Tot School Summer Friends

We have had an amazing summer with our tot school friends.  Today we got to celebrate all the fun parts of being friends.  We started with a giant painting easel made from two 2x4 tables turned on their sides.   

 My youngest (whom we call Arrow) is exactly like her brother.  Man, I'm sure there is a blog post from 6 years ago where he has paint all over his leg as well.

Yep - Here is a picture of Arrow's big brother EMan, just about 5 years ago...

Back to today: We also drew with chalk on the fence and I loved when one of the little boys declared that he wrote his name, so cute and proof that he's ready for the fall where we ramp up our learning of letters and writing/drawing.

We also played with the parachute and a bunch of soft balls.  The kids had a complete blast with this activity!  Thank you for sharing your summer with me!

Summer Fun Tot School

We had a blast this morning in tot school.  Our theme was Summer Fun and we were able to play all the fun summer activities!  We splashed in the little splash pad and used it to scoop water to be delivered all the way across the yard to the sandbox.  We fed the bunny and played a lot of "pass".

 We took a short break for snack and went back to playing play dough and in the sandbox.  We pulled out the second water table and found a few boats in the toy box to play with. 

 All the toy kitchen tools came in handy while we played in the playhouse and used the water table and sandbox to do serious toddler "work".

 It was a fantastic day of tot school!  Thanks for sharing your children with me!

Nursery Rhymes in Tot School

We had such a fantastic first day of tot school's summer session!  We sang nursery rhymes all day (I may dream in nursery rhymes because we sang them over and over). 

 We had a lot of fun learning the Humpty Dumpty nursery rhyme.  Here's how I do it with toddlers:

We played play dough and blocks.  We learned to sort the dog pictures from biggest to smallest and we played a lot with the water table, sand table, and toy kitchens.

 The kids loved the bunny and learned to pick clover from the grass to feed to him.  We also worked on climbing and played in the playhouse.  We had a fantastic time singing and playing together!

Summer Fun - a Summer Intentional Learning Play Group

During the summer I've been hosting Little Learners, an intentional learning play group.  This week we were able to do our Summer Fun curriculum.  Find the free Preschool Summer Packs and Tot Packs here (just scroll down a tad to download them). 

 Days like this are a lot of fun as kids get to explore and play as they like and as parents we focus their attention on little things along the way.  I believe it is important to engage children in gardening and for our lunch we were going to have BBQ Zucchini sandwiches.  You basically cook some shredded zucchini and mix it with your favorite BBQ sauce and use it as sandwich filling.  We love it!  As a group we headed into the garden together to find some zucchinis that were ready to be picked.  Engage little learners by having them find and pick and hold the plants that you're after.  Engage bigger learners by having them "teach" the littles what we're looking for.

 Because the theme was "Summer Fun" we had out the swimming pool and the water wall toys.  (Check out the DIY Water Wall here.)  I love that they all grabbed pipes and were blowing bubbles into this small container together!

 I encourage our intentional learning groups to try to include as many elements of learning as possible.  We had a couple letters to review and had out some do-a-dot markers to decorate the letters.

 It's also a time that I use to demonstrate to parents the introduction of a new concept.  I think of it as teaching parents how to teach their children concepts they wouldn't have thought of.  This week's math concept was "graphing".  We were working with kids as young as 2 and as old as 4.  There were kids who'd never been introduced to it yet, kids who've seen it but not mastered basic graphing, and kids who new exactly what to do.  I love that homeschooling in a small group gives us the beautiful age range where kids can work together to be successful.

 A great large motor activity for younger kids is bouncing them on a large ball.  Hold their hips and bounce them to the front, side to side, and to the back.  This helps them develop different balancing muscles.

 Even CJ (my 4.5 year old) really likes this game even though he's comfortable bouncing on the ball by himself.  EMan just wanted to ride the horse, and that's ok.  Learning and skill development should always be fun and never forced.

 I ABSOLUTELY love this next activity. On a nice warm day, provide your child(ren) with goggles, a small hammer and cubes of ice.  They love to smash those ice cubes!

 Enjoy summer, and happy learning!

Summer Plans

What are your summer plans?  I intend to work hard with my play group (LEARN= Life Explored and Responsibility Nurtured) to set up education based intentional meetups.  I love being in a group that I consider my homeschooling group even though many of them aren't officially "homeschoolers".  We all have the same goals and values for our children and that is a powerful thing.  We're working on setting up a School Co-Op Day for the next school year that will engage all children from toddlers through Kindergartners (more on that Monday or Tuesday after we meet as a group).  In the mean time I'm hosting a variety of play dates known as "Little Learners" for the group to demonstrate to other moms how to lesson plan and intentionally spend time with their children.  We will be using the Little Adventures Tot Camp Printables as the lesson plans for these get togethers.  They are great packs you can use at home with your child(ren) or you can get together your playgroup and make it a fun meetup.

Tot packs are about 20 pages in length.  They each have a page of activities ideas and oodles of printables.  You can certainly use all or part of the lesson plans.  The printable pages include songs, matching games, drawing games and other activities.  Tot packs are designed to be a first introduction to math concepts, letters, shapes and colors.  They are not meant to obtain mastery in any subject.  Let them be a guide for educational play between you and your child.

There are 6 packs for the summer time curriculum and as we have each activity day I'll post pictures and share how it went.  If you are interested in getting in on the fun you can buy the packs from Teacher's Notebook or enter the raffle below to win your own downloadable set.

Tot Summer Camp -Download all 6 Summer Tot Packs-

click on the picture to link to the printable.

  

  

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