Winter Holidays - Tot School

This group of toddlers had a fantastic time this morning talking about Winter Holidays.  We started with a gift wrapping station.  They wrapped up a gift for mom and dad at home.  I love teaching kids how to use tape.  They get such a kick out of sticking the tape all over the wrapping paper.

 We talked about how the New Year means that the Earth has gone around the Sun one whole time.  I made these cut little spinning toys and the kids rotated the earth and then yelled, "Happy New Year!".  We wore hats, blew blowers, and even shot out silly string.

 We had a little Santa's Workshop happening with the building toys in the basement and the cardboard house that we worked on coloring on the main floor.

 We practiced the letter J by coloring and reading our J book.

Polar Express

We had a great time this morning in tot school.  We read the book "The Polar Express" and had a pajama day.

I had the sensory table set up with cotton ball and plush snowballs and encouraged the sweetest little snowball fight ever.

We learned a new math game today.  It's called a "Grid Game".  I made a die that had dots for the numbers 1, 2, and 3 (twice each) out of a cube wooden block.  We rolled the die and counted the dots, then we got that many counters and covered the same number of trains on our game board.  When we covered all ten trains we were the winners!  It's a simple game to play at home that makes a big difference in early understanding of quantity.   

 We worked on our super secret holiday gifts after a snack time of hot chocolate and animal crackers. 

Some story time and playing with trains finished up our time together today.  It was a blast!

Gingerbread Friends

The Gingerbread theme in our house is no joke.  It's a HUGE mess of AWESOME!  It's also a delightful way to make my house smell delicious.  We started off the day by playing a bit in the school room to make drop off consistent and normal.  Then we headed to the kitchen for the rest of the day.  Our first gingerbread activity was homemade gingerbread finger paint.  I love making this finger paint.  It is colored by spices and smells delicious!  I even learned this year that I can make it in the microwave which means I can make it with my kindergarten class, yay!

Gingerbread Finger Paint, Combine in saucepan or glass bowl:

 1/2 c. cornstarch

 3 T. sugar

 2 c. cold water

 1 T. Cinnamon

 1 T. Ginger

 1 T. Cloves

 Cook together until thickened. The spices make it a brown color and it smells lovely!  

To cook in the microwave: stir, cook 1 minute, repeat until thick. If you decide to add some food coloring, and leave out the spices for regular finger paint, just add a squirt of liquid dish detergent after cooking it and that helps the food coloring to not stain. I don't add the detergent when I don't add food coloring (like today).

 Our next gingerbread activity was based on the book "Gingerbread Friends" by Jan Brett.  In the book the gingerbread baby wants friends to play with.  We made him friends by making 3 gingerbread friends all holding hands.  Then we decorated them with crayons and stickers. 

 At snack time each child got a gingerbread cookie, some frosting, and goodies to decorate with!

 After snack we played with gingerbread play dough.  We haven't pulled out the play dough since summer camps and I was surprised that everyone was engaged for a half hour or longer until pickup.  

Play dough ingredients:2 cups flour3/4 cup salt4 teaspoons cream of tartar2 cups lukewarm water2 Tablespoons of vegetable oil2 T. Cinnamon2 T. Ginger2 T. Cloves

Stir together the flour, salt and cream of tartar in a large pot. Next add the water and oil. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly. Make sure to use a super duty spoon because once it gets thick it's like stirring play dough!  When thick, remove from head and knead until smooth.

Animals in Winter - Tot School

We had such a fantastic time in tot school today!  I love talking about all the things that animals do in winter time.  We practiced saying some big words like "Hibernation" and "Adaptation" and "Migration".  

 We pretended we were animals in winter needing to do different things.  We built "dens" to "hibernate" in, pretended to be butterflies flying somewhere warmer, and we pretended to hunt for food and grasses.

Winter Camps

Happy Thanksgiving Week everyone!  Winter Camp registration will open on Thanksgiving day at www.InitiateLearning.net Be sure to sign up early because spots will go fast!  Check out the amazing line up:

Tot School - Scarecrows and Thanksgiving

Because of how the weeks fall this month we were able to do our Scarecrows theme and Thanksgiving theme together this week.  We started the day off by decorating our scarecrow hats and saying "Boo" to the stuffed animal crow.  They thought that was a hilarious game.  We also made handprint turkeys - be sure to check the binders for those gems!

 One of the favorite activities was making dancing scarecrows.  They were pre-cut and assembled with mini brads to make the head, arms, and legs wiggle like they are dancing.  I thought they turned out delightfully adorable!  Have a great Thanksgiving, no tot school next week!

Tot School - Indians and Pilgrims

NOTE: This educational tot pack and activity day is meant as an introduction to Native Americans and Pilgrims.  I have intentionally used the word Indian to introduce the letter I.  Indian, however, is not an accurate description of Native Americans.  For more information please see this link. There are also many different tribes of Native Americans that have very different traditions. Though the Pilgrims were in contact with the Wampanoag, this pack introduces ideas from many different tribes.

We had a fantastic morning in tot school yesterday.  I have loved watching this group of children grow up- they really do grow and change so quickly.  One thing that I'm noticing now is how they are developing the ability to play together, a developmental step just beyond playing side-by-side.  I love how they are interacting and saying hello and goodbye to their friends by name.

