hyper little one

[mamamanda]

So I have a 3yo dcg who is a little more active than the rest of my group. She is definitely egged on by one of my boys whose last day was today so I expect it to get better, but I'm trying to brainstorm ways to help her during calmer times of the day. She is great when she's outside, but inside play is rough. She is constantly jumping, bouncing, screaming, flipping....very much lacking self control. We have a 20 minute calm down time to do puzzles or read books before nap. She is all over the place. Today I gave her a mat so she could see the designated area and told her if she got off the mat she would go straight to nap. She sat for 2-3 minutes, but started throwing the books she had across the room. I stopped her immediately and reminded of rules for caring for our things. She was up running around the room within minutes so I moved her to her nap mat. I can hear her & partially see her from the reading area with the other kids, but she started jumping around the nap room & throwing toys in there. (nap room doubles as the play room which has been fine until today. ) I had to move her back to her mat 3 times at which point I put on my mean face and dared her to get up again. She glared at me with me staring right back until she gave up & laid down. She was asleep in minutes.
She's always been a bit hyper but the defiant /destructive stuff has only been about 2 weeks now. We start preschool in a week & we do a lot of fun hands on projects /activities, but she will have to be be calm & orderly to participate & I'm not sure what more to do to help her. She gets 2-3 hours of outdoor free play each day so its not like I'm not giving her a chance to run & bounce. How would you go about teaching her to calm herself down?

[Baby Beluga]

I have one who is like this, continue to be firm.

It took a while but every single time she would jump/scream/run/etc inside I told her those actions where not safe inside and she needed to save them for outside. If she continued to do them inside then she needed to play by herself on a rug where she was safe.

What makes her calm down during quiet times is sensory stuff and a stool. Her hands have to be moving, feeling, squeezing, etc. During quite times (free reading, circle, etc) she has a play dough filled balloon and a stress ball filled with dried lavender that she can squeeze as well as a small child size stool she can sit on.
I also make sure she has access to some form of a sensory activity throughout the day - water, sand, beans, etc. Although water is what really makes her calm down; it's like a switch is flipped.

[Febby]

What makes her calm down during quiet times is sensory stuff and a stool. Her hands have to be moving, feeling, squeezing, etc. During quite times (free reading, circle, etc) she has a play dough filled balloon and a stress ball filled with dried lavender that she can squeeze as well as a small child size stool she can sit on.
I also make sure she has access to some form of a sensory activity throughout the day - water, sand, beans, etc. Although water is what really makes her calm down; it's like a switch is flipped.

This. I've had several wild kids over the years who will calm down with sensory. There are a couple that I hand a sensory bottle to at circle times and story times.