FIRST TIME TOT SCHOOL POST

~Punkin is 20 months old~

I have been a "lurker" on many tot school sites for a long time, and we have been doing "tot school" unofficially for quite awhile, but I finally decided to officially take pictures and document our activities to post each week. I have been hesitant to post much since I "beg, borrow, and steal" lots of ideas from other moms on other blogs. But I finally realized after reading many blogs that they all do it, too! Now I will just have to start documenting exactly where I get my ideas so I can give credit where credit is due. :) Anyway, "Punkin" (as I will refer to my daughter) LOVES her "tooltime" (aka schooltime) each day and her "Tot Tray Playtime." I don't know how other Tot School moms do it, but I have our day divided up into half hour chunks of time that include activites such as: Independent Playtime in her room (she picks the toys and plays by herself), Structured Playtime with Mommy (where we do a game or activity related to the learning goal for that day or week....or sometimes we just go to the park or play outside), Free Play / Watch PBS, Tot Tray Playtime (with me in the room to assist with an activity if needed, but I don't intervene all that much if possible), Structured Playtime (I give her the activity to do while I make lunch), Tot School Time (where I sit down with her and do a guided activity with her to reinforce or teach a skill), Storytime, and Family time in the evening.....just to name a few. SO, all that to say, we have a somewhat formal "schooltime" for 15 minutes in our day aside from when she plays with her Tot Trays.

Punkin has been doing much better this week at remembering to put away the tray she was working on before getting out another one. But I am still trying to figure out how to get her to be engaged in one tray activity for more than just a few minutes (or seconds, sometimes!). I haven't made a big deal of it yet, as I'm hoping her attention span will increase as she gets older. Every once in awhile, I will intervene to give her another idea of how to play with the toys to prolong the activity a bit more. Also, I need to get a bigger shelf (maybe a 9 cube organizer?) so that I can put a few more trays out for her each week. This week she seemed to get tired of the 6 that I had.

TOT TRAYS

I didn't really have a set theme with Tot Trays this week. I just set out some activities I thought she'd enjoy.

I had this one out all week, but she wasn't really interested in it much until Friday. She was supposed to match up the lid with the container, but I wasn't sure how she would do. The first few times she got it down to play with, she just took eggs and put them in the containers and didn't do much with it. But then on Friday, she surprised me by sitting there for a full 5 minutes matching up all the lids. And she did it correctly, too, without any help! She did need some help getting the lids to snap shut, but she had fun, then, too, taking all the lids back off again. I used this as an opportunity as well to reinforce positional words and opposites like off and on.

This was a big hit all week! She played with this almost every day. I had seen this type of thing on another blog (I can't remember which one) and promptly ordered a similar one on Amazon. I liked this one because it shows the sign language for each number.....We do a lot of sign language with Punkin.

She also discovered this week that the pegs actually can stack, too! She loved seeing how high she could make the towers.

This was a dollar store find that I put in her Easter basket. Again, she wasn't too interested in lacing the beads until the end of the week when I showed her that she could make a necklace. Then, she was all about it!

I LOVE Melissa and Doug toys. This was one I got an amazing deal on right after Christmas. I just got it out this week, and it was an instant hit since Punkin is so interested in shapes right now. She played with this every day. Some days she just took the shapes off and on, but toward the end of the week, she started naming each shape as she took it off (I told her the red was a pentagon, and she now says "pengon" as she plays with them.....though she doesn't know a pentagon in any other context yet), and on Wednesday, she even lined each set of shapes up in a line and started trying to count them. (She has been able count to twelve very easily for quite some time, but counting objects is a relatively new skill she has been enjoying.) I showed her how to use her pointer (index) finger to point to each one as she counted, and since then, she has been counting lots of things that way around the house. Just yesterday I noticed that she actually starts with 1 now and can point to each object as she counts. (She used to start counting at two since she was used to us starting out for her saying "one.....")

And of course, I threw in the good old blocks for fun. She enjoys making towers.

LETTER B FOR BUTTERFLY

We did activites with Butterflies this week as we worked on the letter B. Punkin knows all her capital letters by sight and she knows all the sounds of letters. So as we continue to reinforce the sounds with our Letter Work, we also have started focusing on the concept that there are words that start with that sound/letter, and exposing her to the lowercase b.

We started our B work with a Basket full of things that start with B. She pulled out an object, we said the name of it and noticed the B sound at the beginning. Then, we said, "(Ball) starts with B..../b/, /b/, /b/" as she put the object into the Box. (Truth be told, she had more fun trying to put on the bib, using the blanket as a cape, and bouncing the ball around the house than she did doing the activity. But that's fine with me.) After that, throughout the day, we noticed things that started with B....like when I had to tell her to sit on her Bottom instead of stand on the couch, and when she started Bouncing on the cushions, and when she took a Bath, to name a few.

Punkin LOVES her sensory tubs. I hid cards with the letter B and butterfly cutouts in the macaroni for her to find. (I had intended to use Beans, but didn't get the store to get any. Oh well.) I had intended for her to put the B's in one Bowl and the butterflies in another, which she started off doing, but then she just went back to scooping out the macaroni and taking the B's and butterflies and throwing them on the table since they were hindering her scooping efforts! :)

I just got this new Do-a-Dot set in the mail that I ordered, so we used it to "paint" on our letter B (I printed this sheet from Confessions of a Homeschooler) and to decorate a butterfly. Punkin had a ball using these! She kept saying, "I painting!" She actually did a great job of tapping dots instead of trying to smear it and "color" with it like a crayon as I was fearing she would do. We will definitely be using these more often!

