senses

Charlie’s Cues: Using the All About Me Cards

| Chalimar Rios

Independence, perseverance, attention to detail, and taking interest in a variety of tasks are some of the lessons that we want to teach children from an early age. We can do this through modeling behaviors, reading books, observing images, and last but not least, through experience.

FunShine Express makes this process easier for you by including All About Me Cards as part of the bimonthly toddler curriculum kit, Buttercups. The All About Me Cards is a series of cards featuring real images included in the Teacher Pack. Through these images, children observe peers performing daily tasks and activities that relate to the monthly themes. The cards usually focus on tasks children can help with, feelings they experience, wonderful things their bodies can do, and exploring the world with their bodies and senses.

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How to Incorporate Cooking in Your Classroom

| FunShine Express

by Patricia Dietz

Children are naturally curious and love hands-on learning through multiple senses. A great way to encourage more hands-on learning is through cooking in the classroom. Cooking with young children has many benefits for early learning and development, such as fostering early math skills, increasing fine motor skills, developing language and literacy development, engaging the senses, promoting healthy eating, and connecting cultures. Here are some tips and recipe ideas to help you get started with cooking in your classroom.

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Let’s Play Outside!

| FunShine Express

by Kelley Jilek

The boy and girl playing to a sandboxWhen you recall your childhood, do some of your fondest memories revolve around unstructured outdoor play? Did you make dandelion soup and mud pies, create sand castles, and run through sprinklers? Was your favorite grade school subject “recess?”

Although it is still just as exciting, young children today are spending less and less time outdoors. There are many possible explanations for why this is happening. Here are just a few:

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