Tot School Show & Tell: S is for SNOW

~ Chunky Monkey is 23 months ~

It's January, no better time in Michigan than to cover "snow"

and we didn't get as much as the Northeast, but we've had some inches.

We did our posterboard daily which covered the following:

Letter: S (worked on it's sound)

Color: White (means "righteous")

Shape: Circle and a poem about a snowball

Number: 15 (means "free")

Verse: Psalm 51:7

Vocabulary Word: Snowflakes

Sound: -ow (row, tow, mow, blow, throw, snow, grow, show, bow)

And I pulled out our mailbox that I put a magnetic letter "S" in

and the "S" word cards that I printed out from the S Packet at 1+1+1=1.

I sing the following little diddy:

I've got a letter, I've got a letter

Let's look and see, Let's look and see

What letter do we have today?

What letter do we have today?

(open box)

It's the Letter S, It's the Letter S!

Then we review each of the "S" words in the box.

Then we did activities each day, here are some of the ones we did:

Skinny Minnie and Chunky Monkey both played a math game together.

Chunky Monkey rolled the die and Skinny Minnie graphed what was rolled.

This was a great game for not only math, but for team work!

I pulled out the lacing card that I got from Oriental Trading.

He surprised me because he really liked doing this!

He sat and did this activity for about 30 minutes on his own.

He kept trying to figure out how to get it into the holes.

After a couple days of practice and he had it down.

Will be adding more of these type activities in the future.

We worked on name recognition by making a snowman

out of the letters of his name.  He drew the face all by himself.

We reviewed the letters in his name each day after making this.

I printed out the floor numbers from Confessions of a Homeschooler

preschool "S is for Snowman" post, but only did numbers 1 - 5.

I gave him white pony beads for "snow balls" and had him

put that many beads on the numbered cards.

We practiced this every other day.

So it's too cold to go outside here in Michigan, with temps below zero.

So, I went outside and filled a bin with snow and brought it INSIDE.

Gave him a watercolor pallette, brush and cup of water and let him

have at it! He painted the snow and then decided he wanted

to touch it.  At first, it was too cold, then he got used to it.

Then he made me build snowmen and snowballs that he could throw.

Painting a melted a snowman!

I gave him blue construction paper and silver paint glob with a brush.

He had fun smearing it everywhere... thus a melted snowman!

And of course, we made snowman lanterns (got the idea from Pinterest).

I velcroed the little battery operated tea lights to the bottom of the jug,

only because these two are pretty rough with everything!

When I turned on the lights, Chunky Monkey thought it was a real

candle and tried to blow it out and brother followed suit!

Then they had an adventure in the dark with their lanterns.

Big Brother wasn't too keen on no lights, but Chunky Monkey

was in heaven! He was running everywhere with that light and watching

it shine on the ceiling or the wall or light his path - so much fun to watch!

That was a highlight of our Snow Tot School.

What did you do for January?

Have Fun and Be a Blessing!

~Bekah

Tot School: T is for Turkey

~Chunky Monkey is 22 months old~

Our first attempt at Tot School with my littlest monkey in the house right now.  I didn't prepare a school board like I did for my Funky Monkey, only because I'm still learning what keeps this littlest monkey's attention.  So, this week was more for "experimentation", to see what he likes, to see what interests him, to see what he does with different trays, to see if repetition is the key with him or not, etc.  All I have to say is this week was VERY interesting!!!

My second born child is very independent, stubborn, and pretty much will only do what he "wants" to do.  This is cool by me, but I have to learn through this in how to teach him.  And some things no matter how much he wanted to do it ALL by himself, just couldn't happen... after glue on EVERY thing, I finally figured out it was easier to give him a Q-tip with a blob of glue on a plate than to give him the glue bottle!!! After about a million sticky messes with glue I learned pretty quickly, I hope, hehe.

So take a peek into our T is for Turkey week... please forgive some of my photos without a Chunky Monkey in them, he's quite the character that trying to take photos becomes a game of "get the camera", so if he is MIA, he got distracted...

