The infants have discovered that the little people toys have a hole in the bottom and have tried to place them onto their fingers to balance them. Shannon wondered if they would like to explore Christmas finger puppets.
There was a Santa, Elf, Reindeer, snowman and Penguin puppet. Shannon had three sets of five, and dumped them onto the floor. Penny squealed and bounced with excitement as she saw the finger puppets. Theo crawled over so fast with excitement. Shannon encouraged language through labelling the finger puppets as the infants played with them.
Penny and Theo could easily use their fine motor skills to place the finger puppets onto their fingers. Theo would put it onto his finger and then lift it up to kiss the character. Penny copied Shannon as she told Penny that Santa says, “Ho, ho, ho."
Penny tried on each finger puppet and would show it to Shannon to label it for her, before turning it towards herself to smile and take a good look.
Margo came over, found Santa and gave him a kiss right away. She said, “Ho, Ho, Ho,” every time she picked up the Santa puppet. Margo also explored the reindeer and elf finger puppets. Margo could use her fine motor skills to place them onto her fingers and repeated the word, “Elf,” learning a new word. She seemed to really like to play with the Santa finger puppet.
After lunch Margo went back over to the finger puppets and she said, “Santa,” as she labelled while pointing at the Santa finger puppet.
Ava used problem solving skills to figured out how to turn the penguin finger puppet over and used hand-eye coordination to place her pointer finger inside it. Then she picked it up to see what a good teether it would make.
Leila found the two Reindeer and carried one in each hand. Shannon then recited a Christmas version of, "Brown Bear," with each character puppets she brought in. Leila smiled as Shannon recited the story and got excited with squeals as Shannon passed her the reindeer finger puppet and showed her how it fits on her fingers. Leila liked to transport and gather the finger puppets into a big pile on the floor.
Shannon found the groups of penguins and practiced numeracy with the infants by counting them, one, two, three. Theo copied as he stood up one snowman at a time as Shannon counted them and did the same with the penguins too.
I wonder if the infants would like more activities that involved grouping and numeracy learning?
Melody wonders what the interest would evolve to if we read, “Brown Bear.”
