Valentine Tot Trays

Oh, Tot School... how I've missed you.

There must be something about this time of year that makes me want to break out the learning activities, because this is right about the time that I originally started doing Tot School work last year. We've done a little bit more of it recently and both kids are loving it. Sophie has come to recognize that a fun game is about to ensue when she sees me carrying out a tray. She comes right over and sits down on the floor in anticipation. Will has also been so excited to have "activities" to do once again. That's what he calls this type of Tot School work. Technically, he's not really a "tot" anymore. But I don't really know what else I'd rather call it... so Tot School it remains until I think of something.

We did a bunch of Valentine themed tot trays this past weekend. Here's a glimpse at most of them set up and ready to work.

Tray #1 was a fine motor skill work with some Valentine colored buttons to balance on a popsicle stick. This takes very careful precision to place each one without knocking another off.
I did the first three for her, and Sophie had just placed that clear one closest to her hand. She knocked some off with the next button.

She got bored of this activity quickly, but boy does she love free-playing with buttons!

Will did a little better. We extended this activity with an imaginative plot that the green tray was a crocodile-filled swamp and the popsicle stick was a log. He had to carefully place the frogs (buttons) on the log without letting them fall in the swamp. He seemed so nervous and careful. :)

Tray #2: Size differentiation. Read the label cards, place one behind each bowl and sort pom poms into correct bowls. (The heart above is for another game using the pom poms.)

These are the same size cards I used last year before Will was better able to read them, so I just wrote the words in graduating fonts to help him understand.

Sophie didn't really know what she was doing, but she liked moving the pom poms from bowl to bowl.

Working together - Will tried to explain it to her. :)

Here was a fun extension with the pom poms. I cut out a paper heart and placed it on the ground. Then I had the kids climb up the little step stool and drop the pom poms from above, trying to land on the heart. They all seemed to bounce/roll off, so I placed one of the glass bowls on the heart as a target.

Tray #3: sensory sort with the lentils and patterning with the beads.

For Sophie, I placed all of the smallest colored heart beads into a cake pan and poured the lentils over top. She had to sift through with her hands to find each of the hearts.

Meanwhile, Will created patterns using the bigger beads.

Will really wanted a chance to try the sensory tray too (he always finds the simplest things to be the most fun) and I gave Sophie an empty baking powder container to drop the bigger beads in since she's too young to pattern with them. Sophie still LOVES activities that involve her putting individual pieces into a whole or a slot, dumping them out, and doing it again.

It could entertain her forEVER!

Tray #4: tonging pom poms around a paint palate. For Will, it was also another patterning activity.

This is old hat for him but it's still good to continue practicing learned skills.

Sophie shocked me with her tonging skills! I first introduced tongs to Will when he was between 2 1/2 and 3 years old, and he took much longer to learn how to use them! Sophie used the paint palate briefly, but had more interest in this divided tray. The number stickers in each slot were for another activity I did with Will. She just placed the pom poms in each hole at random.

Tray #5: threading pony beads onto pipe cleaners. Another activity Will's done before and enjoyed.

He pushes the pipe cleaners into the shaker and then threads like colored beads onto each stem. Great for fine motor skills.

Done!

At random, Sophie picked up her tray with the beads in the baking powder container and walked around with it. It occurred to me that this was something I'd had Will practice before to keep balance of the items on the tray while walking. The container slid around but she didn't let it fall off. :)

Finally, we did a "heart hunt". Like an Easter egg hunt but with plastic heart containers from the Target dollar bins. I put a plastic bead in each just so they'd find something inside when they opened them and that turned out to be such an exciting thing! LOL They'd find the hearts (Sophie found the pink and Will the red - I hid them easier for Sophie) and then open the containers and put their respective beads back into Sophie's container.

Hunting for hearts - definitely the favorite activity of the weekend.

Such fun!

The last activity was a counting game for Will. He counted out conversation hearts and put the appropriate number into each numbered slot (from 1-9) in the divided tray.

Then he got to pick one slot to eat at the end. He picked 5. Silly boy. ;)

Hopefully, I'll have some more Tot School posts coming in the future. For now, it was fun to include some into our Valentines weekend.