Tot School-Grocery Store

This week our theme was grocery store!  This was the first week after my mom and aunt left.  Josh was also back in the states so I gave myself a lot of grace and we did as much as we could.

On Monday we focused on fruit.  I gave Mara a do a dot to work on while I made breakfast this morning.  This time I put letters in the circles instead of giving her a marker.  I then peeled matching letter stickers and asked her to match the letters.  She did awesome!  I wasn't able to actually make breakfast while she was doing this as she needed help but it was a win!

During Madeline's morning nap we focused on fine motor skills and more matching.  I had fruit cards set out for her and asked her to clip a clothespin on the cooresponding card.  We then found that piece of fruit in her play fruit pile and put it on it's picture in one of our Usborne books.  Seemed like a long activity but she really enjoyed it.  Later in the evening she pulled out all the pieces of this activity and repeated it on her own :)

I recently got Mara this game called Avalanche.  It's a very simple game yet still a little advanced for her.  We had fun "playing" it and practicing using tweezers to remove the fruit carefully from the stand.

This day we also did some fingerprint art in one of our favorite Usborne books, Fingerprint activities.  I love this book as there is usually one page for every theme we do!

Tuesday we bascially repeated ourselves but with vegetables!!  I gave her another do a dot letter match in the morning and at naptime we tackled the veggies.  She did this one much faster than the fruit and really seemed to get the hang of it.

The rest of our day was spent with pretend play and lots of cooking in her kitchen.

Wednesday we headed to a play group with friends and didn't get to do any totschool.

Thursday we decided to hit up the real thing and make a trip to the grocery store.  I have had so many offers to keep the girls while I shop since Josh is away but I braved it with both so we could turn this into a learning experience.  As we shopped we talked about each section and what kinds of food you would find here.  It was really fun to listen to Mara as we strolled the aisles.

Next week we will be talking all about Occupations!  We'll be mainly looking at community workers such as policemen, firefighters, and mailmen but we'll also throw in doctors and farmers!  I'm excited to put some of her toys into play here!

Tot School-Dinosaurs

So my initial plan was to do dinosaurs the first week my mom and aunt were up.  A few days into their visit I quickly realized that it was better to just forgo tot school and let Mara enjoy playing with them.  On that note we did fit in a few dinosaur related activities and I wanted to give them their own blog post so I can look back on the week and remember.

The first day we did some letter recognition with name dinosaurs.  I cut out crude dinosaurs out of foam and wrote Mara's first and last names on each.  I then put the corresponding letters on clothespins and let her clip the letter where they needed to go.  She did great withe the letter matching but struggled with the actual clipping of the pins.  This was good to identify this fine motor skill we need to work on.

We then created a dinosaur head by painting her feet and stamping them on a piece of construction paper.  Once the paint had dried we glued eyes and gave the dinosaur teeth.  I let Mara "color" her dinosaur too and she seemed pretty proud of her creation!

I broke out the playdough this week in a fossil dinosaur invititation to play.  I gave her some dough, dinosaurs and other fun "fossil" materials.  We talked about how you can find dinosaur bones in the rocks and read from one of our fun Usborne books!

The last activity I did with Mara this week was dinosaur eggs.  I froze the same plastic dinosaurs used with the playdough in an ice cube tray.  To make it fun I added food coloring and baking soda to each cube.  My intention was to give her a squeeze bottle with vinegar and water and let her watch the reaction as the eggs melted away.

Well we didn't have too much vinegar on hand so there wasn't much reaction.  She didn't seem to mind and enjoyed just melting the eggs with warm water.  We continued this in her bath later that night!

I had a lot of fun activities planned for dinosaur week and they just didn't happen.  At the time I was a little bummed and hard on myself for not being on top of the game.  BUT looking back on it now I'm glad we did what we did and I'm not super woman.  Tot school is always a success whether we do one activity or ten!

Next week we're on to the grocery store!  I didn't find a lot of things with this theme to do so we'll be doing a lot of pretend play and field trips to the store of course!

Tot School-Hygiene

This week we'll be focusing on hygiene.  We're going to be talking about brushing our teeth, covering our mouth, taking baths and germs.  This theme is coming at a great time as Mara has been fighting us on just about all of those.