Our "Letter" of the day is introduced in a mailbox! We sing a little song and he opens the mailbox to pull out the magnetic letter "T" and the "T" word cards.  We review all the word cards and practice what the "T" says.

Both of my boys did these.  My Chunky Monkey's is the top one and my Funky Monkey's is the bottom one.  I laid out their plastic mats with stickers on both and the pumpkin card template. They both got busy decorating, but my littlest one needed help getting the backing off the stickers and wanted to sit on my lap while creating his.

Littlest guy made his "T" for turkey letter craft - this is when I figured out glue on a plate with a Q-tip was WAY easier! After it dried we put our "T" word cards on it and practiced what the "T" says.

Q-tip painting!!! When he first saw the Q-tips he tried to clean out his ears, lol.  Then he saw the paint and went right to town.  I showed him how to "dot" on the dots and then let him go for it.  He could paint for hours!!!

I had two other tot trays as well, but I didn't get pictures of them.  One tray had a Letter T on it and I had a HUGE push pin that he used to poke holes in the formation of the Letter T, but I couldn't take pictures while he was doing that tray.  And the other tray was a do-a-dot Letter T and I gave him buttons in a box to pull out and put on the "dots".  He had more fun dumping the buttons and sending them all across the floor!

Hope everyone had an AWESOME Thanksgiving!!!

Have Fun and Be a Blessing!
~Bekah



~Linked Up to~

We are done with School!!! But the kids aren't so thrilled, what?!

We finished school up about a month ago now and my kids have not been thrilled.  I don't think my oldest understands the meaning "summer break" or maybe it is just a homeschool thing?! Not sure.  Either way, since they have been driving me batty and crazy and squabbling so much, I ended up planning out some fun stuff for today.

This was primarily for Cadence to introduce tot school just to see how it would work with him, but big brother got into it too. :)

I pulled out one of our old boards and decided to begin with the letter A with Cadence.  I chose this because I know it is the one sound he can imitate.  By the time big brother and myself had finished singing the Leap Frog tune of "The A says /a/" he finished it with "/a/, /a/, /a/".  And we very intrigued with the apples, which lead to our next activity...

I found all of our plastic balls that are green, red, yellow and orange and put them in our dump truck.  I set it out just to see what the little monkey would do.  He looked inside the truck and immediately said "ball" and went to grab them and throw them.  As he picked them up I called out each color and then told them they were apples.  He looked at me like I was crazy and said "ball, mama". LOL  Smart little monkey! Then big brother showed him how to work the scoop on the truck, that was a little difficult, so he settled for dumping them instead!

Then came nap time and big brother chose his activity for the day...

He chose to paint his Mario Reward Chart, since he just finished "world 3 - ice world" and wanted to change it to "water world for world 4".  So, he painted bloopers and cheep cheeps and piranha plants all over water world.  And then he had reading time, we are doing a summer reading challenge with our local library, so he read his first book today, "What do you do with a grumpy kangaroo?".  Then he watched his new Veggie Tales movie that grandma and grandpa brought over this morning, Veggies in Space The Fennel Frontier.

After nap time, I set up some activities for the little Monkey to explore.  This one is a muffin tin with geometric shapes that I got from Oriental Trading (see it here).  The first thing he did was point to it and say "uh" and "what is that?" Then he found all the spheres and said "ball" and threw them, of course.  So, I showed him how to sort them by color.  He did pretty good, then decided building towers and knocking them down would be more fun.

His last activity, I think was his favorite one of all.  I cut out tree shape from construction paper and put that on the wall.  Then I covered the tree with contact paper, but the sticky side is out.  I cut off some strips of crepe paper in red, yellow and green, so that he could tear them and stick "apples" on the tree.  He LOVED the tearing part, but wanted me to put the apples on the tree and then he had fun harvesting them!!!  Then he tried to stick stuff on the tree.  He thought this was a great activity and continued it for about 30 minutes!!!

What do you do in your homeschool for little tots?

Have Fun & Be a Blessing!
~Bekah