I am very excited to have completed my first week of tot school. I was looking for something to structure my day better with my 27 mo. old (and to get away from Baby Einstein - his absolute favorite). I knew I didn't want curriculum since he is way too young but I needed guidance. (and frankly to get me away from planning the entire 12 years of homeschool curriculum before he could recite his ABC's). I was so glad that I stumbled across Carissa's site on Tot School. She and other moms offered a wealth of information and resources. If you are curious, please visit her site http://www.1plus1plus1equals1.com/TotSchool.html and her blog http://totallytots.blogspot.com/.
I have been in the planning stages (and still going through them) for the past couple of weeks. I got our den somewhat cleaned out to make way for our temporary tot school / play room until I get the basement cleaned out. ( We moved into this house from out of state about 10 months ago w/ an 18 mo. old and a 1 mo. old - needless to say it is piled high with boxes and orphaned items - Ugh!)
The Farm
For our first unit we learned about the Farm. Most of the resources I used were from Two Teaching Mommies. (Thanks!) and a farm tot book from 1+1+1=1.
We kicked off Tot School with a trip to a farm (our friends, the R's who have some buffalo, a cow and a horse.
T-Rex eyeballing Peaches the Horse
Munchk feeding hay to Cody the Cow
Munchk getting hay for the buffalo
"You want me to give this to THEM?"
"Here goes"
Giving grain to Peaches
Time for some grain - he's got a big tongue!
T-Rex inspecting Cody's food
Taking a drive to inspect the fence line and see the neighbor's donkey.
T-Rex insists that he can steer too.
We started off the week slow. Most of my goals right now are to work on Munchky's motor skills and following directions (horror of horrors). He already knows his numbers and counts up to 10, somewhat up to 20 he skips a couple of them (randomly), his uppercase letters, shapes, colors, animals. Most of this has come from books (he loves them!) and dare I say Baby Einstein (really loves that). Know I want him to work on exploring these concepts hands on.
The lesson plan from 2Teaching Mommies has numerous activities in three days, we divided this up to about 15 minutes to 1/2 hour each day, (while T-rex is sleeping!)
His first intro to scissors. Which he thought were pretty cool. I don't expect him to be able to use this any time soon, just wanted him to get the feel of them. He promptly stabbed the R is for Rooster paper we were working on. Which was also his first intro to glue. I got purple disappearing glue sticks (big mistake). He got very upset when I showed him how to stick paper and the googly eye to it. How dare I cover up his beautiful purple lines!. He was even more upset when the purple lines disappeared. This was remedied by getting out his purple crayon. I have to admit that when he was napping I glued the feet, beak and googly eye back on the Rooster. Who doesn't like googly eyes?
By far his favorite activity of the week. Cutting out fall shapes from play-doh. He asked to do this every day.
Lastly we worked on "how many spots on the cow". The idea is to roll the dice count the number of dots and put the same number of pom-poms on the cow. He enjoyed counting but didn't care to match the numbers, he just kept on putting all the pom-poms on the cow and counting. Oh well. He also enjoyed throwing the Pom-poms around the room. And finally counting them into their box.
One of his favorite toys- the shape sorter, he has just recently begun to master this one. He is working on differentiating b/w the pentagon, hexagon, and octagon. (actually I am too)
The boys absolute favorite activity - raiding mom's baking pans to make music. Vocab word of the day: cacophony
Another fave Melissa and Doug toy - pound a ball. Using the spoon, b/c he broke the hammer many moons ago. It's also a great way for moms to relieve stress. I have confiscated this toy from the living room (after searching a long time for the balls) to the shelves in our tot room. It's been a week and I still have all four balls!
Making the letter F for farm out of playdoh and then stamping it.
Another favorite Munchky activity. - Making french toast, he is quite liberal with the cinnamon.
Putting grain into the silo (I thought I had popcorn to put in but no such luck) so we used dried beans for our grain. This is an excellent transfer activity (and one I actually thought of myself!) b/c it involves not only transfering from one spot to another and dropping it in but also getting the spoon in the opening and then dropping it in. With that being said it is a bit more difficult. This is Munchky's most difficult task right now as he won't eat anything requiring a spoon right now by himself. (which is entirely my fault, he wasn't a spoon grabber as a baby, so I kept right on feeding him (no mess!) but now he will rarely even try on his own. He didn't do too well with this - but happily he didn't get frustrated and we cheered for every grain he got in. Mom put some in too, and he was very excited when he opened the door and all the grain poured out. Then of course he had a fun time throwing it around.
We also worked on some of the Farm Tot pack, and making a shape tractor. (thankfully he got over putting stuff on the glue). That's it for our first week. I gladly welcome any suggestions or comments. Please check out what other moms are doing over at 1plus1plus1equals1.