Monday we started with teeth.  I cut out a mouth for her and gave her 16 teeth to put in it as well as a tongue.  As we glued them in we talked about how she has upper teeth and lower teeth and how it is important that she brushes all of them (she only does her bottom at night).  After it dried we pretended to munch on her play food.

Then we talked about flossing.  We don't floss Mara's teeth but probably should.  For this I took one of her lego duplo blocks and put some play dough between the pegs.  I told her that the play dough was food that we get stuck in our teeth.  I gave her some yarn and showed her how to use it to get rid of the food.  She had a lot of trouble working the yarn but did a decent job after a few tries.  What I was really impressed with was that she kept at it.  With her attitude lately she hasn't been to keen on continuing to try.

On Tuesday we focused on covering her nose when she sneezes or coughs.  I talked with her about how when we do those two things germs go everywhere.  Then I took a windex bottle with a picture on it and demonstrated the concept.  She didn't want to spray the bottle herself but stayed with me in understanding the topic.

We then created an art project to demonstrate this too.  The night before I had cut out a silhouette of her head and glued it to another sheet of paper.  I first traced her hands and then let her color this face while I cut them out.  We then glued a tissue with her hands holding it up to the face's nose.  She really focused throughout this whole activity and showed me all the ways to cover her face: hands, elbow and tissue.  I was really impressed!

Wednesday was the beginning of the end of the week for us.  All we got done was a germ sensory bin.  I put cotton balls in a bin along with some spiky balls.  I told her the cotton balls were the white blood cells attacking the germs.  She took this literally and threw all the "germs" out of the box and at Buddy, our cat.

Thursday and Friday were kind of washed with any activities.  We kept busy with puzzles and our books for the weeks but I just didn't get my act together to prep anything.  I've found that if I don't prep the night before it doesn't happen.

Next week we're set to start dinosaurs.  I'm curious how much we'll get done as my mom and aunt are visiting.  I hope we can fit it all in along with some fun with them!

Tot School-Art

Last week we worked on Art.  At first the topic was a bit broad for me but once we got into it, I started to appreciate it and I think Mara got a lot out of it.

Books for the week

On Monday we did two craft projects.  The first was a marble painting.  I put a sheet of plain white paper in a tote and put small amounts of paint randomly along it.  I then added a bunch of spiky balls.  Once the lid was on I gave it to Mara to shake.  Of course at first she wasn't interested but after a few shakes of my own she took over.  In the end we let it dry and now she calls it her "boom" painting (aka boom=fireworks).

I then tried a technique I saw on Pinterest to "tie-dye" baby wipes.  We have a ton around here so I grabbed two and rubber banded them.  I let her color one with markers and I did another.  We let them dry overnight and checked them out the next day.  Honestly this didn't really work.  I don't know if we didn't color them enough or what.  I don't think we could of as they started to kind of ruin the markers we used.  So I just chalked this up to a fail.

Our last project was to do some water painting.  Usborne has this amazing water painting book so I just tore out a sheet and gave her some water.  She loved revealing the colors.

Tuesday we did some more art work with paint.  I spread out a large sheet of brown paper (thank you Usborne shipments!) and threw some watered down paint on it.  I gave Mara a blow dryer and let her go to work.   Again it took a while to convince her to try it.  My girl is not a risk taker.  She finally was into it but of course it didn't really work as imagined.  Not sure if it was the paper being crinkly or the paint not runny enough.  In the end we just lifted the paper and watched the paint run around it.

Our second activity was some splat fireworks.  Here I took paint and cotton balls, hid the colors under the cotton and gave her a hammer to reveal it.  She was so into this until her play hammer got paint on it.  Then it was game over.  We had to wash it over and over...

On Wednesday we did some more motion painting.  This time we put the paper in a mason jar with the same spiky balls.  She got to shake it up a ton and we laid it out to dry afterwards.

In the afternoon she was a bit of a terror so we resorted to coloring pages.  This actually really turned out well.  She hasn't strictly colored in awhile so she was ready.  I also let her pick the topic and involved her printing them.

Thursday we did some rainbow paper.  This was achieved by dipping black paper in water with a few drops of clear nail polish in it.  When you remove it the film looks like a rainbow in the sunlight.  This was a fun activity but I think I ruined one of my mixing bowls.  I wish I would have done it in a paper bowl.

