This Week In Tot School...

We didn't get much of a start on our Tot School week until Wednesday. Monday was an unusual day and Tuesday we went out for dinner. But a large majority of our week has been reading... lots and lots of reading. So there wasn't much to take pictures of anyway.

We've been working a lot more with phonics practice and Will is doing very well. He still loves his Letter Factory DVD from time to time and watched it twice this week. It's been such a great teaching tool, although I do have to explain to him that the letter "o" sound doesn't really have to be the drawn out Tarzan type EVERY time, as they teach in the movie. (If you've seen it, you'll know what I mean. LOL)

So this night, we pulled out our M&D letter magnets and he started by arranging all the lower case in alphabetical order on a tray.
Then I started spelling CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words for him on his white board and having him practice blending the letter sounds he's already familiar with. This was our first and I showed him how to do it.

Then he did this one on his own and got the word right! (See this previous post for a video clip.) I was so excited and proud of him!

Next, I gave him some simple word, paper flashcards that I printed and he found the letters to match the spelling of the word and sounded them out as he worked.

This game was to help him hear the rhyming sounds of different words. I put three paper flashcards out with a picture and word on each. Then I told him "I'm thinking of a word that rhymes with _____. Can you find which of these rhyme with _____?"

We did the same game with his old flashcards too.

Before we finished, Will wanted to try to spell "wagon" (the picture on his t-shirt). So we sounded it out together and he decided which letters came next.

This was a birthday gift from the Rethmans. We played with it this night and Will really enjoyed matching the puzzle halves and telling me what letter each started with.

We read this book A LOT this week. He identified several more words in the text upon my request, i.e. "up", "stop", "dog", etc. just by sounding them out and searching for the correct beginning letter sound.

On another night, we brought back out the matching rhyme cards (a Christmas gift from the Rethmans) and put them all together.

Then we moved on to counting. I save all these cardboard rectangles from boxes at work 'cause I find lots of uses for them in Tot School. Here (and this is sloppy, I know) I just divided each side in four quadrants and placed a certain number of stickers in each section. Then Will counted how many were in each box and clipped the appropriately numbered clothespin on that corner.

This one was cooler and just better. They were just brightly colored label stickers that I numbered to help him stay on track with 1:1 counting.

This was super fun. I bought a small bag of wooden craft cubes from Hobby Lobby and numbered one from 1-6 and the other from 4-9. I also wrote down the numbers 1-9 on paper for an extra visual aid and we talked about each having a "value" and how "6 is greater than 2" and "8 is greater than 7". Then we each rolled a wooden "di" and decided who rolled a bigger number. He liked this, though he kind of needs some practice with "rolling a di". He wants to select the up number himself and casually drop it so that number is displayed. :) Next we each rolled a di and I talked to him about how we could create two-digit numbers. So for example, we'd roll a 3 and a 7 and I showed him how we could make both "37" and "73". I don't think he gets that 73 is bigger than 37 though yet. We'll definitely keep playing with this. I think it's a great learning tool.

Another night while I was making up some last minute activities at the table, I busied him with a fine motor activity to keep him entertained and we worked together. I poked a dry spaghetti noodle into a small container of play doh and he threaded Cheerios onto the noodle. LOL He has so much patience for this kind of work.

Here was one of the pages I made him. More 1:1 counting practice. I think the Dot markers enhance ANY learning activity for Will. He loves them! So I wrote the numbers 1-7 down a half piece of construction paper and drew small circles in pencil beside each number that he stamped while counting aloud.

This didn't turn out exactly as I though it would. In fact it seems kind of pointless. But I'm sure that would be news to Will, 'cause he loved it. I just wrote down two of each number from 1-9 and he picked a color to stamp each set. We only have six Do-A-Dot colors so some were repeated, hence the pointlessness of this activity. But we did talk about which number was biggest, which was smallest, and then counted backwards (i.e. "what number comes just before 9?") stamping as we went.

