Seeds of Extension Announcement

Posted by on Oct 29, 2016 in All Posts, QIP, Seeds of Extension Project | 0 comments

Seeds of Extension - A Two Wishes Child Care project to strengthen children, families, and community.

Hello everyone!

Throughout the duration of the Two Wishes Child Care program, we have sent home puzzles, games, and art activities for children to do at their homes. We have finally formalized this project into the Seeds of Extension. Each month, an activity extending learning on one or more of our themes will be sent home with families. The Seeds of Extension project is free to full-time clients and is currently funded through tuition payments, but our hope is that eventually we will be able to secure local grants that will assist us in sending home high quality free extension activities to all of our clients. Part-time and drop-in clients will be able to purchase the Seeds of Extension projects at cost.

Seeds of Extension Project – October

The Seeds of Extension project in October is an 8.5″ x 11″ magnetic felt/flannel board valued at $5. In our program we use a large 20″ x 27″ magnetic felt board throughout the day in a variety of ways as well as personal felt boards. The children always have fun with felt!

seeds-of-extension-october-felt-board

Felt boards are a tool used in early childhood education to help children:

  • develop early literacy narrative skills wherein they create their own stories or retell stories they’ve already heard
  • motivate children to think that reading books is fun by coupling felt board characters and pieces with print stories
  • maintain interest in story time by allowing them to move felt pieces as the reader tells the story
  • build visual literacy, an important technological skill
  • retain more information as they visually see the story take place on the felt board
  • learn and practice social skills by visually acting out different circumstances on the board
  • experience a story or learning opportunity through multiple senses
  • develop skills outside of early literacy such as letter and number recognition, pattern recognition, matching and sorting, cause and effect, problem solving

How Do You Use It?

Throughout the time that your child is in care at our program, we will be making our own felt board pieces to send home and sending home information about ways to use your felt board. There are several ways to make the felt boards accessible to your children. With their magnetic back, place the felt boards:

  • on a metal door
  • on a kitchen appliance like a refrigerator or dishwasher
  • on a magnetic white board
  • on cookie sheets like the one in our below picture (Wilton Small Cookie Pan) to use as mobile felt stations or even put it in a vehicle for play during car trips
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Children placed different orange and black shapes on felt boards recently to make Jack O’Lanterns as a quiet time activity.

You can easily make your own felt board sets. Any item can be turned into a felt board piece by affixing sandpaper or the rough part of velcro to the back of the item. Flat items work better and can be layered. Felt will stick to itself.

Many felt board sets are also available for sale online (such as at Amazon, Etsy) or at teacher education stores. Periodically they can be found at local stores like Target or Walmart.

Further Reading

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