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!

ABC Book – Letter F

We have been concentrating on the letter F the last few days. Our library (and I’m sure all libraries have these books or similar ones) has a good selection of simple books about letters and their sounds. We read this one in particular:

It was OK, not the best plot ever, lol, but it did a good job of getting the /f/ sound across.

{If you are wondering why we aren’t going in alphabetical order with our ABC book, it’s because I am too lazy and I’m doing the easy ones first – consonants that normally only have one sound. And we skipped “D” because a small “d” is too similar to a small “b” and I don’t want M to get confused. He hasn’t quite gotten down the “big letter/ little letter” thing. (We call them mama letters and baby letters sometimes – it seems to help!)}
 
Links to the .pdf files for the activity pages are listed at the bottom of this post. If you download them and use them, I’d love to see pictures and hear what you’ve done with them! You don’t have to make an ABC book, you can use them to work on math skills, just for fun, or whatever!

I tried something new this time – instead of just using cardstock, I used a file folder and punched holes in it so it will fit into our binder. It works pretty well and I think I’ll continue to do this with the other letters. It’s nice to be able to take it out of the binder in one piece in order to work on it, instead of taking several pages out.
So here are some pictures of our F pages in our book:
First, our craft page (it’s certainly not original, but feathers are always fun!) – Feathers for F of course:

Then we had a pocket full of things that begin with F:

And then we had a pocket of F songs. The pocket is downloadable at the bottom of this post, and the songs came from the DLTK site, which I love and use quite often. You can find the songs here.

I made a miniature fishes in the fishbowl counting game with a spinner:

A pocket of Flowers to color (these are laminated so M can color them over and over again with his Crayola Window Markers):
And finally, some Frogs to sort by size – Big, Medium, and Small:
M loved the frogs. I guess I forgot to take a picture of him sorting them. His favorite part was naming the “f” pictures and coloring the flowers. He was really interested in the fishbowl game, but lost interest pretty quickly. He didn’t seem interested in the songs, but a couple of days later he started asking me to sing them for him again and now he is singing them himself!

Here are the links to the various files. I’ve listed them separately in case there is only one or two that you would like to use:

Fishbowl game and pocket
Frog Size sorting: frogs, mats, and pocket
Color the Flowers: cards and pocket
F Songs: pocket only
The links to the songs are:
Letter F Song
Do You Know the Flower Man?
A Fishy or a Frog
Enjoy!
Have a beautiful day! :)

Art time – Ice paints

Several weeks ago I made ice cubes in our freezer using water and some tempera paints. I planned to let M paint with them outside some hot summer day. And then I totally forgot about them. I found them a couple of days ago and brought them out for him. It ended up being one of the most fun activities we’ve done in quite a while.
I put some newsprint out on the patio, in case he wanted to paint with them. Well, first he experimented with them, watching them melt in the sun. Then he put some in his little wading pool and watched them float around. Luckily that water was pretty cold so they didn’t melt in there. He brought them back to the patio and moved them around on the paper for a while, and made this:
Then apparently inspiration struck, because he grabbed a paintbrush, dipped it into the puddles of icy paint and began painting…. himself. As in, his body. First it was simply feet, and he made this:
Then, well, he got a little carried away:
Ok, I got in on the action too. I wrote “I *heart* u” on his tummy, and made a funny face on his back. Heh. :) It wasn’t quite so much fun when he decided to paint me, but that’s neither here nor there.
He had a great time, I was surprised at how much time he spent with these simple ice cubes, and how much fun it turned into!
To make them, I just put a baby-spoonful of paint in each part of my ice cube tray, then I ran water from the faucet over them and popped them in the freezer. I may have stirred some of them up with a toothpick, but the paint pretty much settled to the bottom of the ice while they were freezing anyway.
I hope you do this with your little ones! It was so much fun. You will obviously need to be ok with messes (or have a stiff drink nearby), and a swimming pool or hose is a good idea too for clean up time! I actually brought a washcloth out and washed him (no soap) in the pool.
Enjoy! And have a beautiful day! :)

Thursday Thinking - Why do we do “tot school”?

(Don’t know what tot school is? Check it out here.) I’ve been asking myself this question a lot lately. I’ve been trying to create a little more structure in my days with M, and giving more thought to planning tot school time.

