TOT SCHOOL FOR FIRECRACKER - CHICKA CHICKA BOOM BOOM

Firecracker is 27 months.

I  made several attempts with Firecracker to do "Tot School" from about age 1 on, and unlike her sister, Punkin, she was NOT interested.  Then, suddenly one day I noticed her identifying letters and counting things, and I decided to try again. Well, something clicked, and now she LOVES Tot School! Due to schedules, we can't do it every day like I did with Punkin, but we enjoy the days that we do get to have Tot School while big sis is at Kindergarten.

 Our Tot School area the last couple weeks.  We read and re-read Chicka Chicka Boom Boom over and over again!

 And she LOVED (as did Punkin) the Chicka Chicka video from HERE.

 We said the ABC's and as we did, Firecracker found each letter and lined them up on the floor.

 She loved lining up the letters.

 I printed THIS PAGE from Making Learning Fun and gave her a specific color (one at a time) and had her mark the letter I called out.  I also said a sound and had her mark the letter that made that sound.

Finished product!  Her fine motor skills still amaze me!  She did the stamping all by herself!

 One of her favorite activities was digging for her ABC letters in our Rainbow Rice bin and then putting them back in the puzzle.

I printed out these cute Chicka Chicka lowercase letters from HERE and spread them all over the living room floor.  Then, Firecracker went and found them in ABC order.

And she brought them over to the couch where she lined them up.

I made a letter matching activity by printing out coconut trees and labeling "coconuts" with lowercase letters.  Then, she used her uppercase bottle cap letters to match uppercase and lowercase. (You can download a copy HERE and write in your own letters, or numbers, or whatever skill you are working on matching.)

Firecrackers knows her colors well already, but she loved looking at the color word (identifying it by the color of the print), and finding the matching tree as I read the words to her.  She thought it was so fun to put the trees in the pocket chart!  LOL!  You can download my file HERE. (I simply cut apart the sentences, colored the blank trees to match and cut them out.)

To review shapes, I had Firecracker make this shape tree as we identified the shapes she used.  I lightly drew lines on the paper where the shapes should be (roughly) glued.  It was also very good fine motor practice as she used the glue stick to glue down each one.....which she loved being able to finally do like Big Sister, Punkin!

We also practiced using more fine motor skills, as well as practicing how to spell her name by finding the letters in her name on stickers and putting them on a Coconut Tree.

We used her Bottle Cap letters again to practice spelling her name, matching the capital letters to the lowercase letters.

More uppercase / lowercase letter matching using THIS SHEET.

For Sensory Play one day, I put a bunch of plastic letters in a sink full of bubbles. She had a blast trying to find the letters and "fishing" them out of the water.  I made her tell me the name and sound of each letter as she put it on the counter. (And yes, I took her shirt off since it was getting soaked!)

We also briefly worked on numbers after reading Chicka, Chicka 123.

We used her shape tree that she had made as her workmat.  She picked a number from the cup, had to identify the number (with help....as we are still working on number recognition), and then counted that many "coconuts" (cheerios) onto her workmat.

We also laid down a coconut tree on the floor and then stood back and threw a handful of foam letters.  She had to then run over and count how many of the letters landed on the tree mat. (Which usually was only like 1-3.... the rest usually went flying all over the room!  But that was part of what made the activity fun for her!)

We made a fun handprint coconut tree craft one day and then Firecracker stuck ABC stickers on it one by one in ABC order.

It turned out so cute!

We had a couple fun Chicka Chicka Boom Boom snacks / lunches as well.

TOT TRAYS

Leapfrog Jr. ABC book (and other books as well)

Making "Alphabet Soup"

Finding lowercase letters to make words

There were also ABC puzzles and a big Letter Matching floor puzzle in her trays, but I didn't get pictures of those.

TOT SCHOOL AGAIN .... FINALLY! :)

 Wow, it's been so long since I have posted on here.  We have finally gotten back into our "schoolyear" routine, doing tot trays, schooltime, roomtime, structured play, etc.   It's a lot of work for me, but the payoff is huge!  :)  Here is what we've been up to the last two weeks!

Tiny Tot School with Firecracker

 She set the toilet paper roll "links" in the muffin tin and then set the plastic eggs on top of the tp rolls. A huge hit!

 This was by far her favorite tot tray the last few weeks!  I put velcro circles on the outside of a clean, empty milkjug and used lids from milk, soda bottles, etc. to stick all over it.  She loved taking the lids off and putting them into the milkjug. (I had cut a circle in the side of the jug for her to put them in.)  She wanted to do this one first every time!

