Tot School – Oct. 4, 2009

 M is 37 months old

We had a very laid back week.  I am working on getting some tot trays / workbox-type things set up that M can work on independently throughout the week, but they are a work in process and nothing is where I want it to be yet. 
M surprised me by finding things to do on his own this week anyway – most of which were never captured on camera.  He strung beads and pasta, played with his Lite Brite, laced up some lacing cards, and played with some of his favorite flannel board sets.  My husband had Monday off, and they played Bingo, tried playing checkers, and read a lot of books together.  They also got out their binoculars and did a little out-the-window bird watching.  Here they are mommy-watching :)
Tuesday was an absolutely glorious fall day and we ventured outside (with the binoculars of course).  M grabbed his “nature basket” and trotted off:
You can see our yard is still mostly green.  There is one tiny patch of leaves turning colors in an oak tree: I’ve been hoping to gather up some beautiful leaves for an autumn leaf identification project, but Mother Nature is not cooperating with me.  Actually I should be happy that the leaves aren’t turning yet, it means winter is still a little ways off.  M grabbed a branch blown down by the wind gusts we’ve been having and tried his best to knock some leaves down for me.
No luck, so he started building with some logs -
Another look around with the binoculars(by the way, I got these at Target for $1.00 – awesome deal!) :
We did do some fun school stuff inside too, continuing with the autumn theme…
We learned a new poem and a new song.  I found both at preschooleducation.com.  The song (to the tune of “The Farmer in the Dell”):

The leaves are falling down,
The leaves are falling down,
Red, yellow, orange and brown,
The leaves are falling down.

And the poem, which M absolutely LOVED and did over and over again…

5 little leaves so bright and gay
Were dancing about on a tree one day.
The wind came blowing through the town,
And one little leaf came tumbling down.
(Continue with the remaining 4 leaves)

We did this with 5 silk craft leaves (Dollar Tree!).  I held them up, made them dance around, then M was the wind and blew and I would let one fall.  This was a huge hit!  He then held the leaves and I blew them, then he asked for all the craft leaves, and his silly mama gave them to him and eventually this happened:
Look closely and you can see a couple of them still in mid-air. :)
We also tried  doing these harvest pattern strips from filefolderfun.com:
He is just not *getting* patterns at all.  So I gave up and made it into a quick file folder matching game to put on a tot tray for him.  There are several more pattern strips, these two are just the ones we tried doing.
We did a fun autumn matching game – played concentration style.  He did great with this.  I can tell he is really starting to get better at the memory games.  The cards were printed from DLTK.
We also did a flannel board story about the Little Red Hen (I associate it with harvest time).  This set was found here:

And we made a cute autumn wreath:

That’s it for us for this week!  I so enjoyed taking it easy and not trying to fit too much in.  We both had more fun just being together. :) 

Check out what other moms are doing with their tots here!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Our Flannel Board – part 1

 

M just LOVES our flannel board.  I’m sure you already know this, because I’ve said it on this blog about 20 times already. ;) 

The flannel board has become such a big part of our day lately - “school” time and just playtime too – that I want to share a few things about it – including how I made our board, the different ways I make the felt sets, which felt sets we have, and how we use them.

Since we have about 20 different felt sets, with lots of ideas for more, this is going to have to be a series of posts.  I hope it gives you some great ideas!

To make our flannel board, I used a large piece of foam core board from Michael’s (2’ x 3’, I think).  Some people choose to use a heavier material such as plywood, but I wanted ours to be lightweight and easy to transport since we move it around the house, or sometimes put it away.  M was very small when I first made our flannel board and I didn’t want him to get hit in the head with something heavy, should he pull it over on him (our board is not attached to the wall in any way, it just leans up against it).

I bought 1/2 yard of blue flannel and attached it to the foam core board.  To cover the board, simply pretend you are wrapping a present, then secure the fabric to the back of the board with glue or duct tape.  I used white duct tape and it has held up fine for over 2 years now.  It is not very *pretty* on the back, but we never see that side and easy means more to me than pretty does for something like this!