And, sometimes, a little voice in my head says, “Why are you spending (*wasting*) your time on this? He’s only 2!" And it’s true that most of my “real-life friends” don’t do these things with their children (at least not in a planned or structured manner), and my mother didn’t with me. (And I like to think I turned out pretty OK. ;) )

I strongly believe that small children need certain things – love, attention, and affection top the list. Obviously they also need their physical needs to be met – good food, good rest, and exercise. And we are obligated to discipline them, help them learn to get along with others, and to discern right from wrong.

Developmentally, here’s what I think is important:

• Creative time - let them play with play-doh, paint, draw, whatever – just let them create something every day (or at least as often as possible).
• Free play time, completely child-directed.
• Outside time, as often as possible, regardless of the weather.
• Books, books, books, and more books, and time together with a parent to read them all.

Tot School for us started long before I even knew to call it that. It started by making library lists of things M wanted to know more about. I think airplanes were our first subject. Then came trucks, cars, bikes, anything with wheels. He is all boy. :)

Soon, autumn, my favorite time of year, was coming, and I wanted to share my love for it with M. Colored leaves lend themselves nicely to all kinds of crafts and art and so we added in a few activities along with books about the seasons.

Suddenly my mind was swimming with “themes” to learn about and I turned to the internet for help finding activities.

And, fyi, there’s a lot of info out there. Wow.

I was drawn into the world of crafty, artsy blogs of moms with toddlers and preschoolers; I learned what Montessori actually is; I found out that homeschooling moms are not weird, they actually really have their act together, and boy do they have a lot of resources they are willing to share!

Somewhere along the line I stumbled across the whole Tot School internet world. And I loved it. Making my own games and activities for my child really appealed to me.

{All the learning toys on the market appealed to me too, and I went through a not-very-discriminating period where I was buying anything “educational”. I eventually learned to be a bit more picky, but that’s another post for another time.}

At a very young age (less than 1 year old), M learned to recognize letters by constantly asking us to name his little foam bath letters for him. He has always been interested in the ABCs and finding new ABC activities for him has simply been a way of providing him with what he needs and wants to learn about.

I’m trying to follow his lead more in other areas too – if he’s interested in numbers and counting, I find ways to help him learn more about them. If he’s not interested then we turn to a completely different activity.

Preparing tot school activities is mostly a hobby for me, something I really enjoy doing. I enjoy doing it so much, actually, that I really need to remember it’s just a hobby, not a full time job! I must admit one of the top reasons we do planned tot school time is so I will spend one on one time with M, doing something other than playing with his matchbox cars and making car noises again and again and again. Because, honestly, that makes me crazy. And the last thing we need, any of us, is a crazy mama.

Tot school looks like a lot more than it is, I think. We mostly do it on Tuesday mornings, for maybe an hour. Then if he asks to do it on other days I usually have 2 or 3 activities picked out to give him.

I try, purposefully, to not do it all the time, because I do think the items I listed earlier are more important. I don’t want every little thing to be a teaching moment. In Miseducation: Preschoolers at Risk, David Elkind writes about how children play. While much of their play is truly work, in that they are learning something, sometimes it’s just play. Children need to play in order to work through emotions, feel in control of something (dinosaurs eating people is the current game my son enjoys controlling these days), and in order to simply relax and have fun.

If we try to turn everything into a lesson, they may give up on what they were doing – not work through the emotions (teddy being scared, etc), or simply feel that mom is always taking over and controlling every thing. Not a pleasant thought, right? It’s certainly not how I want to be seen through his eyes.

I don’t believe tot school is making M smarter than other children. You know, simply learning your ABCs at an early age doesn’t mean you are smarter. It simply means you learned it sooner than someone else!

I think most parents spend similar time with their children. We do tot school on purpose simply because that’s what works for us. I get distracted easily and I’m very task-oriented, which means I could easily forget to just sit and relax and have fun with my son if it weren’t planned and scheduled into our day!

Also, it gives me a chance to see how much M knows, what he’s interested in… it gives me a chance to simply know him better. He’s a great little guy to know! :)

Do you purposefully do tot school activities with your little one? Have you ever felt discouraged when someone doesn’t understand why you are doing this? How have you responded?

I hope you and your tots have a beautiful day! :)

What are these?

We went to the Dollar Tree yesterday (I could spend all day in that store), and found these:

I thought they were tiny little tops to spin.  I still think they must be meant for spinning, but they are pretty much FLAT on the bottoms and don’t spin like I thought they would.  They have tiny little peg handles on the tops, and I would turn them upside down and spin them on that, except the bottoms are just plain yellow, no design, so obviously that wouldn’t be much fun. 

