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!