8.11.2013

tot school - the letter k - 25 months

This was the first week of Tot School in our new and improved classroom and it was awesome. Maybe it was the heat or maybe it was our brief break from tot school while I redid the classroom, but Ethan simply wanted to spend every waking moment doing tot school activities. It became a chore to break him away from tot school to eat dinner or leave for our one of our playdates! We did the letter K for two weeks again and it still worked out perfectly. Towards the end of the second week, Ethan declared "no more K week" with a trace of boredom in his voice and refused to touch the trays. Instead, we spent the end of the second week doing tons of art projects, so it worked out wonderfully. Ethan was very into art these past couple of weeks!

LETTER K TRACING ACTIVITY

The tracing activities have never been a huge hit but, for whatever reason, this one was! I put a dotted line letter K print-out in a page protector and let Ethan use a dry erase marker to trace it. He would actually try to trace, and even though his lines were squiggled and scribbled rather than solid and straight, he did a pretty awesome job!

KEY STRINGING TRAY

This tray was the same scenario. Ethan usually despises stringing activities, but he loved this one! My parents recently got new doors and my dad got a new car, so we had a few old keys to use. Ethan's job was to string them along the ribbon. A couple of the keys had smaller holes and he had some trouble, but he was really using a lot of problem solving skills in trying to get the keys on the string. If one side wasn't working, he would try the other side of the ribbon, or try stringing the key from the top versus the bottom. Nothing beat the level of pride on his face when he accomplished it!

K WATERBEAD ACTIVITY

This is a print-out from The Measured Mom. I placed it in a clear page protector so Ethan could use waterbeads repeatedly as he wished. I did this activity because while tot school was under construction, he was begging me for a "waterbead tray." The least I could do after taking away tot school for so long was let him have his waterbeads! Surprisingly, he wasn't so into this tray, or at least tired of it a lot quicker than the others.

THE KITCHEN TRAY

This was an idea I borrowed from The Kavanaugh Report. After much searching, I found a picture on a real estate website of a kitchen sans appliances. I printed out pictures of a microwave, oven, toaster, Keurig, Baby Bullet (what we use to make Ethan's smoothies) and a refrigerator. Ethan got to build his kitchen however he liked. He loved this activity, and my favorite part was how he referred to the Keurig as "daddy make coffee." I asked where mommy gets coffee then and he said "Starbucks." Boy knows me well! He had a blast making his kitchen up every which way his little mind wanted. Sometimes they didn't make sense, like the 'fridge sat on the counter, but he always had a method to his madness and it was cute to watch him go to work!

COUNTING KITTENS

Ethan can already count to ten, but I wanted to practice actually counting out items rather than simply reciting the numbers. We've been starting to learn to count out the numbers up to five. In this instance, we had different groups of kittens, from one to a group of five, with corresponding toy mice in the same numbers. Ethan's job was to count the kittens and then the mice, and give each group of kittens the right amount of mice. It took him a while to warm up to this tray. He loved the idea of kittens, but got a little frustrated with the counting out process at first. By the end of the first week, he was counting out the mice up to five in no time, and started to really get into this activity!

K MAGNET TRAY

Apparently I forgot to snap a photo of our magnet board for K week! As usual, Ethan loved the magnet board. It's always a great way for him to use favorite words or learn new ones. For K week, we had kettle, key, king, koala, kangaroo and kiwi.

K IS FOR KITCHEN DISCOVERY BIN

K is for kitchen, so I filled a bin with a bunch of random kitchen tools and gadgets. Ethan went bananas over this bin and spent every free moment he could find playing with it. He absolutely loved this bin. He learned to identify a lot of new items, like garlic press (I die inside of the cuteness every time he says this!), mitt, whisk, mallet and measuring cup. I also loved how he called the spoon rest a "spoon bed" and would tell the spoons "night night" each time they "laid down" in the bed. (In case you didn't see my Instagram video of this which I may or may not watch five times a day.)

SPECIAL K ACTIVITIES

We ate a kiwi in the spirit of K week. Ethan has had kiwi before, but luckily he didn't remember and so this experience was a pretty cool one for him!

We painted crowns so Ethan...and his favorite babydoll...could be KINGS!

Ethan also decorated a letter K using pieces of cut up paint swatches. He has taken a huge interest in using glue, so this was the perfect opportunity for him! He did great at making glue dots and sticking the colored pieces onto his letter K!

My favorite activity we did was make a koala out of paper plates!

Our koala's nose was made of black beans, which Ethan thought was so cool!

We did a lot of painting with kitchen utensils this week. It started on accident when Ethan got paint on one of the whisks. The whisk painting turned out pretty neat:

So we quickly moved onto using a spatula as a stencil to make cool square shapes on our paper!

Ethan's favorite kitchen painting activity, however, was using the dishscrubbers to paint. We learned that by using them as stamps we could create one painting style, and by scrubbing with them, we could create an entirely different type of painting.

...We did a LOT of art during K week.

The dirty and clean brush cups I made for our new tot school room actually worked out wonderfully. Ethan kept the dirty brushes separate from the clean ones and remembered each time that after painting we had to wash our brushes and put them away! Things are going a lot more smoothly in that department.

Our music nook actually having a space is another part of our new tot school classroom setup. We have been having an absolute blast selecting records and playing along. There are certain songs that just send Ethan running over to his instruments to start playing along. Sometimes he even asks for certain records to play in the background while he's working on his art. We are both loving our new addition!

LINKING UP WITH:

Tot School Montessori MondayI Can Teach My Child

No Time For Flash CardsFor the Kids Friday



7 comments:

  1. Is that curling ribbon you used for the stringing activity? If it is, I love that idea. Then, the string won't fray and it's easier for little fingers to string. Smart!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yep, it is! I used to pick up cheap shoelaces at the dollar store and have him use those for bigger holes, but I saw this in our craft drawer and thought it would be perfect! I love that it doesn't fray, too!

      Delete
  2. How cute is that koala! I'm dying ;) Love K week!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I love your kitchen picture, much better than mine! I searched everywhere for a picture like that!

    ReplyDelete
  4. They all came out great! Using the keys to string is an awesome idea.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I have added you to my linked to and love section of my blog... such a great job you do here!

    ReplyDelete
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    ReplyDelete

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