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! :)

Sunday School on Friday – Noah’s Ark

I have found that M seems to gain more from our Bible story times when we do activities and talk about the story a little bit before actually reading the story from one his children’s Bibles.

So, on Thursday I let him watch a short (3 minutes) video about Noah’s Ark on his Read And Share Toddler Bible DVD. He really enjoyed this.

There are so many inspiring ideas online for a Noah’s Ark theme. We almost weren’t able to fit everything in!

Friday morning when he woke up, this was waiting for him:

The printout is from Making Learning Fun (a fantastic site, by the way).

M got right to work:

Later we talked about all the colors of the rainbow as we did a little color mixing:

Next we had fun playing “Sink or Float?” in our kitchen sink:

M came up with some pretty interesting things to drop in. :) We made a little boat with a sponge, straw, and foam sail, and tried to see what we could carry on it and what would make it sink.

We talked about the ark and how God kept Noah, his family, and the animals safe on it.

I found these story cards on Sparklebox (another fantastic site!). M has never done sequencing with story cards before, and I wasn’t sure he was ready for that challenge, so I simply told him the story with the cards, and then we did it a second time while he told the story (with me giving some prompts).

I made up some game mats by printing this template out on colored construction paper, and we played an animal matching game. The game we used is one we’ve had for a while, but as we found matches, we got to put our animal couples on our arks. Whoever had the most animals on his/her ark won. :) Very simple, I know, and it was really unnecessary to print out ark game mats, but simple things can make a difference. M felt like it was a brand new game. And he won. ;)

We didn’t end up actually reading the story about Noah and the Ark from M’s Bible until bedtime that evening!

I had a craft planned, but we just didn’t get to it. However, I do still plan to do it with M, and I’ll create a separate post for it. I think it’s going to be a lot of fun!

Have a beautiful day! :)