Tot School, January 12

The Littlest Apple is 28 months old.

I am so excited to be getting back in to the swing of Tot School!  We’re still easing our way back in to things, so we only did a small portion of the activities I planned.  I’m using the Itty Bitty Bookworm Curriculum, and our theme right now is Snowmen.

The Littlest Apple played with his new See & Spell, a Christmas gift from Mommy & Daddy.  We haven’t done too much work with lower case letters yet, but I’m already seeing some progress by using this new toy!

We explored different hot and cold items, including a heating pad, an ice pack, some warm water, a soda can, our fireplace, a ziplock full of ice, and some freshly popped popcorn.

Since we were stuck inside all of last week due to the extra cold weather, I tried to incorporate some physical activities into the mix.  I set up this hopscotch in the living room with painter’s tape, and planned to use it with letters, numbers and shapes to incorporate some learning.  It was a big FAIL, even without the letters/numbers/shapes.  I had such high hopes for this activity for my energetic son, but all he did was run around it like a maniac, get dizzy and fall down.  Silly boy!

I used our new magnetic chalk/dry erase board for several activities this week.  I drew some shapes on the board and asked The Littlest Apple to match the correct numbers.  We also did some lower/upper case letter matching.  Most of all, he just wanted to use the chalk and the dry erase markers and eraser.

We also used bubble wrap to paint.  This is something I’ve been intending to try for a while, but it was perfect for our snowman theme since it looks like snow!!  I put the bubble wrap on the bottom of a cup with a rubber band so it would be a circular shape (perhaps to make snowmen?).  The Littlest Apple got FURIOUS at me when I started demonstrating.  He saw the cup, and expected that I was going to put some water in it.  See his pouty face the picture?  This kid has got some very serious ideas about how he wants things to be done, and if they don’t go as planned he freaks out.  (Cups are for DRINKING out of, Mom!  Duh!!) After the initial tantrum, he enjoyed this activity and went through quite a few sheets of paper.  He was very proud of his snowmen paintings.

We played with the winter sensory tub frequently, but the snow dough was the biggest hit of the week.  The Littlest Apple asked to play with it every single day.  Now if I could only teach him not to tear the dough into a million tiny pieces….

The Littlest Apple enjoyed watching lots of the alphabet videos on Starfall.  We also watched several of the beginning reader videos, even though we’re not quite at the learning to read stage.  He LOVES watching those videos!

As usual, we read many books.  Here are a few of our favorites from last week.

In the kitchen, The Littlest Apple helped make tortillas.  He really enjoyed this, and they were delicious!

I’m hoping to have a more organized Tot School post next week (and with more photos).