And for our snack, we ate Bears (teddy grahams).....one of Punkin's favorite snacks! (Daddy even got her to show him how she has been counting objects by pointing to each bear and counting how many she had for him. Each time she ate one, Daddy would ask her to count again to see how many she had left.)

SHAPES

Last week we worked on ovals as we did activities with eggs, but this week, we just reviewed shapes in general. I printed out these shapes from Home Grown Hearts. I set them around the room, and called out a shape for Punkin to go find. She had fun running to get it and them coming to put it into a box I had sitting next to me. We sang a goofy little shape song for each one as she did it.

We also spent a lot of time working on her shape puzzles. She LOVES puzzles. I would call out a shape, and she'd find it and put it back on the puzzle. I also had her say the name back to me as she did it. Punkin knows all her basic shapes (circle, triangle, square, rectangle, star, heart, oval, and diamond), so we focused on the moon and pentagon on this particular day.

In keeping with our butterfly theme, Punkin picked out a shape from one of the cups, and glued it to the right spot on the butterfly's wings. I had her say the shape name each time as well. She had more fun using the glue than anything and just wanted to "pat" down the shape anywhere at first until I showed her how to match it to the black one. After the novelty of the glue wore off, she did better. I only had her do two of each shape for now. I think we'll continue this again next week as we will be doing more butterfly stuff anyway.

We also got out the beloved Melissa & Doug shape sorter to use for this activity. My original intent was to show her how to use tongs to pick up the pieces one at a time and set them on the correct butterfly. Well, she hated the tongs, and cried if I tried to show her how to use them. So, I set those aside, and then she had fun just using her hands to do it. Oh well. We'll keep trying.

For her structured activity time, I cut sponges into shapes and showed her how to squeeze the sponges to transfer water from one bowl to the other. She was soaked by the time she was done, but she sure had fun doing it!

For our shape snack, we had circle and square crackers! Yum, Yum!

COLORS

I got these printables from Home Grown Hearts as well. Again, as with the shapes, I set the colors around the room, and called out one at a time for her to get and come put in the box. Again, she loved this. I was surprised that she loved something so simple as that, but hey! Whatever works! We chanted our color word chant for each color as she did it. (I can't even try to describe them to you because you just have to hear each one. We chant the spelling of each color word in a different sing-song tone for each one. It is something I used when I taught first grade to learn to spell the colors.)

I printed these out from Confessions of a Homeschooler and cut them apart. I had Punkin match the colors. She could match the colors fine, but got frustrated with how to put them together to look like a butterfly. I had to help her with that part. After she found the match, I ended up setting them the right direction for her and having her scoot the two sides together.

For her structured playtime, I got out the playdough and let her cut butterflies out of the different colors.

NUMBERS

We didn't do as much with numbers this week because we ran out of time. We spent one morning at the zoo and one day at Grandma's, so we didn't have as much time this week.

We did to one activity, though, on Saturday afternoon. I got some big dice at CVS for a quarter after Valentine's Day that actually has some pretty "interesting" phrases on it. But I immediately thought of covering the sides up with stickers and using them for other things. I have one with shapes on it, and this one I put numbers on. Punkin knows her numbers from 0-9 by sight, so I thought I'd introduce her to double digit numbers. But I didn't want to overwhelm her too much, so I put 7-12 on the dice so she'd have some numbers on it that she already knew. She was to roll the dice and find the matching number on her paper and put a butterfly sticker above that number in the next empty box. She loved rolling the dice and pulling off the sticker to put on the paper, but she wasn't into telling me the number she rolled or trying to match it. I knew she was going to need my help with the concept of matching and finding the next empty box to put the sticker in, but I had to guide her more than I thought on even paying attention to the numbers, mainly because she was more interested in the dice and the stickers than in paying attention to what she was doing. But I still think it was a good first exposure for her to this activity, and we'll do it again soon.

MISC.

I got this also from Confessions of a Homeschooler. Can you tell I love her blog? :) Anyway, Punkin does pretty well with putting different sized objects in order from small to big or big to small, so I didn't think she'd have too much trouble with this. She was supposed to sort the butterflies by large, medium, small. It was harder for her than I thought. Or maybe she was just ready to go outside and play..... We'll have to try again next week.

For our craft this week, I cut a butterfly shape out of an empty cereal box, and I had Punkin glue tissue paper pieces to the wings. Then, we added eyes (which she thought was hilarious.....guess she is fascinated by "googly eyes") and pipe cleaners for antennae.

Lately, Punkin has really been interested in helping my unload the dishwasher. So, I moved our silverware drawer down to a drawer that she can reach, and after I take out the sharp utensils, I let her unload the rest of the silverware. She used to just throw all the silverware into the drawer without paying attention to where they went, but this week I showed her how to find where the forks and spoons and knives each go, and now she does it by herself. She also now says "fork" and "spoon" and "knife" as she puts them in, and today I caught her attempting to count them as she put them in. (She lost track after four, but I thought that was a good effort.)

FIELD TRIP

We got to go with Daddy to the zoo on Tuesday since he was off work, and it happened to be free admission day at the zoo. It had nothing to do really with our lessons for the week, but we couldn't pass up this opportunity. Punkin LOVES ..... I mean really LOVES animals, so she had an absolute BLAST!

Punkin adores her Daddy, and I just ADORE this pic of the two of them enjoying their day together.

Punkin saw a few new animals that we haven't really talked about much (rhinos and donkeys) so I put together a picture book for her of the animals we saw, and we go through it at least once a day and name all the animals. She loves this book!

Well, that was our week this week. I think we'll continue with butterflies next week as well as there are a few things I want to continue or do again, and I have some other activities I want to do as well. To see what other moms have done this week for Tot School, you can visit 1+1+1=1 for more ideas.