Tot School: Morning Routine

Posted on March 30, 2009 by Amanda

I thought I’d put down what we try to do every morning when we do school. I say try because it seems there are often days when school doesn’t happen. As we get into older grades I need to be more focused on this, but it’s a gradual work towards progress that I’m getting there. Slowly but surely.

Each day I have a helper. I printed off each of their pictures and just rotate through them. This becomes more complicated when my kids spread the pictures all out and declare “We’re doing lots of kids helping today Mommy!” They get very excited by this.

My helper gets to choose a pointer, right now they’re different eggs from the dollar store. Then my helper says the date, and then helps everyone count up to our day of the month, ex: 1,2 3….27. I based this somewhat off what primary kids do in counting days of the school year, but I know mine aren’t up to counting up that high, so we do the day of the month.

Next my helper gets to find a letter. I will make a sound and they point to the letter that makes that sound. All of my kids can do this more or less. It’s getting the beginning letter sound that Princess struggles with, but she’s 2, so I’m not worried. She’s leap years ahead of where her brothers were at her age.

Next, we do our flannel board math. My helper passes out the flannel boards and each kiddo gets a set of 10 pictures. These are from the Beginners Counting Set. Then my helper chooses a number for everyone to count to. Honestly they’re still struggling with counting, so I’m trying everything I can think of to help them out.

After this we get out our sticker books. We spent a day going through and putting alphabet stickers on 26 different pages, and I bought some alphabet dividers. Now, each morning my helper gives them each a sticker. The downside to this method is Batman has 3 lions on his L page because he loves lions. The upside is they have true ownership of this book and will sit there paging through it and pointing out the different stickers. I’ve been collecting stickers for quite a while, and I also got a sticker maker, so now anything they want can be made into a sticker as long as it isn’t wider than 5 inches. We also glue things in and will glue in craft projects when we do those.

Finally, we make words. This is mainly for the boys who are ready for it, but Princess gets to sit in on it. I got a bunch of felt letters, which really weren’t quite what I wanted, but I’m going to make do because I don’t want to buy more. And, so far we’re just working with the words from a reader from Reading A-Z , I have a bunch of samples from them and intend to join. My hope is to have them confident enough so they transition easily into reading. We’ll see.

So, that’s our morning routine. I’ll be posting soon about our stations we work at. Those I’m still refining because I haven’t found any really great ones yet. It’s a work in progress.

Tot School: Monsters

Posted on March 23, 2009 by Amanda

So, as a posted earlier in my blog (How to Make a Monster) my kids have suddenly and very randomly become obsessed with monsters. So, we spent Tot School this week learning about monsters. I collected a bunch of Sesame Street monster books and anything else that was remotely monsterish and we spent the week reading those.

I made a Monsters Inc. monster sort, printed it out and laminated them with my super duper cool sticker maker. I absolutely love this, I’ve used it several times for activities this week.

We also put together a monster number book. I cut out and stapled the book together, and then cut out lots and lots of monsters and fed it through the sticker maker. We then spent a couple of days putting stickers on and counting our monsters.

Another activity I thought of, but did not remember to do is Monster Hide and seek, we now have several monsters and I was going to hide them all over the rooms we work in, but we never got that done. They’re really getting into hide and seek games.

As to some other Tot School Activites, this week was crazy busy with lots of field trips and outings:

Berry picking with friends.

Playing at a local park, and getting absolutely soaked.

And my new favorite, “Yes, my hoe is also a horse.”

And, I’ll actually post a few other in detail posts later this week about our Tot School, because I have a whole bunch of pictures from this week, but I have to do something for cleaning and stuff while the kids are still sleeping….. If anyone wants the files for the monster stuff we did, write a comment and I’ll figure out how to share it.

Tot School on the Go

Posted on March 16, 2009 by Amanda

Princess is currently 28 months old.

Truthfully we didn’t do all that much in the way of planned school this week. I’m going to post about the monsters we made as soon as I figure out how to work the changes Photobucket did to their way of posting pictures, but that’s another time. So, here’s my comments about school on the go.

You can teach your child anywhere. This picture is a picture of Princess coloring at Razoo’s, they have a fabulous menu for teaching purposes. There’s lot of letters, lots of great pictures of animals, and it is a lot like a seek and find picture from Highlights magazine. So, we spent our time waiting for our food talking about the different animals and the letters on the paper. Then we went to REI and Ikea, there we had all sorts of useful discussions (and not just about when it is and is not okay to run). We got to talk about houses, how to put things away, where things go. We talked about climbing and animals, and how things are different. It may not seem exciting or like the best tot school, but it’s what I wanted to post on this week.

