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! :)

Tot School

M is 35 months old.

I felt really behind all week, nothing was planned (and I am nothing if not a Planner), and both M and I were a little cranky.  Sigh.  Motherhood isn’t always pretty I guess.  Anyway, we did only a few things…

We played with M’s foam bath numbers and he matched the number to the correct pile of erasers that I set up:

He did this pretty well, with only a little guidance from me.  We switched it and he put the number of erasers down next to the appropriate foam number (does that make sense??)

One day he wanted to “do school” when I wasn’t able to, so he got out the little erasers, a pair of tongs, and a bowl from the kitchen and did this all on his own :

 

I found a copy of the Moveable Alphabet here, printed it out and put it in our pocket chart (from Target dollar spot – you knew I’d mention it at least once, didn’t you?!).  Then M matched up his letters from his See and Spell.  I thought he would have fun putting things in the pocket chart, but he really was not all that interested.  I do think I’ll try it again though, it could’ve just been that we had a bad attitude all week. ;)

M matched paper clips to colored pieces of cardstock.  He did great with getting them on this time, something he’s really had a hard time with in the past:

 

He did some scissor practice using the pages I printed from here:

We did a dolphin puzzle, which was a real struggle… I know he can do this puzzle, he just lost interest halfway through.  I made him finish it, but I’m really not sure why.  Normally if he isn’t having fun we just skip something. 

We made a blue, yellow, blue, yellow pattern with his blocks.  I did this with him and kept asking “what comes next?” and he kind of got it eventually, I think.

We finished up with an activity that’s always fun and puts both of us in a good mood.  We got out his songbook and we played his instruments and sang several songs.  You can’t see his box of instruments in this picture; we have a harmonica, a triangle, a shaker bottle (pictured), jingle bells, tambourine, and the bowl and wooden spoon (pictured) that he uses like a drum. 

I’m hoping to make next week a little more fun and interesting!  I hope you all had wonderful weeks with your tots!!

Have a beautiful day! :)

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! :)

Tot School

M is 35 months old

I am finding myself wondering a lot lately if M knows I started a blog. He is constantly asking to do “school”! So much so that I’m having a hard time keeping up with him and finding new and interesting things for him to do. Thank goodness for all the other great blogs that link up to Tot School and their great ideas!

Here’s what we did this week:

We made a Cheerio bird feeder by stringing Cheerios onto a pipe cleaner and then forming it into a circle.

Then we hung it up in the tree outside M’s bedroom window:

It only took a couple of hours and there was a blue jay pecking away at it. It was completely stripped of Cheerios within a few days and we found the bare pipe cleaner on the ground. I’d call it a success, and we’ll definitely make one again.

I made a pattern with his blocks and he tried to copy it. He did pretty good, with just a slight mistake (can you see it?):

I created some cutting strips for him using stickers to help guide him. I got this great idea here. He knew exactly what to do and followed the lines almost perfectly. I knew he could cut well, but I didn’t expect him to do so well with this. He can cut a straight line no problem, apparently. I’m working on some new ones with wavy lines to give him a new challenge.

He also surprised me with this matching game:

You match up an enlarged detail of the birds to the full version (hope that makes sense). It is more challenging than a simple picture-to-picture match. But he caught on right away and did a great job!

We reviewed things that start with B from our ABC book:

And did a little Baseball Size Sorting from our ABC book too:

He is still loving the flannel board activities so we did one with numbers. It’s great for number recognition. I got the patterns and the idea from here.

Then we did Old MacDonald Had a Farm (patterns from here):

I left all the flannel board sets out and found him later playing with it this way:

It made me very happy to see this because I’ve been making felt sets for him since he was tiny (that’s how he learned his shapes, in fact), and it’s gratifying to see him finally enjoying them!

Hope you all had a great week of Tot School too!

For more ideas, see the 1+1+1=1 blog!

Have a beautiful day!