I know a lot of you love the Dollar Tree as much as I do, so I’m wondering if any of you have bought these, and if so, what do you do with them?? 

Or, any suggestions, even if you don’t have these, would be very welcome!!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Art Time - Oiled Paper Suncatchers

I remember seeing this somewhere a long time ago, and it's been sitting in the back of my mind ever since. Finally we got around to doing it.

We used some sketch-pad paper, slightly heavier than regular printer paper. I thinned our tempera paints down a little bit with some liquid starch, thinking that might help it appear more translucent; however, after seeing the completed project I'm thinking bolder, more vivid colors would look nicer. The oil really makes the paper as translucent as it needs to be.

So, stick your paper somewhere in front of your child and have them paint it:
Let it dry.

Take some cotton balls and some oil (we used mineral oil, but you could use baby oil or even vegetable oil) and rub the oil onto the back of the artwork. I was going to let M do this part, but I got impatient while he was doing something else and ended up doing it myself. I'm glad I did because, well, oil is... oily. And it can make a big mess. Just an FYI. :) And the finished art:

The picture doesn't really do it justice. It's pretty in real life. I like it, but next time we'll go for brighter, bolder colors.

Have a beautiful day! :)

Tot School

(M is 35 months old)

We've been talking about patterns for a while now and M apparently thinks it's a line up of any kind. He made these "patterans" this week and was so proud of them:

It was so cute, he listed off the patterns to me like this - circle, square, circle, circle, star, square... and on and on until he was at the end. Evidently we need to work on the idea of repeating objects in order for it to be a real pattern. And don't you like how we had to hang his lacing beads up on the window tie-back? "For decoration" of course. :)



We did a little toothpick and styrofoam activity, pushing the toothpicks in and then putting beads on. I tried the whole pattern thing with him again, seeing if he could copy my pattern. He did, and then he added his own little touch:Then some pipe cleaners got in on the action. This activity kept him busy for quite a while:
We did a little squeezing-water-out-of-a-sponge-with-a-garlic-press activity (That's it's official name). I think I got this idea from The Wonder Years, but I'm not 100% sure on that.
He did his foam ABC puzzle. Hammering the letters in never gets old.We did a dinosaur matching game (file folder game found here):
And we lined up color cards by shade, lightest to darkest:
He did his name puzzle:
And he worked on this little wipe-off mat we found (dollar spot at Target, I love it!) - We picked a letter then I went through and named all the objects for him and he circled the ones that started with that letter's sound. He did great. And he actually circled things, which I didn't know he could do. Yay for fine moter skills! :)
He spent about an hour playing with play-doh, he was very into it!
He worked outside on his car. He's really into fixing things lately (pretend of course). :)
One day he had to have a Superman mask. He doesn't even know who Superman is, but he got a little Superman action figure at a garage sale and I told him a little bit about him. So we went online to see if there was a mask we could print out. No superman, but I found a cute site that has a lot of animal masks - all printable for free! He decided to be a frog! :)
That's my boy!

For more Tot School ideas, visit 1+1+1=1!

Ribbit. Have a beautiful day!

Open Ended Art - Yellow Collage

This is our first time participating in the open-ended art carnival going on here! I am excited because I think M's collage turned out pretty good! :) Of course I may have a little mama-bias going on too. ;)

I put some materials together, including a little basket with yellow pom-poms, some yellow felt pieces, yellow ribbon pieces, some green paper with stickers that he cut out earlier in the week, and a few feathers. I also put his scissors out with some yellow foam, tissue paper, and some yellow-ish scrapbook papers. I taped a piece of blue paper to the table with all the supplies:

Then I waited. M watched me set everything up and then he would occasionally go over and look at it, but he wasn't doing anything. I think he is used to me telling him it's art time and what we are going to do. I was hoping he would just climb up and start creating something.

Finally I said, "You can get up at the table and make a collage with those things if you want to." And he jumped up into the chair and got started right away.

I tried to keep quiet, and for a while I reconciled myself to the idea that he was going to have a piece of paper with 3 little yellow pom-poms and puddles of glue all over.

But I just couldn't stay quiet and eventually I said, "Ok, I think that's enough glue for now" in my happy-happy mommy voice, and I snatched the glue bottle away. :)

He cut up some of the foam and other papers and then he really started glueing stuff on. I was in another room when he came to tell me he was done. He was very excited. So was I when I saw the finished art:

How fun! I am loving this!

To see more open-ended art visit Teaching My Little BookWorm!

Have a beautiful day! :)