I also found an 8” x 10” piece of corrugated cardboard, and used some leftover flannel to make a smaller version that we take with us on car trips:

The first felt set I made for M was a group of simple shapes in different sizes.  He was less than 1 year old and had fun simply manipulating them, sticking them in his mouth (bleck!), and trying to make them stick to the flannel board.  We had them out all the time and made fun geometric designs with them: I repeated the names of the shapes for him, and sometimes the colors, over and over while he picked them up and did whatever he wanted with them.  He knew the names of all the shapes pictured within a few weeks.  Sometimes we used them to talk about soft versus hard.

The next set pictured is what I refer to as our “miscellaneous set” – it’s a little bit of everything.  I found many of the templates in Flannel Board Stories for Infants and Toddlers, by Ann Carlson, which I picked up at our local library.  Some of the printed pictures were found on various pages of the DLTK-kids.com site.

These were just for fun since M was still so little, and are things that M found interesting – a car, an airplane, a school bus, a semi-trailer, a little boy with clothes you can change, and a couple of puppies.

This is a good point to discuss the various ways of making felt sets.  Most of these were simply made by drawing or tracing with felt tip pens right onto the felt pieces, then cutting them out. You can use all colors of felt-tip markers, but make sure they are permanent markers, so the colors don’t bleed if they should happen to get wet.

To make the puppies and similar picture-pieces, I printed the pictures onto regular paper and cut them out.  I then put a thin layer of white glue on the entire back of the picture and placed them on a piece of felt.  A heavy book on top made sure they stayed flat as the glue dried; once it was completely dry, I cut it out along the edge of the picture.  This is one of my favorite methods – it’s just so easy to do, and the felt pieces hold up very well.

If you find pictures online that you would like to use, another great way to make them is to print them out, laminate them, and hot glue a piece of sandpaper to the back.  Sometimes the rough part of velcro works too, but I have had better luck with sandpaper; and the rougher the better.  This is easy to do and the pieces stay in great shape, but they are not quite as much fun for little fingers to play with as felt is.

{I sometimes copy a black and white picture into my computer’s “paint” program to color it before printing it out to use this way.  Of course, you could also color them with markers or crayons before laminating them.}

Fabric stabilizer sheets also work for use on the flannel board.  These color well with colored pencils or crayons – simply draw, color, and cut out the piece you want.  The stabilizer is rough enough to stick on the flannel board by itself.

In the next flannel board post I’ll share some of our other sets, and how I keep them organized, as well as the different things we do with them!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Tot School – Sept. 6, 2009

M is 36 months old.

Tot School is just becoming more and more fun (for both of us) as we go along. This week M kept saying “That was fun!”, “I’m having fun!”, and various similar exclamations at random times. I hope he meant it and wasn’t just trying to talk himself into it!

In winter we were in the routine of doing something with the sensory tub almost every day. I’d let him pick lentils, rice, noodles, or whatever each day and he’d basically play with his little cars or little people in it while I had a little Mama-quiet-time in the mornings. You know, time to pray, read, actually put two thoughts together in a row, or simply sit and stare at the wall. :)

For some reason I never tried hiding things in the tub for him. This post from Jolanthe made me change my mind. So I grabbed his letters from his See and Spell and hid them in some rice. There wasn’t enough rice, so I mixed the lentils and pasta in too. Who says the sensory tub should only have one sensory experience in it at a time?

This is how he started – looking for the letters:
But it quickly turned into this:
I guess old habits die hard. We did get a lot of rice and lentils and noodles on the floor, but it was vacuuming day anyway, so I wasn’t too worried. Plus, it’s always fun to give him the dustbuster and make him vacuum with it. The dustbuster could keep this kid occupied all day if the battery didn’t run out. :)
I made up some new activity bags over the weekend; I was really excited about them. First, sandpaper and yarn (I’ve seen this on a lot of blogs, but first read about it in The Toddler’s Busy Book, by Trish Kufner).
It was not a big hit at all; apparently it was very boring:
So, we did a little scissor practice. I’m still trying to figure out where I first found these pages to print. I need to print out some that are a little more difficult, because M did these perfectly this time! He just loves cutting!
Then we did this little book from the Mailbox (June issue, I believe). It is a book about a seed that gets planted, then sprouts, grows a stem, gets leaves, and finally flowers into a sunflower. On each page M had to pick the correct picture to glue on, depending on the stage of the plant. He did fine with this, but wasn’t really “into” it, and didn’t want to color it.
Next we played checkers. Rather, we tried to play checkers. I know, I know, this is way too advanced for him and I was way too impatient to keep explaining it to him. BUT he has been asking for a checkers game since he saw a picture of one in a magazine.
This is how far we got before we both gave up:
Another activity bag I made up for him was these foam shapes. I cut slits in them and you can fit them together to create… well a bunch of shapes that fit together. :)
He loved this activity, although it didn’t really turn out like I hoped it would. I think the slits should’ve been shorter.
Another activity bag I made him was this “Silly Critter” game from the most recent issue of our High-Five magazine. I put magnets on the back and we used a pan to match up heads, bodies, and legs to make “silly critters”. We both liked this one!

