Last week we touched on our new big idea of movement within our classroom and outside. We have noticed how much our shale friends took a huge interest in climbing and taking greater risks in reaching new levels and heights, literally!

We started out by exploring movement through sensory as our friends still absolutely enjoy sensory play in any way. We then moved towards gross motor by setting up safe environments for balancing, as most of our friends in Shale are hitting that 18 month mark and are thriving to push their own boundaries and trigger there sense of fear and accomplishment. This has also helped redirect the children from climbing all over our shelving and window sills. We set balance beams up with different textures on top so as the children walked across the also got a different feeling through their feet, we also moved the beams so that the children could start off on the floor and end up in he sandbox.

We also utilize our tables by taking off two legs and turning them into slides or ramps for the children to climb up or slide down. We have put three tables together so they were in a up, down pattern. The children would start off by climbing up one side, go down the other and up again, once they reached the floor they would repeat the climbing circuit all over again.

How do you support safe gross motor exploration in your home?

Have a great weekend.

Cassi, Sarah, Young and Emily