The rest of the day we laid low.  We did do a few pages in our Usborne Art Sticker book which was fun.  I love how interested she is in stickers and how she is really getting into the books.  She likes to place them just right and wants to do all the work herself.

I gave her a sheet of paper and her stamps.  I let her go to town with a little free art.  She had a blast creating the shapes and putting the cat stamps inside of them.  I was interested in the fact that she really loved to do the stamps on top of each other.

On Friday we talked a lot about colors and read one of our favorite Usborne books "Big Book of Colors".  I also printed off an activity page for her to do along with the book that talked about primary and secondary colors.  I think the topic may be a bit over her head but it was good to introduce her to it again.  I think if I would have done this page with paint she may have been more engaged.  We could have mixed the primary colors to reveal the secondary ones.  We used crayons and it didn't have the same effect.

Next week we're talking about hygiene and I think it is really coming at a good time.  She hates brushing her teeth all of a sudden and we've been really harping on her to cover her mouth when she sneezes.  Let's hope these are two topics we can make progress on!

Tot School-Transportation

This week we are focusing on transportation.  We're taking a day each and talking about airplanes, trains, boats and even a hot air balloon!  Mara has been obsessed with trains lately so I thought she would have fun this week.  Plus we own a bunch of great Usborne books on all these topics which just happen to be her current favorites on the bookshelf!

Monday we didn't get to do any tot school as Josh had off and we went out of town.

Tuesday I tried to make up for our off day by doing three activities.  Unlike weeks before, I decided to combine all the activities into one focused time.  This week we tried to do it in the afternoons after nap time (and during Madeline's nap) and I can honestly say I love this approach better.  Mara seems more engaged and focused.

Our first activity was a Popsicle stick airplane craft.  We read our Usborne book, "Look Inside the Airport" and then created our scene.  We glued the sticks to look like airplanes and pulled apart some cotton balls to make clouds.  Mara did a great job with the glue.  I am just now letting her try to squeeze it on her own and she does a decent job.  She is still much better with a glue stick so we try to stick to that when possible.

Construction was another focus of the week.  Although we did a whole week on this topic I wanted to revisit it in transportation week.  I had a left over do a dot so I pulled it out and let her go for it.  Again she is getting so much better with this to the extent that she gets really frustrated if it's not perfect.  I'm wondering if that's a sign she needs something more challenging or a sign I should keep giving them to her? While she did this activity we read yet another Usborne book, "Construction site".  This book has some great pictures and flaps to explore!

Our last activity of the day was a road I made out of tape on the ground.  I simply took masking tape and put it on the dinning room floor to make a road.  I set out three of her favorite cars on it and let her have some sensory play.  I loved that she didn't get down on the floor with her cars but moved them all aside and drove on the road herself with her radio flyer.  She also loves just "walking" the road and when daddy came home he showed her how to walk heel to toe.

Wednesday we did three more activities again.  Today was supposed to be focused on trains but I threw in a hot air balloon craft for the fun of it.  I did something similar to our bats and asked her to "paint" a coffee filter with her do a dots.  Then we used water to create a watercolor affect.  We let it dry overnight and revisited it the next day.

Then it was onto trains.  We used "Fingerprint Activities" to make a fingerprint train.  Mara was somewhat curious about this but HATED getting her finger dirty.  I had to have a wet paper towel nearby at all times so she could clean her fingers.  We did manage to get a few fingerprints from her before it was too much.   Funny thing was after a few minutes she wanted to do it again so we flipped through the book and found a page where you can use your fingerprints to make people in cars.  We made a few before it was time to wash hands again lol.

Our last activity of the day was a name train.  I printed out a train and then cut cars out to go behind it.  On the cars I spelled out her name.  She's getting pretty good at letter recognition but I really wanted to focus on her name.  I then cut out wheels that had corresponding letters and asked her to put the wheels on the train.  With each wheel we named the letter and then she found the same letter on the train cars.  When we were done we spelled it out and talked about how it was her name.

Thursday we talked all about boats.  Mara LOVES the song "Row, row, row your boat" so I thought she would be really into this sub-theme.  We started with a simple rowing game.  We sat on the ground and sang the nursery rhyme while swinging back and forth.  This was mainly for fun but also helps her with her balance and gross motor skills.  One of my goals in the new year with tot school is to incorporate more physical activities like this!

