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It's getting colder now, and while I will persevere and bundle kids up and go outside, we will likely be spending more time indoors soon. My group tends to end up wrestling each other/running through the room smacking each other if they have too much free play inside. What do you do to fill the time? We have a short attention span for coloring. I'm not much for crafts. We play matching games and things like that at the table sometimes to ground ourselves when it gets to crazy sometimes. I do a little bit of"school" type stuff. Basically, I just don't want to be breaking up wrestling all winter. Help a girl out with some ideas.
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I do centers when it gets like that. 3 choices, everyone picks something and needs to stay with it for 15 minutes. At the end of 15 minutes, they can choose to stay or go to a different center. It works well! Some of our centers are:
Lego's
Lincon logs
Tangrams
Art (could be stickers, water colors, random stuff to "create" with just depends on what I have and how much clean up i want to deal with
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Play doh
Books
Blocks
Dollhouse
Army men sets
Plastic animal set
...basically, I get out the toys that can't come out all the time due to babies or toys they haven't played with in a while. Sometimes I'll change it up and put animals with the lincon logs to encourage different kinds of play.Comment
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We did this today.
Hullabaloo game is a good way to let them move with control.
Animal pretend - have kids act like the animal that you call out.
Basically, anything that gets their gross motor skills moving will help. Their bodies need to move! If we don't provide appropriate ways to channel the energy, it will come out as wrestling and craziness.
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we do "sport exercises" a lot
-walking as a penguin/ duck/ spider/horse
-hopping as a bunny/frog/kangaroo
-marching/tiptoeing/galloping/skipping/running around (they learn how to keep a distance between each other, how do not cut a line...
-beanbags boogie
-freeze dance
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I am really mean "a lot". The kids get sweat and burn out a lot of energy during that activities.Comment
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We do cosmic kids yoga on YouTube.
Simon says
I also cut out shapes and we'll hop to each shape. During Valentines Day I have hearts and we do the "heart hop".
If you put pieces of washi tape on the floor see if they can hop from one piece to the other.
Coloring time
Puzzle time
Dance time
Reading time can be calming.
Sensory bins with oatmeal, ice, snow, rice.
In the winter we bring snow in and paint with watercolors. We also take plastic animals and make them walk through the snow.Comment
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I also take out things that seem to get forgotten up on high shelves so it's like new stuff to them. Twister is great and we modify it somewhat such as 'put your left ear on blue'.
Make tents with blankets and become bears. I 2nd Hulabaloo, a dcf gave us a game and the kids love it! Mirror play enthralls them because we don't do it very often so it's new, exciting, and fun. Hand out magnifying glasses and sea shells or whatever you have, they love it. We make bird feeders once a week during the winter(just empty plastic containers like yogurt, put peanut butter on them, roll in bird seed and tie them to a tree).
I took our counting bears the other day, combined them with a couple small different sets of blocks...they had a blast. Set up an easy obstacle course inside.Comment
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