This was mostly meant to be a fine motor activity and practice with drawing a line, because I know he knows all of his upper and lowercase letters and is fully capable of matching them. Will really hasn't had ANY practice with writing. He doesn't love to draw and so we haven't done much with it. I'd like to start working with him on writing his name and making more purposeful marks on paper. So this was just a connect-the-big-and-little-letters-with-a-line game.

Umm... it could use some work. :) I really have no idea what the skill level of 3 year old should be with writing, but I'm sure it varies depending on the interest level of the child. I showed him how to do this with letters A and C. Several times, I could tell that he was just so excited to make another line with the marker that he didn't even look first where he would be connecting that line to. So some of the lines went in the complete wrong direction or just took a... um... longer route to get to the proper destination. ;) Haha. Take a look at the lines from the big letter E. The first one goes down to lowercase "d" - probably because he had just drawn a line to "d" right before that - and the second connects to "c" before heading on up to "e". LOL

Here's a second go at it with more letters and a smaller piece of paper. P.S. I would REALLY LOVE to get the kids a smaller, wooden table and chairs to work at, but I just don't have the space for it until (and IF) we create a play room in the basement. Boo.

Hmm. A little progress, maybe?

I thought this was brilliant idea when I first saw it, but it proved to be too difficult for Will on the first try. I tied two pieces of ribbon to one end of a cooling rack and I wanted Will to practice "weaving" them through the metal. I really had to help him and continue to show him what to do next. I figured since he seems to really comprehend patterns that he would understand this, but it was just too hard yet. Once finished, he did seem to recognize the "over, under" pattern when I pointed it out to him. I left this activity out, so he can keep working on it.

This final activity was one from the Practical Life (PL) jar: lifting, carrying, and setting down a tray with objects on it. Will often reminds me of a playful puppy dog, when he bounds all over the place with total carelessness and little awareness of where his arms and legs are. Examples include his use of messy art tools like glue and paint where he'll be looking at whatever he'd just done and not even realize that his hand is still holding the tool and now dripping glue/paint onto the floor. Or when he's holding his beverage cup without a lid in one hand and then tries to do something else - say, taking another bite of food - and has no awareness of keeping that beverage cup level instead of tipping and spilling. So I thought this was a good starter activity to help make him more aware of his surroundings/actions while he's moving. First, he carried an empty tray. Next, I put an empty plastic measuring cup on it. Then, I filled it with about an inch of water. And finally, I filled it completely full. His job was to squat down, pick up the tray, walk across the kitchen and set the tray down. He did very well.

Another time, I'd like to have him hold a full, lid-less cup of water in his hand while trying to walk on a line of sidewalk chalk outside or duct tape on the carpet inside. I think it will be a challenge to watch his feet and stay on the line, while also watching that the cup stays level.

Moving on to a brief Teeny Tiny Tot School. This week, Sophie spent some time playing with daddy and her stacking cups. The older Sophie gets, the greater the bond between her and her daddy grows. It warms my heart. The "baby stage" is not Craig's specialty, but he's great with toddlers. She's really starting to want him more too.

Watching daddy fit one inside the other.

She also spent a fair amount of time horseback riding. :)

This week, Sophie got her first, real, purposeful experience with puzzle play. She wasn't really able to do it herself yet, but she liked trying over and over. And she DID seem to recognize like colors because she'd pick up two of the same color puzzle pieces. I just kept saying aloud the color and name of each shape as she grabbed them. Also, please excuse the outfit. She'd had a blowout day with the babysitter and was a bit mismatched.

I have a cool idea for jazzing up this puzzle once she's a little older and has mastered it.

On another night, Sophie one-upped the pot-and-pan-drums with "cookie tin drums". They sound way cooler... sorta like bongo drums.

This entertained her while I got dinner ready.

And the next morning, the kids both rocked out in their first living room gig.

I meant to take pictures of Sophie's favorite books this week but never got around to it. For her, I'm mainly working through a lot of the favorites from Will at this age, i.e. the Peek-A-Boo books, 10 in the Bed, and an old goodnight book from when I was a child. She's really taking more of an interest in books, which I love, but they still have to be pretty brief.

Stay tuned next week for our unit on nutrition! :)