Tot School - Pets 4/25

What a great day of tot school!  There were so many happy faces and giggles.  All the kids are starting to play independent of me, which is fantastic!  Our theme today was about pets.  We read "The Big Red Barn" a handful of times and played with a bunch of hand puppets.  We also played with the toy kitchen and Rock-Em Sock-Em Robots was brought down as well. :)

 With Mother's Day just a few weeks away we may have started a fun gift today.  It's awesome to be in such a good groove as a whole class that I can work one-on-one with each child doing something as messy as hand print painting without the rest of the room falling apart.

 Outside we visited the pet bunny and then pretended to be the pet animals in the outdoor run that the bunny uses from time to time. We had a super fun day together!

Tot School - Zoo Animals

The last few days we've had some crazy wind in Denver.  This crazy wind took out two fence posts in my backyard.  I couldn't get them fixed before tot school today so we needed to stay inside for the day.  We did a slight swap of tot school themes and ended up doing Zoo Animals today.  I LOVE doing zoo animals.  We have some fun blow up zoo animals and some finger puppets.  We have puzzles and books galore.  It was so much fun!  

We made a zoo out of Lego Duplos, read "Goodnight, Gorilla" about a zillion times, and pretended to be animals ourselves.  I made some tear-free bubbles and put the bubble blower up high.  I LOVED the bubble solution, but it's residue was crazy.  Homemade tear free bubbles: 3/4 c water, 1/4 c tear free baby wash, 3 TBSP corn syrup.  The bubbles work amazingly well and there wasn't a single incident where it got in eyes and made anyone upset.  It did, however, leave an interesting sticky residue on hair, toys, and the carpet.  I'll definitely use it again, but outside for sure.  Those of you that have kids that played here today you may find this crazy residue on their little clothes and in their hair.  It should wash out easy peasy. 

Tot School - Fruits and Vegetables

Tot school this morning was so much fun!  We're really starting to get into the groove with this group of kids.  We really get rumbling and tumbling into all the good stuff as kids start to adjust to our group.  Truth be told - having a group of toddlers usually means there are kids who cry at drop off for a while.  The good news is that they hardly cry for very long. When there are so many awesome activities ready to dive into the fun starts right away.  Today we talked all about fruits and vegetables.  We talked about all the colors of all the fruits and vegetables.  We sorted them by color and explored their different textures.  Even if they didn't eat it (or want it) for snack time they all got a variety of fruits and vegetables on their plate.  My goal with kids is to give them the opportunity to see, touch, smell, and possibly even taste a bunch of different fruits and vegetables.  Then when they don't get eaten, they become wonderful paint brushes!

 We used broccoli for our paint brushes today, along with green paint.  The weather was so lovely we were able to play outside with all the different food toys.  We also pulled out the bubbles just for fun.  I read one of my favorite books "Tops and Bottoms" to a transitioning group of kids.  In tot school we often don't make it through a book.  I start to read to interested kids, they wander away and other kids come to listen, and when they all wander far enough to not hear I put the book down in a spot where they can come back to it and hopefully they do at some point. 

I was really happy with how today went in tot school.  Today was week 6 of 10 in this session and everyone is melding so well together.  I'm excited for what our future together holds!

Tot School - Planting Seeds

We had such a fantastic day in tot school yesterday.  We read some books and played with the playhouse inside as we got settled.  Then we went outside.  Our theme was "Planting Seeds" We played with a wildflower mix of seeds, potting soil, and watering cans in the sensory bin. 

 Snack included Oreo's (simply because they look like dirt) and bananas. 

 At the end of the day we planted flowers in our flower pots.  This is the toddler connection of seeds turn into flowers - just sped up for our class time together.  I love how they each planted their flowers completely true to their own personalities.  Also, I'm impressed with myself for being able to plant flowers with 5 small kids and get pictures of most of them as we did it :).  It was a great day!  I love that the weather is more consistently warm and I look forward to being outside more often.