking about the colours of the apples, bowls, scoops. Motor skills were improved on with feeling the texture of the oats and utilizing tools to scoop the oats and dump them back onto the table. The class has also further developed their social interactions with friends as three toddlers at a time play at the sensory table. They were not only interacting with each other they were also learning about sharing and waiting for their turns.

At Trafalgar Oaks, we have created a kindergarten readiness program for our preschoolers who will be attending kindergarten in the fall. This program introduces literacy, counting, writing, and reading to name a few!

Today our preschoolers continued practicing 1-1 correspondence with numbers. They looked at different numbers and counted out the amount on their worksheet, marking each square with the correct number. This helped them strengthen their counting skills, and number recognition as well. Our preschoolers also worked hard to count the correct number of stickers carefully and match numbers to one item at a time.

We also began exploring shapes! We began our session with a fun shape game that encouraged our preschoolers to recognize and identify different shapes such as circles, squares, rectangles, triangles, ovals, hearts and stars. Next our preschoolers got to participate in a shape sorting activity, where they practiced grouping shapes by their attributes and practicing cutting with scissors and glueing. Together we practiced recognizing and identifying different shapes including circles, squares, rectangles, ovals and triangles and they had fun learning how to draw each shape while also building their fine motor skills skills and early writing skills.

This week’s activities has helped our preschoolers strengthen hand eye coordination, expose them to critical thinking, further develop early math skills, and sharpen their already growing observational skills.