Adults help facilitate interactions and activities at the Learning Centers.
Art area/writing center/typing center:
This area provides children with opportunities to express creativity, observe cause and effect with a variety of mediums, increase small muscle development, eye-hand coordination, discover colors, shapes, sizes and textures, develop aesthetic appreciation and independent work skills. Children may create stories and write letters and numbers. A typewriter is available for children to explore typing, letters and numbers.
Game table:
Children improve conceptual development and turn taking skills while playing a variety of games.
Puzzles, manipulative toy and game area:
Children express creativity with open ended materials. They match, sort, sequence, seriate and classify materials by color, shape, size and texture. They improve small muscle development, eye-hand coordination and social skills such as turn taking, sharing materials, cooperating while creating, and joining in play activities.
Library/stories on tape/story retelling props/puppets:
Children develop reading readiness skills, build vocabulary and conceptual development, identify roles and relationships people have in stories, listen and participate as a member of a group, and listen to stories being read in a group or individually.
Computer center:
Children become familiar with computers and develop concepts with variety of programs appropriate for their deveopmental level.
Discovery/science area:
Children explore, experiment, hypothesize, question, discover, and develop concepts using real objects.
Math center:
Children develop readiness skills such as rote counting, 1 to 1 correspondence, matching, sorting, patterning, shapes, sizes, quantity, recognize number symbol.
Sand/sensory table/water table:
Children develop sensory awareness with materials such as sand, water, beans, rice, flour, dirt, pasta, oatmeal, etc. They explore and distinguish textures by sifting, pouring, comparing, measuring and experimenting with a variety of materials as well as develop math concepts. During the water activities, children are not allowed to drink the water. If a child has a sore on his/her hand, he/she is not allowed to participate until the sore is healed, to prevent the spread of infectious diseases. Children will wash their hands after playing in the water, sand or other sensory material. When the session is over, the water table is emptied out, sprayed with a bleach solution, air dried and refilled with clean water for the next session.
Dramatic play area:
Children develop creative expression, imagination, role playing skills, problem solving, social interaction skills, small muscle control, eye-hand coordination, and work through problems by reenacting real life experiences.
Large wooden building blocks/wooden unit blocks:
Children design and create structures with the blocks while developing muscle development, eye-hand coordination, conceptual development of size, number, shape, weight, width, and function of the block, and how to work cooperatively with others.
Workbench:
Children experiment and create projects with a variety of materials. They improve small muscle development and eye-hand coordination. Goggles must be worn at all times and an adult must be present.
Musical instrument table:
Children experiment with a variety of instruments to discover how they make sounds and what they sound like combined with other instruments.
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For additional information contact:
Karen Veerhusen-Langerud at veerhuse@grinnell.edu
or (641) 269-3320; 1207 Park Street, Grinnell, IA 50112.
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