Tot School- Homemade Memory Game

Posted on March 9, 2009 by Amanda

Princess is 28 months old, and Superman and Batman are 4. Today, we’re going to learn how to make your very own Memory/Concentration game. This is a great Tot School activity because it’s a fun craft to do for most any age and it can be used for almost any skill you’re trying to learn. I like the lids because it’s a little easier to pick up and turn over then just a normal piece of cardstock, also it makes for a different tactile experience to play with.

Here’s what you need:

lids from cans or jars (if you use a smooth edge can opener this is a great use for all those lids) obviously you can use other items,

stickers that you have matching pairs

We’ve made this game a couple of times and it is still one of their favorite games to play. It’s very important to make sure you have an even number of lids, and at least one pair for each child to put stickers on.

Next let each kid choose their stickers to put on the lid, help them pick ones that match.

Then stick them on the lids.

Now, depending on the skill of your child choose your particular rules for Memory and play the game. We set out about 20 or so lids and then take turns flipping over 2, if yours match you keep them.

Mine are just now getting into playing games and this is loved by all 3, so it’s a good go to game in all variations. I’m about to make some for letters and numbers, but am going to do those on cardstock and laminate them. Mainly because it takes forever to save up enough lids to do that many, and it’s good to have a variety of materials for making games. When I get that made I’ll post it as well.

Tot school in the park

Posted on March 2, 2009 by Amanda

I’m sure anyone reading this is wondering: “Why did she start with that picture?” “Why did she call this tot school?”

Well, here’s why, we were able to make these two spills into a great lesson. We went to our local park to have lunch and play. Within 30 seconds of sitting down and getting out our food, we’d had our first spill. This was followed very soon after by our next few spills and a cheeto falling on the ground. My kids looked at this and commented “Now the birds can drink it.” I asked them why, and they explained the whole thing to me.

“The Mommy birds will bring the baby birds here so they can drink the yogurt and eat the cheeto.”

“We can’t eat the cheeto because it fell on the floor, but the Mommy and Daddy birds can give it to the baby birds.”

So, as a result of what was admittedly a rather annoying spill because he’d spilled most of his yogurt before he’d drank any of it, we got a great discussion about birds and what they can and can’t eat. We also talked about where baby birds come from and what they might do.

We had a lot of fun at the park, and I’m quite glad we went. They have really expanded their play, and now have whole discussion about what they’re doing and why, and there are plotlines. It’s quite fascinating to see. I look forward to seeing where they go from here.

And for a few more traditional tot school pictures:

more pattern work

putting together a floor puzzle, I should really look into getting more of these. It was a big hit.

Reading and acting out our Nursery Rhyme book (read more about that here: http://adventuresofmommyness.blogspot.com/search/label/nursery%20rhyme)

Thanks for visiting and thanks to Carissa for organizing all this! Be sure to visit her and the other tot school sites: http://1plus1plus1equals1.blogspot.com/2009/03/tot-school-12-week.html

Calendar time

Posted on February 24, 2009 by Amanda

I decided to take a page from my school teacher days, and use some things that work there. So, every morning as we start school time we have calendar time and I have a helper for the day.

My helper gets to point to the days as we count them, now with our new egg pointer (since I took a hint from Carissa at http://1plus1plus1equals1.blogspot.com/ ). Next my helper for the day passes out our lap boards from Lakeshore, they’re essentially a small flannel board.

My helper draws a number and each of them puts that number of flannel objects on their board. When I worked at a teacher supply store I got the beginning counting flannel board set. Each kid gets to count it out on their board.

When they think they have the right number we count together, and when it is right we hold it up for everyone to see.

Next we do a pattern for the day. I figured out the cushions we’ve been leaning against are splendid little flannel boards, so I added it into our learning time. Again my helper gets to figure out the pattern for the day.

Finally we also have an alphabet sticker book that we add a new sticker to each day. At first I was only having the helper put a sticker in, but I figured out that was limiting the other kiddos chance to learn more. So they get a sticker and have to figure out what letter the picture starts with. We’re also putting in any craft activities we do related to each letter. So yesterday we made apples from Homeschool Creations http://homeschoolcreations.blogspot.com/2008/09/preschool-corner-letter.html .
Our apples had quite a lot of seeds, they thought this was the most exciting part of all.

When we’re done with calendar time, we head off to complete our activities for the day. Today it was working on our current nursery rhyme, which I’ll finish posting about tomorrow. I was going to post on that today, but I forgot to get a picture of the completed project.

For more Tot School ideas visit: http://lapbooksbycarisa.homestead.com/TotSchool.html