Tot School

M is 36 months old

Despite having a crazy-busy week, we were able to slow down enough for an occasional tot school activity. Here’s a little of what we did…

It’s been raining a lot here lately, and M loves to open the windows and feel the rain and talk about it. He actually went out to play in the rain twice, but his silly mama forgot to take any pictures.

He watched Daddy plug a hole in one of the tires of our truck, then pump more air into it. This was fascinating for M.

We found some moon sand at the Dollar Tree. I was really excited about this because I’ve been wanting to get some for M, but it just seemed so expensive for… sand. At the dollar store it’s called Magic Sand. :)

I made a new flannel board set – have you ever heard Raffi’s song about the Little White Duck? That’s what this is based on. I found the pattern here. I’m telling you, Matthew LOVES his flannel board. He is so into it I’m going to have to do a separate post about it.

I printed out this hot air balloon and gave M some m&ms to put on it. He loved this of course. He is such an m&m kid. I got the idea from Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns.

I also printed these “magnet pages” and M practiced one-to-one correspondence by putting glass pebbles on them. I did not think this was the most original idea ever, it was just something we did on the spur of the moment. However, it was one of M’s favorite activities that day.

We used our pocket chart to do some ABC matching:

More matching with this heart matching game, from Childcareland.com:

I used these dog pictures for another game. I put 4 different dogs on the tray (these are magnets, and we used a cookie sheet to stick them on), and we talked about them. Then he would close his eyes and I would take one away. When he opened his eyes he would try to remember which one was missing. I think this was a good idea, but it was a little too difficult for M. I’m going to try the same thing using other items some time soon.

M practiced his fine motor skills with some lacing cards:

And practiced his scissor skills too. Does anyone recognize this scissor practice printable? I can’t recall where I found them. I added the stickers to help guide him.

My favorite activity this week (and M liked it too, but I don’t think it was his *favorite*) was this:

I used foam stickers to make these, and M had to recreate the shape combinations that I had stuck to the bottom portion of the grids. I got the idea here; click to see the full tutorial. He did great with this, and I was so proud! It is not as easy at it looks because he had to determine which shape was on the bottom and then place the second shape on top of it.

I hope you all had a great week of tot school! Go here to get more ideas from other tot schooling moms!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Art Time! Roller Shapes Painting

I found the inspiration for this art project in a post that Michelle wrote at her blog.  (She and Emily did something similar to this with chenille pipe cleaners glued to cardboard tubes.)

Here’s what you need:

• Cardboard paper towel tube
• Fun foam shape stickers
• paint in colors of child’s choice
• paper to paint on
• paper, paint tray, plastic cutting board, or *something* similar to roll the paint out on.  We used newsprint, but in the future I will use our plastic cutting board because paint just soaked into our newsprint and I felt like we wasted quite a bit.  You could use a smooth sheet of aluminum foil too!

Begin by peeling the backing off the stickers and let your little one put them on the cardboard tube wherever they want to.  Make sure they get stuck on firmly; they have a tendency to peel up at the corners.

Put your paint in “globs” on whatever you are going to roll it out on.  At first we were going to use a plate, but quickly saw that wouldn’t work, so we painted the paint from the plate onto our newsprint and spread it out a little with paintbrushes.  I didn’t get a good picture of this, but you can see it in the picture below.

Roll your tube through the paint a few times, then put it on your paper and roll it out:

Keep doing this until you are happy with your art.  If you are so happy doing it that you want your mama to tear off 2 more sheets of freezer paper for you to paint on, then so be it. ;) 

M made 3 beautiful shape paintings. Here’s #2:

(The # 3 painting became a little murky and then the hands got involved, and then there were really no shapes to photograph, so it didn’t make the cut for this post. :)  )

And, when he was at the sink cleaning up, he said, “I really loved painting today, Mommy!!”  And that made my heart swell. 

Have a beautiful day! :)

P.S. I am so pleased that ABC and 123 featured one of M’s favorite craft projects ever!  His cute Summer Sunshine.  I’m excited because every kid that sees it in our home wants to make one too (must be the handprints!), and I’m so glad to be able to share it!