Then it was on to some sorting.  I found a printable online and had her sort the different transportation vehicles that were in the air versus on the water.  She did this pretty well but got board of it quickly.  I fell behind when preparing this and I think that's why she wasn't as interested.  If I would have gotten it set up earlier while she was napping it probably would have gone over better.

Our tot school ended that night with a sensory bath.  I had planned on doing a sensory bin but couldn't think of a big enough tote that I could put water in so I switched things up and just did it during bath time.  At first she hated my ice boats screaming and throwing them BUT as soon as they melted she wanted more.  Toddlers.....SO I think we'll try this again at bath time tomorrow.

On Friday we were ending with cars.  Our first project was some car drawing.  I simply attached markers to the back of some of her wheeled vehicles and let her "draw".  Well after the massive breakdown she did this for about 30 seconds all while yelling, "Choo choo." Semi-success?

Our next project was a craft.  I wanted to make cars out of toilet paper tubes.  I prepped this all the night before making "tires" out of cardboard and cutting slots in the tubes for windshields.  Then I gave Mara the markers and let her decorate her cars.  When she was done we put the tires on and played with them on her masking tape track.

The last project of the day just happened as I was straightening up my Usborne bookcase (yes I have a whole bookcase dedicated to it).  Mara saw a train sticker book and just HAD to do it.  I gave in and we  sat down with the book.  The best part of these books is she is super engaged forever.  We did almost the entire book over the course of an hour.

Next week we are focused on Art.  Again we'll be doing a lot of of craft projects and a few activities.  I'm looking forward to breaking out two of our new Usborne books again and seeing how Mara does with them.  

Tot School-Love

With Valentine's Day on Sunday, we decided to focus on Love this week.  I didn't have a lot of activities planned but had a ton of craft ideas.  Mara ended up coming down with something mid-week which really threw our planning out the window.  She wasn't interested in much beyond laying on the couch and Mama snuggles.

On Monday we started with our bible verse, John 3:16 "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." I grabbed a piece of construction paper and taped a heart on it.  I asked Mara to put fingerprints all around the heart so we could remove it and still have the heart design.  She wasn't so interested and did a few prints on the heart.

Our next project for the day was some hand stamping.  Mara loves to have her hand painted to we did two crafts with this.  There wasn't a specific reason for these but I wanted to make some Valentines cards.  The first one we made love bugs for Daddy and the second was a heart for me.  We let both dry and then decorated them the next day.

Mara really needed an activity this day so I quickly printed some counting puzzles.  She wasn't really interested in them overall but I think they were good in getting her to explore her numbers.  She will only say two and I want her to try to make the other number sounds.

On Tuesday we did some do a dots.  She hasn't done any in a long time and I was super impressed by how far she has come with these.  Before she might have gotten the dot in the circle but mainly would just "color" the picture.  Now she is filling every dot and gets very upset if she misses the circle.  After finishing her first page she asked for a second and did a great job with her letters!

Wednesday started with a pretty hands on craft.  I mixed some salt dough and we used cookie cutters to make heart shapes.  From there we put our fingerprints and hand prints in the dough.  We set them to dry and will paint them on Friday!

We also tried a little letter recognition exercise.  I wrote all the letters on four hearts and gave her stickers with the letters on them.  Her task was to put the stickers where they needed to go.  She was sort of into this but I learned some valuable lessons from it.  I did too many letters.  Next time I will only do about half and two you have to get sticky stickers.  These kept falling off.

Thursday Mara was still pretty clingy so we did a simple craft with ribbons and paper. I drew a heart on a sheet of paper and she used glue to adhere different red ribbons to it.  Afterwards I laid another sheet over it with a heart cut out.  The final product was a heart valentine!

Friday went out the window as Daddy was home.  Our love week ended on Sunday painting our salt dough Valentine's from earlier in the week.  Mara did great dipping her paint brushes into the paint but was honestly more interested in cleaning her brushes than painting.  I told her that she couldn't dip them into the water unless they had paint on them so she would paint a tiny bit so she could dip in the water :)

Next week we're on to transportation.  Monday will be off as Josh is off of work for the holiday.  My goal is to prep the night before.  With both kids and my Usborne business it's too hard to do it on the fly!

