Tot School Tools

We had a delightful first day of the Tot School year.  Our theme today was school tools and it was so fun to introduce a variety of items and start showing kids how to use the tools.  We had blocks and play dough and the water table to get us started.  I now have a class set of play dough scissors and I was able to work with multiple children today in showing them how to hold scissors.  Of course, it's a skill that has to be practiced and practiced - today was just an introduction.  

 One of the fun aspects of tot school is that it is totally individually led.  I set out a variety of activities and kids choose where they want to spend their time.  When an activity is looking like the kids are done with it I put it away and get out something new.

 We also all had help in pouring our water today for snack time.  As we practice more and more the kids will be able to do their own pouring.  It will be a wet experience at first, but we always get better with practice.  I love giving Cheerios for snack time accompanied with a pipe cleaner.  Toddlers have a great time threading the cereal onto their pipe cleaner and it's wonderful small motor skill practice.

 After snack and lots of block building we pulled out the paint. We learned about the dot painters first.  They are great because they have easy to open and close screw caps. Then we moved onto stamps and stamp pads.  I forgot how much training is required to teach kids the correct side of the stamp to push onto the stamp pad and then press onto the paper.  Next came the paint and paint brushes.

We got messy and really enjoyed our time together. We ended the day with story time. I pulled out a variety of board books for the kids to look at and made a class book with each person's picture and name from our class.  When I read our class book out loud kids came running to see themselves in our book. I made a copy for each child and sent it home in their folders to read all week long.  It was a great first day!

Wheels in Preschool

This morning in preschool we had a letter review.  We got to play with wheels and talk more about the different shapes around us.  We played with all the vehicle toys and cut out pictures of wheels and trucks.

 We had a fantastic time in art today.  We cut out pictures of vehicles and glued them onto our pages according to if they were facing right or left.  Then we painted using toy vehicles to spread the paint all around.  We continued our discussion about shapes and talked about what shapes would roll the best.

 This afternoon we dove right into our Ready2Read and guided reading lessons.  We talked about letter X and had a great time reading the book "Max" by the Amazing Action Alphabet.

 We also spent time discussing the numbers 9-15.  We made a tape version of the tens and units homes.  We used unifix cubes and our big number mats.  We're still working on understanding that a stick of 10 is 1 stick of 10 units.  I'm hoping to really get a hang of what the numbers up to 20 mean so we can start working on counting to 100 next.  And not just the counting of it, the UNDERSTANDING of it!

Animal Friends

We had a fantastic day learning about the letter A and animal friends today.  All of the kids loved coming in this morning to find these mini animals, fishing poles with fish, animal hand puppets and stuffed animals galore!  There was plenty of animal noises around the room as they played with all the items. 

 Art was amazingly engaging today.  We first drew with crayons and then water color painted over the top of our drawings.  Many of the kids were focused on their art for upwards of a half hour!

 We also talked about puppets and made sock puppets today.  Last year when we did sock puppets there was a bit of hesitation about them. This year the kids were ready to dive in and put them on themselves.  They even brought me a second one for their other hand so they could have a puppet on each hand.  The puppets played all around our back yard and some are still drying off from a bath in the tub of sandy water in the sandbox.

 We played with our Animal Friends tot pack today.  I loved playing one-on-one with this little man as we sorted where the animals should live - in the barn or in the house.

Little Learners - Summer Safari

We had so much fun meeting with our homeschooling group today for our Little Learners activity day.  We used the Summer Safari tot pack to explore different elements of camping and safari animals.  

 The first thing we worked on was our scissor skills and puzzle skills.  I printed a few of the puzzle pages from the tot pack.  Then I used a spray adhesive to glue a piece of construction paper on the back of the pages.  That way the back of each person's puzzle pieces were color coded.  I tried to do everyone's favorite colors.

 After they cut out their puzzles they got to practice putting them together.

 I had a tent set up inside and didn't get any great pictures of it, but we all sat inside the tent to read stories.  We read the pre-reader book from the Summer Safari tot pack as well as a book from ReadingA-Z.com.

 Then we played with the hide-and-seek monkey.  It is a toy I got from ThinkGeek.com a few years ago as a Father's Day gift for my husband from our boys.  There is a receiver that you click and it makes the monkey make monkey sounds.  So one person hides the monkey and another person has to find it based on where they think the sound is coming from.  It was SO MUCH FUN for everyone and I wish I had pictures of it.

 We played a few tot pack games and then sang songs in the tent.  Our next activity was to make a hand print animal of our favorite safari animal.  Though they didn't all quite fit in "Safari" we went with requests.  We had peacocks, lions and zebras.  After they made their hand prints they got to paint for a bit.

 We really enjoy having a group that supports the growing ages and stages of all the children in our group.  I plan to host Little Learners once a month for group.  Today's activity was actually a postponed activity from May, so there will be another one next week.  It's the equivilent of a Tot School class, but all the moms stay.  If you're in the area (Aurora, CO) and need a homeschool group check us out: http://www.meetup.com/learnparents/

We had so much fun with the Summer Safari Tot Pack.  Be sure to stop by our giveaway and enter to win it for your Little Learners!  Low entrants means practically everyone will win!

Thanks to everyone for your support!  Be sure to swing by Circle of Moms today and click on the heart by the Little Adventures Preschool Monkey!