1.19.2014

tot school - letter v - 30 months

Letter V week was a ton of fun! It was a pretty weird week for us. I wasn't feeling all that well and then neither was Ethan, what with his molars coming in. We spent more time home than usual because of it and more time in tot school because of it. Our tot school room seemed to be his "happy place" this week so I'm glad we had some fun trays set up to occupy his mind a little. Strangely enough, this was the first week ever we didn't fill up our art wall! Art definitely took a back seat to some of the hands-on trays we had going on this week.

THIS WEEK IN TOT SCHOOL...

LETTER V TRACING

The past couple of weeks, Ethan has started to be more into the tracing activity. He still doesn't love this one, but he did use it a couple of times. He usually traces the letter once and then colors it in before deciding he's finished. I think he just likes the fun of dry erase markers and being able to wipe off his tracing!

LETTER V TRACING #2

We did this tracing tray a little differently. I used a foam letter V from one of Ethan's puzzles and gave him a pen and some paper. He got to trace the foam V for this one, which he really enjoyed. Ethan got a little frustrated when the V would slide around the paper a bit, but I helped him hold it.

VINE & FLOWERS

I'm not an artist so I drove myself a little crazy trying to create a vine, but in the end it worked out enough. I glued some pink flowers onto some clothespins and Ethan's job was to put the flowers onto the vine. He wasn't able to properly do the clothespins which resulted in a whole lot of frustration. After a couple of attempts, he didn't have anything to do with this tray for most of the week.

VEGGIE COUNTING & NUMBER RECOGNITION

We focused on vegetables a lot with V week. I put some peas in a jar, included some tweezers and some cards numbered 1-10. Ethan's job was to use the tweezers to count out the peas. My mistake was (yet again!) including the numbers 1-10. Especially paired with using the tweezers, this wound up taking a long time to complete and deterred Ethan from really wanting to do this tray. Usually he'd get to five before he just gave up and put everything away or just made designs with the peas.

VEGETABLE MAGNET BOARD

Going back to the vegetable theme, I used it for our magnet board this week. Ethan actually really enjoyed the magnet board this week and picking out the veggies he could recognize.

VOLCANO!

This was, hands down, the biggest hit of the week. We spent most of the week making volcanos! Our volcano is a small water bottle filled halfway with vinegar, two squirts of dish soap and red food coloring covered with dollar store playdough. I included a little cup of baking soda and a little melon baller scoop. Ethan had a blast seeing the volcano erupt. The first time it happened, the look of surprise on his face was the cutest thing ever!

VALENTINES DAY FINE MOTOR ACTIVITY

We started Valentine's Day celebrations a little early around here. I picked up these hearts and the cheese shaker container at Deals (my favorite dollar store ever!) for a dollar a piece. I couldn't believe how much Ethan absolutely adored this activity!

VEGETABLE SLICING

Our veggie slicing tray was a huge hit this week! We used the wavy chopper from Montessori Services for this activity. I threw some veggies into our discovery bin plus a tiny cutting board I found for a dollar at Deals. I had some internal conflict over teaching a tomato as a vegetable and tried to explain to Ethan it was actually a fruit but it sort of went over his head. There's always time for that lesson, I suppose. Ethan had a blast cutting his vegetables. The cucumber was his favorite -- both to slice and to snack on! Between the vinegar from the volcano and the cucumbers from this activity, it smelled like pickles in our tot school classroom a whole lot!

ARTS & CRAFTS

We worked on our Valentine's Day heart stamping this week using a bent toilet paper roll. Ethan loved this activity!

Unfortunately, that was about the extent of our fun arts and crafts projects! The rest of the week was spent working on our Twisty Noodle printables or Ethan's freehand paintings!

LINKING UP WITH:

Tot School Montessori MondayI Can Teach My Child

No Time For Flash CardsFor the Kids Friday



5 comments:

  1. Have you tried letting him use shaving cream and writing his letters in it? It can get messy, but it's easy to clean up. This goes along with tactile and kinesthetic learning for you and fun for him.

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  2. Thanks for sharing your volcano and the coloring page you found! We are doing volcanos this week and I just might use those! I love your vine, too, sorry it didn't work for him :(.

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  3. School Time SnippetsJanuary 19, 2014 at 8:03 PM

    Must get to the Dollar Store!! Great activities! I always love seeing what other Tots are doing and what they enjoy. I like the whole concept of the magnet board, but my tot isn't into that sort of thing. However, Little Brother loves magnets so I'll have to put together that sort of activity for him in a few months! Where do you find the pictures to use for the magnet board? Just cut up pictures? I suppose I could add magnets to flashcards, too.... ?!

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  4. Lindsay @ youaretheroots.comJanuary 20, 2014 at 8:41 PM

    No, but that sounds awesome! Totally trying this next week, thank you!

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  5. Lindsay @ youaretheroots.comJanuary 20, 2014 at 8:42 PM

    Awesome! Volcanos are so much fun to learn about!

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