Tot School-Bedtime

So it's been a long time since we've been serious about tot school.  Josh's parents were visiting, the holidays were on us and I was about to have a baby.  So you can see we were a bit busy.  Now with Madeline here and Josh's parents back in the states, I feel like we can really dive back into our schooling with vigor.

This week our theme was Bedtime.  I chose this theme because lately Mara has been having a lot of issue with Bedtime and sleep.  Her schedule is stressful at night and in the morning.  Although she sleeps through the night, both Josh and I would love to see some progress on the two ends.  I thought that some focus on the subject this week may help a little.

Monday we started with a nighttime play dough invitation to play.  Mara loves play dough so I pulled out the dark blue dough, some star buttons and shiny beads.  I let her go to town "designing" the sky.  She loved it!  Her first try had all the stars in the play dough.  She quickly pulled them all out and then put in the beads.  I love her organization and need to just have one type of thing in the play dough at a time.

After nap we did our craft for the day.  I like to focus on a bible verse each week as well so this week I chose Psalms 3:5 I lay down and slept; I woke again, for the LORD sustained me.  I wrote this on a black piece of black construction paper.  We talked about the verse and then used star cookie cutters to make the night sky.  She dipped different size cutters into yellow paint and then onto the paper.  We also used some star stampers that we had laying around.

On Tuesday we started the day with a nighttime sensory bin.  I used the star shapes from the play dough, cotton balls, colored pom poms and her sleep sheep.  Mara is usually hit or miss with sensory bins.  This one was a definite miss.  She wasn't interested in it at all.  It basically sat around the whole day until the afternoon where she dumped it all out and got in the bin.

The activity she liked the most this day was making our own prayer jar.  We have tried to be more intentional about praying with Mara before she goes to sleep at night.  I saw this idea and instantly thought it would one serve as a reminder for us to do it and two be a fun way to pray with her.  We decorated popcycle sticks with markers and then I asked her what things she wanted to pray for.  I was shocked when her answers were pretty reasonable. lol  We wrote out things like: Mommy, Daddy, Madeline, Nana, Papa, Grandma, Grandpa, Aunt Mary, Buddy, Friends, etc.  We used it that night and she liked picking a stick from the jar!

Wednesday started with a fun craft.  I grabbed two coffee filters and her do a dot markers.  Then I let her go to town on decorating them.  The final step was to take water and brush it all over the filters.  This gave the whole project a water color look.  While Mara did this I read her A Peek inside Nighttime.  We talked about nighttime animals, especially bats as that is what we are going to create from the filters!  She really loved this activity especially painting with the water.  I was surprised how engaged she was the entire time.

Right before nap we decided to do some pretend play.  We went to our bedroom and tucked each other in for bed.  This activity was great for this sleepy mommy.  I managed to catch some quick cat naps while Mara was content in the bed.  She loved tucking us both in and we played like this for close to an hour!

In the afternoon we finished our bats by coloring clothespins black and adding the filters.  We also trimmed the sides so that they looked more bat like.

Thursday was a slow morning but we managed to fit in a bedtime craft.  Since making the bats yesterday Mara had been requesting an owl.  I hadn't planned on making an owl but was impressed with her concept of bedtime animals so we rolled with it.  I quickly grabbed some toilet paper rolls and construction paper.  I then cut out shapes out of the paper to make the owl.  Mara helped me by gluing the pieces on the roll and then decorating the final project.

On Friday we had a slow start.  Mara had a rougher night and we didn't drag ourselves out of bed till nearly nine.   Despite this I threw together an activity centered around the book, "Goodnight Moon".  I made some simple shapes that fit the story and created a storyboard so to speak.  While we read the book Mara placed the objects into our picture to recreate the story.  Although my storyboard was really homemade, she loved it!  We have tried to include books in all our weekly themes but this activity has thus far been the most successful.  Hopefully in the future I'll be able to continue this!

This week we didn't get done all the activities I had planned but I'm pretty proud of what we did.  It was a great week back and I am looking forward to next week where we will be focusing on LOVE.  I figured since Valentine's Day is upon us it's only fitting.  We'll do a ton of crafts and hopefully fit a few activities in there too!