 I cut a hole on the bottom side of a tissue box and then turned it upside down.  She put balls in the hole and watched them roll out the opening at the bottom.

"Where'd that silly ball go?"  :)

Color matching pom poms in the holes of her stacking toy as well as great fine motor work.  :) 

Matching colored balls to matching colored baskets. We did one color at a time as I pointed out where to put the balls each time and said the color each time.

 She preferred to use the baskets like this! 

 One of her favorite activites in general lately is playing with any kind of stacking rings.  She doesn't get them on in the right order yet, but she does a great job of putting them on the stick all by herself.

 We are working on trying to get her to do "blanket time" where I set a timer and she has to play with her treasure box ON THE BLANKET until the timer goes off.  Eventually I would like her to be able to do this for a bit while I do handwriting work with Punkin.  We are only up to about 3 minutes on the timer right now and she does not like to be confined to one area, but we'll keep working on it!  :)

 Firecracker LOVES structured "Baby Play" time with Mommy each afternoon! 

 I used two cups and hid a shape toy under one and then moved them around and she had to try to find which one had the toy under it.  Then, she wanted to just keep covering up the shape herself with the cups.

 And she enjoyed just playing with the cups, stacking and unstacking them.

 Magnetic pom poms!

Firecracker's very first "collage" using contact paper and tissue paper scraps.

 So proud of her work, she was kissing it!  :)

 Leapfrog Fridge Phonics letters!  She worked hard and did a great job getting them lined up right so they would fit.

 But once again, this is what it turned into!  :)

 "Coloring" for the first time!

Then, I'd hand her a sticker to put on the page one at a time.  She was so intrigued with the stickers and LOVED it!

 

Playing with homemade, edible playdough.  (It's not SUPPOSED to be eaten, but I liked this instead of normal playdough because she puts everything in her mouth, so if she did attempt to eat it, at least I didn't have to worry about it being bad for her.)

Punkin showed her how to use a cookie cutter to make shapes, and she thought it was so fun! :)

She loves to empty the bookshelf and look at all the books!

 She loves to help me unload the silverware. I purposefully moved our silverware drawer down lower so she could reach it.

Tot School with Punkin

In addition to the activities pictured here, I have begun to do Heggerty Phonemic Awareness, Guided Reading, and handwriting with Punkin at least 3 times a week. We have only been doing it for about 2 weeks, and she has grasped so many new concepts that it amazes me!

 I printed out cards that had different groups of pictures and she had to find the one that didn't belong and explain why it didn't belong.  She did great!

 One day while working on Phonemic Awareness (Segmentation/Blending), I gave her three pictures at a time and I said one of the words, broken up into each sound slowly and she had to point to the picture that I was saying.

 Opposite Memory Matching

 This was a fun activity.  I used some of her sight words and made pictures on post it notes that rhymed with each one and hid them around the room.  She had to find the green post its and match it to the sight word that it rhymed with.  Punkin is so into rhyming right now, so she loved this game.

Real or Silly Word?  I got this idea from I Can Teach My Child. She picked one black letter to put on the first black star, one red letter (vowel) to put on the red star, and one more black letter for the last black star.  Then, she said each sound in order and blended them together to find out if the word she made was real or silly!  :)

 She did her first Venn Diagram the other day and grasped the concept very quickly and loved it!

 She compared the letters in the words "Friday" and "Thursday."

 Spelling her sight words using magnetic letters.

Making tally marks using toothpicks.

 Finding the Missing Number.  At first, I left a space where the missing number would go.

 After a bit, I didn't leave the space anymore.  It stumped her the first couple times, but then she got the hang of it!

 More or Less: I put some purple pom poms in the top row of an ice cube tray and then would tell her to put either more, less, or the same of her pink pom poms on the bottom row.  We did this again about 4 days later, and I would tell her to put in one more or one less.  That was a bit tougher.

 Leapfrog color/shape Bingo

 She loves her Leapster she got for her birthday!

 Using her kids' keyboard to practice typing on the computer.

 She enjoys structured play with Mommy as well.  She loves anything she can build with!

 She also loved our homemade playdough.

 Shaving Cream writing /drawing

 I had pom poms and toothpicks setting out by her school table one day (for two different activities) and when I came in from getting Firecracker up from her nap, she had made "lollipops."  :)  Pretty creative!

 Another new favorite is Stikki Wikki!