Gardens and Plants

What a lovely tot school we had this morning.  We talked all about gardens and plants, which is a wonderful topic at this time of year when our backyard garden is exploding with growth.  We "planted" flowers in play dough and took a tour of all the plants in the garden.

 We found tickly weeds and everyone got to have their very own - until they all fed them to the chickens :). There was a lot of bike riding, shopping cart pushing, watering can filling (though not watering, oddly enough), and plenty of play in the playhouse with the play kitchen.

Summer Bugs Tot School

Tot School this morning was so much fun.  We have a blast with the "Bugs" theme.  It makes me happy every time I pull out the bug box.  There were a handful of bug jars in our bug box that we put right to work.  In our time together we caught a cricket, an earwig, a wasp, a spider, and a fly.  This was amazing because we could look closely and safely at all the bugs and then eventually let them go (except for the wasp, the evil one we caught didn't survive and I'm okay with that).

 

The bugs theme lends itself to some exciting art opportunities.  We made bug "rings" out of chenille stems by twisting them around my finger and then bending the left overs like antenna.  They fit as an over-sized ring for the toddlers that way.  Our most time consuming art activity was a footprint butterfly.  I did this years ago when my older boys were young and I was excited to make a matching footprint art for my youngest.  They turned out super amazing.

We also painted plates red and turned them into ladybugs.  Painting with toddlers is always an adventure.  One child is grabbing the paint end of the brush and has completely red hands, the child across the table is asking for a baby wipe for every small paint on skin incident, and the child diagonally wants more paint every 3 seconds.  It's kind of like... well... painting with a group of very young children.  I'm pulled a thousand places at once wiping up as much paint as there is placed on the paper.  I guess it was worth it because after tot school was over my daughter carried her two art projects around the house for at least 20 minutes before I convinced her that they needed to be set in a safe place for lunch time.

We read The Very Hungry Caterpillar and talked about all the different foods that the caterpillar ate and how he turned into a butterfly in the end.  Of course there was a smattering of splashing in the water, playing in the sandbox and playhouse, and using squirting bug toys to water the tree and "paint" the fence.  

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!

Summer Safari Tot School

Thanks for joining us on our Summer Safari!  We encountered songs about Lions, and Gorillas, and Bears, OH MY!  We laughed and explored all morning!  Some of our favorites included eating broccoli and graham crackers (YES! Broccoli!).  We spent a lot of time practicing climbing on the climbing structure.  It'll take more practice before they can do it on their own, but they are getting stronger each day!

 We played with play dough A LOT today.  We kept it out the whole time.  I usually put it away when it is left for something else, that didn't happen today.  We played with the little splash pool and a little bit with the sandbox and playhouse/toy kitchens.  It was such a chill class today. Everyone was happy exploring in our little part of the world.

Be sure to check out the Facebook posts of two of the songs we sang today.  Sing them at home, the kids love them! https://www.facebook.com/InitiateLearning/ 

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!

Rain, Mud, and Worms

What an amazing day of tot school!  I love doing the Rain, Rainbows, Mud and Worms theme!  Today we went light on the mud aspect and only played with sand in the sandbox. 

 We colored, "swam", and found tons of worms!  Thanks for sharing your spring with me!

Tot School Friends May 2

We had such a blast in tot school today.  Our theme was Tot School Friends and was perfect for our group of kids.  We were able to pull out all the toys that the kids love the most.  We had tossing games and vehicles and even some toy power screw drivers that really captured everyone's interest.  Due to the rain today we were only outside for about 15 minutes.

We loved art today.  Art with toddlers is a crazy mess of fast transitions and clean ups. I started with shaving cream art. I have found that this activity is the bee's knees for some kids and complete torture for other kids.  Today was no different :)

We also did chalk drawing art.

And painting art.

And then squished a bunch of play dough.

It was an awesome day!