6.23.2013

tot school - letter h - 23 months

H week was a great week -- well, a great two weeks. In addition to spreading out our weekly activity over two weeks in honor of our busy summer, I also started keeping our tot trays in the squares of our big Ikea boookcase. This put them right at Ethan's level for him to be able to select each tray on his own accord rather than ask me for help, and with this, his excitement over choosing trays was completely intensified. I'm pretty sad to see H week go, though I think as of today we got to the point where Ethan is finally ready to see some new trays.

The H Week Magnet Board

As usual, the magnet board was a big hit. This week, Ethan saw lots of things he loves (like helmets, horses and hippos) and learned a couple of new words (like helicopter, hedgehog and hen). He loves naming the items on the magnets each week as he places them onto the board.

H is for House Do-A-Dot

If I was smart, I would have laminated this activity so Ethan could have reused it but I didn't think that far ahead. Ethan discovered midway through the week if he used different colored Do-A-Dot markers, he could still repeat the activity by dotting over the preexisting dots. (He's innovative.) The printable came from The Measured Mom and was great! Ethan really enjoyed this activity.

Home Is Where The Heart Is

This was, hands down, Ethan's favorite tray of the week. He loved this tray and did it over and over (and over!). Figuring I could play off of the letter h's in "home" and "heart," I came up with this one on a whim and am so glad I did. I made a print out of a bird, dog, Ethan, the president and a gingerbread man. Glued onto heart shaped backing, I also included their corresponding houses: a birdhouse, doghouse, the White House, a gingerbread house and our house. Ethan's job was to match the homes and hearts to the people they belonged to. He was so excited right off the bat to see his house there and recognized it immediately. He nailed the birdhouse and doghouse right off the bat, too, but had difficulty with the gingerbread house and the White House at first. After a few tries, he is now proudly exclaiming that president "Omamba" lives in the White House. Even though the challenge is now gone, he still loves to complete this tray!

Hamburger Assembling

Ethan enjoyed this tray, which relieved me because I was initially worried about his deciphering of my not-so-skilled hamburger topping cut-outs. Surprisingly, he knew what everything was at first, minus the ketchup which he got once I explained it to him. I had wanted to make hamburgers for dinner one night during H week so he could do this activity with a real hamburger, but we didn't get around to it. Still, this activity was the next best thing. It was so cute watching Ethan assemble his hamburger -- sometimes he left off the cheese or the lettuce, other times he piled everything on and said "mmm!"

Hippo Counting and Size Sorting

We've done size sorting before, but never with so many options or involving numbers. Ethan found this really challenging at first because of the number of different size hippos to sort and because he can't recognize the numbers yet, he can only count them out loud. While this wasn't his favorite tray of the week, he still really seemed to enjoy it and care about doing it correctly each time, even if it took a while!

Hammer Time

I made this one using a piece of styrofoam and some golf tees. I found the lightest weight hammer I could possibly find at Target (I tried to find a plastic or toy one, with no such luck!) and let Ethan go to work hammering the golf tees into the styrofoam. He actually didn't like this activity at all, which surprised me because I thought he would absolutely love it. (Toddlers.) We only did this activity once or twice, and never for very long.

H Week Activities & Crafts

I had found some various hats at the dollar store and put them into a bin for Ethan to try on. He loved this!

We did some "H" painting activities, but Ethan has been really into choosing pages from his coloring books to color.


Our H hat

I gave Ethan some different "house shapes" and he got to work gluing them together to make his house:

We also took some popsicle sticks, glue and paint and made some houses out of wooden sticks:


Ethan's finished house!

LINKING UP WITH:

Tot School Montessori MondayI Can Teach My Child

No Time For Flash CardsFor the Kids Friday



6 comments:

  1. Tons of fun activities going on! I love the craft stick house.

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  2. wow! I can't wait to try these with my 24 month old daughter, can you please tell me where I can locate ideas for the other letters.. thank you so much!

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    Replies
    1. I kind of wing them as I go, but if you want to see the letters we've done so far, they're all linked up here:

      http://www.youaretheroots.com/search/label/tot%20school

      I hope your daughter has a blast with them!

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  3. Great activities this week! :)

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  4. Great activities! The hammering activity looks like lots of fun. Ethan might love it in the future. I did have a very small, lightweight hammer from Montessori Services when I had a Montessori school. (I kept the hammer for our homeschool later on). The kids loved it. A really lightweight hammer might make a difference as well. Thanks so much for linking up with Montessori Monday. I featured your post at the Living Montessori Now Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/LivingMontessoriNow

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