Activities
Art & Creativity
Art and creativity play a huge role in developing young minds. We practice color identification by looking at our color wall or flash cards as a group and calling out specific colors; repetition and group participation gives the kids a greater chance at memorization. We also draw, color or paint depending on our schedule that day. The kids have a blast dressing up and role playing, which plays a huge part in bringing out their personalities. We have action figures and dolls that the kids love to play with as well, and they really get to let their imaginations run wild during this time. Building blocks and play dough are used for a variety of activities, like making shapes, finding colors, and building things. All of the children love art time and do a wonderful job at expressing their creativity and individuality.
Music
Music time is all day, every day! We listen to music to calm down, to start rest time, to clean up, to play, to dance, and even to sing . Music is used in all areas of child development and imperative for school readiness. It helps intellectually, with social and emotional skills, language, and literacy, and it helps improve motor skills by developing the mind-body connection. Exposing children to music during early development helps them learn sounds and the meaning of words.
Movement
Learning how to move our bodies as children is essential to everyday life. Research shows that encouraging free movement can give children space to develop self awareness, learn non-verbal ways of communicating, and get to know themselves and their body. Children learn their range of motion, balance, muscle strength, coordination, and endurance. At Avery Adventure Academy, we like to use a YouTube channel called Go Noodle. This channel has a lot of educational songs to dance and move your body to. They even have episodes for “indoor recess” that we like to use when it’s too cold to go outside!
Language
Language is an important subject to work on with kids who are 3-5 years old. Even before 3 years old, we work on learning the alphabet song. While learning the alphabet by working on one letter a week, we incorporate writing the letters out and finding the letters in each child's name. We use flash cards and videos for letter identification. Once the child knows the alphabet and how to write all of the letters and their name, we start to work on sounding out each letter and sight words.
Mathematics
Mathematics can be really fun because when we're learning it, the kids get to use a lot of different things! We pull out counting blocks, shapes, and puzzles and work on numbers 1-10 and then 10-20. Then, we learn how to write numbers and identify them from a group of others. Shape identification and sorting shapes are also topics that we work on in this section. Mathematics is an important part of learning for all children in the early years, and receiving a good grounding in it is an essential life skill; in addition to numeracy, math helps to develop skills such as problem solving, understanding shapes, and measuring and developing spatial awareness.
Outdoor Play
Kids who play outside are more self-aware, and their awareness of others and their feelings also increases. Studies show that kids who play outdoors are also less likely to bully other children. Outdoor play often requires imagination and teamwork, which helps children have positive interactions with each other. We do lots of different things outside when the weather is nice. Going to parks and playing with water toys are some of the kids' favorites!