Toddler Curriculum

Daily Teaching Guide Toddler March Week 1 Forest Animals Week Day 3 Circle Time: Where Are The Nuts? Teacher will need to print out the acorn file onto white card stock paper and cut the acorns out. Hide the acorns around the room, but make sure you leave them in plain sight. Tell the children that Mr. Squirrel lost his acorns and need to help him find his acorns. Have the children help you find the nuts. Give lots of praise as the acorns are found. **Optional** If you have a stuffed animal that is a squirrel, bring out the squirrel and show him to the children. Tell him he has lost his acorns, place a small plastic bucket or plastic bowl beside the squirrel for the children to place the acorns into. Art Time: Soft Squirrel Print out the squirrel picture for each child. Provide the children with soft items to glue onto their squirrel. Some soft items you could have the children glue to their squirrel could be cotton balls, pieces of felt, pieces of fake fur, etc. As the children are gluing the items onto their squirrels, make sure to mention several times, the word soft. Tell the children how the felt is soft and have them rub their finger against it. Show them the fake fur and then tell them how soft it is, have them feel the fur, etc. Learning Time: Match acorns by number Print out two sets of my acorn number match up cards. One card will be the game board, do not cut this one. The other card will be cut apart, cut out the four squares; these will be the game cards. Print the acorn number match up cards onto card stock paper for best results. Have the children match the cards to the matching pictures on the game board. Have them match up the cards to the same number on the game board. Place the cards you have cut apart into a cloth bag or pillow case. Have the children sit in a circle. Have the children take turns pulling out an acorn card. Have them match the card to the game board. Help them as needed. Please Note. You may want to place Velcro dots on the backs of the cards and onto the front of the game board. Make sure you have the Velcro in the same place so they will stick together. **Optional** if you have very younger toddlers you may want to cover the numbers with colors. Cut out four small squares of paper from different colors of paper, such as blue, red, green and yellow and glue or tape these small squares over the numbers on the game board and also on the game cards, so they match. Then have the toddlers match the cards by color instead of numbers, or write numbers onto the squares of paper and have the younger toddlers match by color and the older toddlers match by number. Special Activity: What’s under there? Toddlers love to open and close things. You will be making them a poster board with little doors on it to open and close. You will need 2 pieces of poster board. Print out my forest animal cards to use as the pictures on the poster board under the flaps. To Make: You will need to cut out several doors from one piece of poster board. You may want to have one of the doors open from the left side, one from the right side and one from the bottom and one from the top side. Once you have the doors cut from one piece of poster board lay it down onto the other board and light trace the spaces so now you know where to glue your pictures. Remove the poster board now with the doors in it and glue the forest animal pictures into the squares you drew with the pencil. You may want to make the doors a bit bigger so you can attach some Velcro dots to the edge of the door that you will be lifting up. After you get all the doors fixed you are ready cover to cover the pictures with contact paper to make them sturdy. Once you finish with this you will glue the top board (one with doors cut from it) onto the bottom board. Let it dry over night. The next day you place want to place some Velcro dots on the inside of each picture towards the bottom and on the door so they will shut and stay closed. Attach the board onto a wall or door so the children can have fun opening and closing the doors. Point out the pictures inside the flaps to the children and see if they can tell you the names of the pictures. Song/Finger Rhyme: Colored Squirrel Song You will need to print out my small squirrel file. Print out onto different colors of heavy paper, such as card stock paper. You will need 2 squirrels from different colors. Place the squirrels onto large craft sticks *** Please Note *** You can purchase the card stock paper and large craft sticks at Wal-Mart. You will find the craft sticks in the craft department and the card stock paper in the office department. Then, sing the song below with the children. Tune: Where is thumb kin? Where is red squirrel?    (Bring up the red squirrel) Where is red squirrel?    (Bring up the other red squirrel) Here I am,    (wave one squirrel) Here I am    (wave other squirrel) Point if you can, point if you can, at red squirrel, at red squirrel.    (Hold up one squirrel and then the other squirrel and wave them in the air.) Repeat song above with another squirrel that is a different color. Repeat until all the squirrels have been used. March Sample (2) - Cick Here To Down Load