tot school - st. patrick's day - age 3 1/2

This past week was St. Patrick's Day in tot school. It was also our last week of tot school for a couple weeks in observation of spring break. I never do planned breaks from tot school but we have a lot coming up in the next week or two, so I wanted to wrap up our loose ends and enjoy the start of the summer (er, spring) activities around here (the water parks open!). Ethan had been looking forward to St. Patrick's Day but enjoyed our crafting, celebrating and baking far more than the trays once the day rolled around. Next year I may do our St. Patrick's Day trays the week prior so they lead up to the fun.

SHAMROCK SOUND IT OUT WORDS

I found these shamrocks at the dollar store and thought it would make a fun tray. Ethan is becoming increasingly more interested in wanting to read words so I was hoping he would be really into this one, but he didn't spend much time on it. The point of this one was to match the letters to the word endings and sound out what word they spelled.

POT OF GOLD COUNTING

I didn't realize these were Mardi Gras coins until later, but they served their purpose. Ethan got to count out the gold coins that belonged in each pot of gold. He enjoyed this tray, but mostly making his own rules or games with the gold coins. By the end of the week, they had ventured out of tot school and were played with elsewhere.

RAINBOW WRITING

The point of this one was for Ethan to practice more with writing words on lines, but he had no interest in this tray and refused to use it.

LUCKY CHARMS SORTING

This was a fun one because Ethan had no idea these were marshmallows or edible so I got to pull one over on him with that. He enjoyed sorting the shapes and then totaling them up. This was his first experience with writing his numbers which I would like to do more of, since some of them were quite challenging for him. He enjoyed this tray a lot!

RAINBOW BRACELETS

This was another popular tray for the week. Ethan got to have some fine motor practice stringing Fruit Loops along some pipecleaners and then practice twisting the ends together to make little bracelets. He made bracelets for just about everyone he could think of and really enjoyed this tray! Unlike the Lucky Charms, it didn't take him much time to figure out these were edible.

LEPRECHAUN LUCK

Ethan got to independently glue together the pieces to make a little leprechaun version of himself. From there, he came up with three different reasons why he was lucky and we added those on little shamrocks. (He decided he is lucky because his mom makes him tot trays, he is a great artist and he has lots of dolls.)

RAINBOW STICKERS

I colored some reinforcements with rainbow colors and Ethan got to stick them onto the rainbow in color order. This was a fun one for him and he loved making his beautiful rainbow!

GOLD SLIME

Ethan was really not into the gold slime, which was crazy to me considering how much he loves any kind of dough or clay or opportunity to play with something sticky or messy. I paired the gold slime (I made it from a glue, glitter and liquid starch recipe) with some sticks and other things to stretch and poke at it with.

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