At RisingOaks Early Learning St. Nicholas, the children have come across a large snow fall in the new year. Many children observe the snow fall and would make comments such as, “It’s snowing,” and “It’s so white outside,” while others made connections to popular stories such “Jack Frost” and ‘Frosty the snowman.” The second week of January came and it was finally time for winter gross motor activities.
The toddler educators took the children to the back of the school which has a small hill. Some of the children ran up the hill while others wanted to create snow angels on the snow. Wyatt, Luca, Ben, Julia and Alex would run down the hill and even slid on their bums and knees to get a full experience of the snow hill. Luca and Nathan decided they were going to roll down the hill, and upon this, Nathan found some ice on the hill that allowed him to slide more effectively. He gathered up his peers and made sure to share his new discovery, encouraging them to slide down on this part of the hill. The children would slide on their stomachs and would laugh when they would get to the bottom of the hill. The following day, the children showed excitement upon hearing they would use the sleds. The children would take their sleds and approach the small hill in their playground. They would ask each other if they could push one another down the hill. The children would problem solve on how to help their peers and giving them a larger push, laughing with each other and ask, “Is that fun?” On the other days, the children would walk around with their sled in hand and ask a peer, “Do you want to sit and I pull you?” The children would allow their peers to have a ride on the sled and enjoy the nice cold breeze.
Through this repetitive play, the children were able to enhance their social development, emotional development, as well as physical development through exploring snow and experiencing appropriate gross motor activities for them. For social development the children would observe their peers and take turns as well as engage in short group activities. With emotional development they would express their emotions, such as excitement, while having fun or expressing they do not like it this type of activity, as well as self regulation as they would focus on the activity making choices and avoiding distractions. For physical development they were able to demonstrate walking and running down the hill working their large muscles and strengthening their balance.
Overall, we will continue to support our children by implementing different types of gross motor activities in our program and adding different types of activities that will allow them to problem solve.
