Lakewood Child Care Center

It’s Christmas in July throughout the center and what fun it has been for the children!  Our older children have been hard at work sticking cotton balls to a contact paper Santa hat and painting at the easel with red and green paint.  We have been singing all the fun and familiar songs that accompany this holiday typically, such as Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer and Jingle Bells.  They have been shaking bells and waving scarves.  We had them practice taking balls out of the cups of a muffin tin and then putting them back again, while we talked about the textures of the different balls they had chosen.  They have listened to books about the holiday and watched the Gingerbread Man story unfold on our felt board.  They dropped cars down the cardboard tube, rolled balls back and forth with a teacher, used chalk on chalkboards, and practiced placing stickers on paper.  The youngest babies had the opportunity to practice tummy time while lying next to Christmas themed tissue paper that had been contact papered to the floor, it gave them the chance to reach out and touch it while we talked about the colors they were seeing.  They all discovered a fun way to play with the stacking rings and the ring drop boxes.  Christmas bows gave them the chance to stick and unstick them in many places around the room, including their own fingers.  The toddlers have been working on identifying body parts and repeating animal sounds, while the babies are working on consonant sounds back and forth with a teacher.  This has been such a fun week bringing the holiday into the classroom and next week we will have a theme all about sports – this translates to a lot of ball play, which will be very exciting for most of them!