Gumdrop Daycare

Gumdrop Daycare Dog friendly, non-religious private dayhome center with preschool programming for 0-6 yr olds. Flexible hours for your schedule.

03/23/2026

This activity may look like simple play, but it’s laying the foundation for future writing. Every grasp, pinch, and controlled movement is strengthening the small muscles in their hands and fingers—skills they’ll need to hold a pencil, control pressure, and form letters later on

They’re also building hand-eye coordination, focus, and the ability to move with intention—all key pieces of early literacy development.

From the grasp to building a recognition of different shades of each color this activity can be used for multiple different ages in a variety of ways.

Moments like these grow confidence too. When toddlers practice these skills through play, writing won’t feel frustrating—it will feel familiar

03/21/2026

It may not look like Spring outside, but it does inside 🌱🌼

Stay tuned for when I finally video the outdoor space! We're in the process of building some new things for the kiddos so once that's done we'll be ready to unveil!

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03/20/2026

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03/19/2026

Today we explored Las Fallas, a vibrant festival from Valencia, Spain 🇪🇸 where communities come together to create beautiful sculptures (called “fallas”) and celebrate with fire, art, and tradition.

For our little learners here, experiences like this help build early cultural awareness and appreciation for the world around them. Through hands-on play, artwork, fire exploration, and storytelling, toddlers begin to understand that people celebrate in many different ways—and that diversity is something to be curious about and proud of

Activities like this also support fine motor skills, imagination, and social development as children work together, create, and explore new ideas.

Learning goes beyond ABCs—it’s about raising kind, open-minded, and globally aware little humans.

03/18/2026

This simple pom-pom transfer activity is doing so much more than it looks like! Using tweezers to pick up and place the soft pom poms and the harder gems helps toddlers strengthen their pincer grasp, which is an important pre-writing skill. As they carefully move each piece, they’re also building hand-eye coordination, concentration, and fine motor control.

Matching and placing the colors along the rainbow encourages early color recognition, problem-solving, and patience while making learning playful and engaging. Hands-on activities like this help toddlers develop the skills they’ll use for writing, self-care tasks, and everyday independence.

Education through play is always the goal.

03/18/2026

This St. Patrick’s Day number matching activity had the toddlers using math cubes to match the number on each card.

As they count out each cube, children practice one-to-one correspondence, number recognition, and early counting skills. Stacking and placing the cubes also strengthens fine motor development, hand-eye coordination, and problem-solving as they figure out how many cubes they need.

Hands-on learning like this makes math visual, tactile, and meaningful for toddlers while keeping it fun and engaging.

03/18/2026

For a child under 2 to have the focus and skill to create this train precisely along the edge is absolutely wicked! Of course driving it was a mission, but the excitement at building a "real" train was so fun to see. Yes shortly after they derailed but the smile after the build was complete was everything!

03/17/2026

Rainbow Color Recognition 🌈

03/17/2026

Decorating our very own leprechauns and practicing cutting lines on their beards with scissors was a hit. Activities like this may look simple, but they support so many important developmental skills.

Fine motor development – Using scissors strengthens the small muscles in their hands and fingers, helping prepare them for writing, drawing, and everyday self-help skills.

Hand-eye coordination – Following the lines while cutting helps children coordinate what they see with how their hands move.

Focus and problem solving – The children practiced concentration as they carefully opened and closed the scissors and figured out how to stay on the line.
Creativity and independence – Decorating their leprechauns allowed them to make their own choices and express their ideas through art.

Activities like this build confidence, patience, and important early learning skills — all while having fun celebrating a little bit of St. Patrick’s Day magic! We had a little one hit a huge milestone of using one hand to cut today after a week of refusing and wanting to cut with two hands. A huge step that I couldn't be prouder of 🥹

03/17/2026

Inviting the toddlers to stack “gold” coins on the leprechaun’s hat while counting how many they could balance is such a fun activity. It turned quite competitive today! What looks like simple play is actually packed with important developmental learning.

Fine motor development – Carefully placing and balancing the coins strengthens the small muscles in their hands and fingers, which supports future skills like writing, cutting, and self-help tasks.

Early math skills – As we counted each coin, the children practiced one-to-one correspondence, number recognition, and early problem solving.

Focus and coordination – Stacking coins requires patience, hand-eye coordination, and concentration as they figure out how to keep the tower from falling.

Language development – We talked about “more,” “less,” “how many,” and “tall,” building vocabulary through play.

Play-based learning allows toddlers to explore concepts naturally while staying engaged and confident in their abilities. And of course… the excitement when the tower stayed standing was priceless!

03/16/2026

This activity was all about exploring, experimenting, and letting curiosity lead the way. The kiddos practiced fine motor skills, concentration, and creativity while discovering something new through play. It’s always amazing to watch how naturally children learn when they’re given the space to explore.

12/05/2025

We had a hungry dinosaur today! 🦖

Fostering letter recognition in toddlers is crucial because it's the bedrock for reading and writing, building phonemic awareness (connecting letters to sounds), boosting vocabulary, developing fine motor skills for writing, enhancing cognitive functions like memory, and predicting future academic success, making them more confident and prepared for school. It bridges the gap between spoken words and the written symbols that represent them.

I don't usually show how the kids actually play with the setups because I'm usually hands on (and privacy) but today we just had my own two boys so I figured I'd show a little snippet!

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