We used our animal flashcards from Target for a matching game with M’s little zoo animals:

He did his name puzzles with milk jug lids (always a favorite!):
This is our newest addition to the flannel board – 10 in the Bed (found here):
He LOVED it and did it several times that evening with Daddy. Again, I have to get a post done about how great the flannel board is and all the things we do with it. Soon, I hope!
We read this GREAT book – Clap Your Hands, by Lorinda Cauley . It has activities on every page that the child (and the mama) can act out. It is a huge hit!
Then, in keeping with the actions theme, we did these movement cards* from Sparklebox. I put them in our pocket chart and M turned each one over, then we did whatever it said. They are fantastic – there are ones for balance that you do standing in one place; some you do while “traveling”, like skipping; and some you do on the floor, like rolling like a pencil or somersaulting. (There were others, but they were a little advanced; I only printed the ones I knew would be fun for M.) I was hot by the time we finished and even a little bit sweaty I am embarrassed to say, hee hee. These will definitely give you your exercise for the day!
Here’s M at the end of his somersault (I did NOT do a somersault), I love the goofy expression on his face!
For more great Tot School ideas, go here.
Have a beautiful day! :)
*I got the idea to do movement cards like this in the pocket chart from somebody’s blog and I wish I could remember who!! If it was you, please let me know and I’ll add your link. I decided to use the movement cards from Sparklebox, but there were some others available too, and they were linked on the other blog, so I’d like to share them!!

Tot School!

M is 35 months old.

Whew, what a busy week! I’m having a hard time weeding out tot school photos, because I have about 30 of them! Here are the ones showing the most fun…

We played a game of “what’s different? / What’s the same?” with his toy cars one day. I’d put 3 of them together (2 vans and 1 racecar, or 2 blue cars and 1 red car), and he’d have to figure out which one was different and why the other 2 were the same. The tongs were his idea, not mine. :)

He did his name puzzles with milk jug lids. I finally got around to making ones that say “Mommy” and “Daddy” for him. He just loves these:

Pattern blocks and pattern cards:

He asked to do something with “baby” letters (lowercase), which had me very excited, because he hasn’t shown much interest in them, and has been a little confused. Calling them mama letters and baby letters has helped, silly as it seems. So, we grabbed his ABC poster (Dollar Tree), and his See and Spell letters, and matched them up. He did great with this:

Then we lined them up and sang the ABC song a couple of times. He thought it was neat that we could do that, I guess we’ve never done it before.

Then we got out the See and Spell boards and worked on them for a while.

Here’s an ABC uppercase and lowercase matching file folder game we did. We only did the first half of the alphabet and then he was ready to quit. You can find this here.

We did his favorite truck puzzle cards (Dollar Tree again!):

We bought some $1.00 animal flashcards from Target (2 sets) and used them for a matching game. I loved the pictures on these, and went back to buy the insect and American animals ones.

More matching – this time with his toy cars and a color wheel:

It quickly turned into a parking lot. :)

We played with our Target dollar spot marble run:

Sticker book:

We matched up ladybug designs on the flannel board:

Outside time – getting treasures out of a giant ice cube:

Blowing lots of bubbles right in Mommy’s face:

And playing with his new sand/water toy:

Whew! Hope you had a busy and FUN Tot School week too!!

Have a beautiful day! :)