Sunday, September 27, 2009

Tot School – Sept. 27, 2009

Tot School

M is 37 Months old

This week we began our autumn theme! I’m very excited about all the great activities and learning tools available with this theme.

We did a little normal school stuff too – that first…

We did our ABC train in the pocket chart again. Right away, when M saw me setting it up, he said, “I don’t want to do that, I didn’t do so good with it”. :( I told him that we were going to do it a different way this time and that he would do great. I sorted the train cars out on the floor by color, blog pics 010 and then told M which letter we needed and which color group it was with. Each color had only 4 to 5 cards, so it was really simple for him to find the one we needed. He did great! blog pics 013 His favorite part was after the train was put together. He grabbed two pencils and we pointed to each letter while we sang the ABC song. I’ve got to remember to always set him up for success while still challenging him. It went so much better this week and he felt much better about his abilities than he did last week.

I made some dots on colored paper for him and he drew lines to connect them and make simple shapes. The inspiration for this activity was this post.blog pics 002 He did well with this and was excited to draw shapes, but we sure need to work on that tripod grasp a lot! Later in the day he cut his shapes out. :)

We did our weather chart, which has been sorely neglected the past few months:blog pics 026

M practiced his sawing. :) He lined up his blocks and sawed them apart, one by one (making all the appropriate chainsaw noises – you did know that’s a chainsaw, right?) : blog pics 021 You can see we aren’t getting very far on the road to cleaning one thing up before starting another. Sigh.

For our autumn theme, we did a sort of circle time activity a few days this week. First, we talked about all four seasons, and what changes take place during each one. I found these great seasonal clothing cards at Montessori for Everyone, and we set them up on the pocket chart and talked about them. I plan to use these at some point for sorting too. blog pics 033 I put different colored star stickers on the backs of these so when we sort them M will be able to tell if he sorted them all correctly on his own (blue star for summer, purple for winter, green for spring, orange for fall). blog pics 035

I found some fun seasonal clipart at Kizclub and we sorted them out onto colored paper. Green for spring, blue for summer, orange for fall, and red for winter. M did pretty well with this. He had a little trouble with summer and spring items, but in my opinion some of them were a little confusing.blog pics 002

M hung up fall window clings in his room:blog pics 015

We played our autumn tic tac toe game:blog pics 023

And we read some library books about autumn (see reviews here and here):blog pics 032

We learned this fun seasons song (click on image to go to web page):4 seasons song

And I taught M this little poem…

Two little eyes to look at God,

Two little ears to hear His word,

Two little lips to sing His praise,

Two little feet to walk His ways.

Two little hands to do His will,

and one little heart to love Him still.

I’m not sure who wrote this, it is in one of M’s baby books. I’m trying to bring something more about faith/religion into our time together on a more daily basis. We pray at mealtimes and bedtime, read Bible stories, and do our (somewhat sporadic) Sunday School lessons, but I feel he’s ready for more than that.

I hope you all had wonderful weeks with your tots! Check here for more tot school ideas.

Have a beautiful day! :)

19 comments:

  1. Great activities! I like how you made the cards self checking. Love his lumberjackness (with the chainsaw).

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  2. I really like how he drew the shapes by connecting the dots. I'm going to give that a try.

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  3. I love the seasonal sorting activity and the poem too! You had a great week :0)

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  4. What a great week! I feel like such a slacker because we really let Tot School slide this week.

    I love how you scaffolded the ABC game for him. It's SO important to set them up for success, like you said, but sometimes it can be tricky, to. You do such a great job of it though!

    Love the weather board! I think Maddie would really enjoy something like that!

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  5. I LOVE the tic tac toe game! I saw it when you posted earlier and didnt get to comment. I am making DH buy us a new print cartridge today so we can play it this week. Thank you for sharing it :)

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  6. I love the weather board and the seasonal sorting activities. Thanks for the links!

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  7. Looks like a great week! I'd never thought to play tic-tac-toe with D but I am sure that he would love it.

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  8. Love the idea of setting him up for success!!! So true!!!

    I found those very same seasonal cards over at Montessori for Everyone. I JUST made a file folder game with them yesterday!!! I also found a few other goodies on their site that I was planning to post about this week!

    Thank you again for your encouraging words. I really appreciate it!!!

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  9. Wow, what a great week you had. I love the tic tac toe game and the daily weather. thanks for the wonderful ideas.

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  10. What a great poem/song at the end of your post. I think I'll use that with my 15 month old daughter as we teach her body parts. Thanks!

    http://rogersfamilycircus.blogspot.com/

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  11. Wonderful activities. I've got those Montessori Seasons cards too which I plan to use for our up coming Spring theme. I love the seasons clip art. Thanks for the link and all the nice ideas.

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  12. Great week!! I need to get a weather chart like that in use around here---especially since the snow will be flying soon!

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  13. You had so many great activities this week! I love the Montessori Season cards, the autumn tic tac toe, and the drawing the shapes. So many fun ideas!

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  14. Fun week! I'm going to try that "connect the dots" activity with anni. Thanks!

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  15. I loved your activities, games and songs. Anna loves connect-the-dots. In fact, she plays it by herself - she randomly puts the dots on the paper and then connects them. No wonder that her drawings are mostly very... umm... abstract :) The picture of Matthew sawing cracked me up - so funny.

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  16. I am having such a great time surfing your blog. You have so many neat ideas that I know Izzie would love! The weather chart is amazing! You'll be seeing that soon on my blog!

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  17. This is Katie from Katie's Nesting Spot. I went ahead and added your seasonal sorts to tomorrow's post. I hope you don't mind. Let me know if this not permissible and I'll remove them. I included two pictures and direct linked to this post. You are credited.

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  18. THANK YOU! I was serching for something like the 4 differant colors of paper and the sorting pictures for the seasons and I couldn't find anything and I was so frustrated! I'm adding this site to my weeks lesson plan:) Thank you!

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  19. Melissa - You are very welcome! Thanks for stopping by! :)

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