We made feather headbands and counted to four.  We read stories about being thankful and Thanksgiving.  We also built tons of buildings with blocks.  One of our favorite activities was making petroglyphs by coloring on sandpaper (because carving rocks is a little out of our league right now).  Last, but not least, we made a home made game with a popsicle stick, a string, and a circle of chenille stem.  The idea is to hold the stick and try to get the circle around the stick by swinging it. We had such a fantastic day!

Thanksgiving Week Camp Registration Is Open!

I am so excited to announce the launch of a new website to make signing up for camps a breeze!  Check it out by clicking the "Home" button above or heading over to http://www.initiatelearning.net

Thanksgiving break is headed our way and I'm excited to announce 2 new camps and a repeat of a favorite!
Wednesday, November 21, 9am-noon MakerSpace
Wednesday, November 21, 1pm-4pm Robotics EdScratch 1
Friday, November 23, 9am-noon Robotics EdScratch 2

Here are the basics:

MakerSpace: Do you have a builder, crafter, or tinker-er that loves creating things? Imagine the cardboard challenge on hyperdrive and that’s what this three-hour camp is about. Makerspace is the creation of robots, cars, toys, and battery powered awesome. We will learn to connect basic motors to wheels, propellers, and gears onto student’s invented creations (made with recycled materials). We’ll learn about circuits and paper/cardboard crafting. Students will be bringing these inventions home to explore more and show you the amazing things they can immediately apply in their own home tinkering time. Students will need to bring cleaned recycled materials to class, no glass items please.

EdScratch 1 (Robot Programming): Join Miss Amanda for EdScratch 1. Whether you’ve programmed before or not, this is a great starting place for students to learn to program robots. We’ll start with some robot basics, including teaching Edison to play soccer and move into introducing the EdScratch programming language. Building your first program in EdScratch is easy! Just drag and drop the blocks you want together. EdScratch is much more complicated than EdBlocks, however, so expect to challenge your brain to make Edison accomplish even more than what was possible in Miss Amanda’s summer camp series. Students will need to bring one Edison robot with fully charged batteries. If you don’t have your own Edison robot I have extras available for $40 each.

EdScratch 2 (Robot Programming): Ready to dive in and really get programming your own robot? Join Miss Amanda for EdScratch 2. Using the vertical block-based visual programming language based on Scratch we’ll explore computational thinking, the input-process-output cycle and the parameters of inputs and outputs on Edison, grouping blocks (writing programming for Edison to do two things at once), bugs and debugging syntax and logical errors. Students will need to bring one Edison robot with fully charged batteries. If you don’t have your own Edison robot I have extras available for $40 each.

I can't wait to work with your kiddos!  Only 6 spots per class! Sign Up HERE!

Tot School Halloween 2018

We had so much fun this morning for Halloween!  It was messy and exciting all day long!  We learned the letter C and painted pumpkins!

 We also explored mini pumpkins and gourds in our rice sensory table (how many cups of rice did you vacuum up today?  I think I'm at 9 and counting....). We made footprint ghosts and handprint spiders as well.  We played all sorts of dress ups and listened to some fun Halloween music.  Happy Halloween everyone! 

Thanksgiving Camps

We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming to announce Thanksgiving week camps!  There will be morning and afternoon camps on Wednesday and a morning camp on Friday.  Details and registration will be released and open on November 1st!

Tot School - Doctors

We had such a blast today talking about Doctors and the letter H.  We had out the baby dolls and 300 bandaids to start.  I love having young kids play with bandaids.  The fine motor skills required to open the package and put the sticky bandaid on something successfully is amazingly difficult.  Plus, they have a ton of fun doing it!

 We had a pretend doctor visit and made charts of how tall everyone is (not exactly accurate, if you're wondering).

 We also added our weight to the doctor chart (also, not accurate, but close). 

 We had our first formal writing activity today as we practiced using pencils to trace the letter H.  We learned the song "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes" and had it playing on loop for about an hour for background noise.  It was fun to listen to them sing along from time to time. 

Tot School - Bubbles, Balloons, Blocks!

Usually our Bubbles day is held outside, but with the chilly weather and snow we ended up inside and expanding it to Bubbles, Balloons, and Blocks.  I also put together our October sensory bin of orange colored dry rice, plastic butter knives, Halloween erasers, and pumpkin buckets.

 I had another sensory bin set up in my kitchen.  I ran some hot soapy water and scooped off the top layer of bubbles for the kids to play with in the sensory bin.  It made for a nice scrubbing of the sensory bin - now it can say inside all winter.

We did turn on the bubble machine a few times in the basement.  It was convenient that I planned to shampoo the carpets later this week - the timing is wonderful :).  I don't have any great pictures of the balloons.  We had 50 balloons over by the sofa that were used to kick and catch and throw all around.  I wrote the letter B on them and we sang our song "This is the sound that B can make /b//b//b/, /b//b//b/, This is the sound that B can make in words like Bubble and Balloon" (Mulberry bush tune). 

Tot School - Safety

Wow! We had so much fun this morning in tot school.  We talked all about safety and made some super fun fire trucks out of cardboard boxes and paper plates.  The kids worked really hard on them and were a bit sad to wait for them to dry. 

 We played with playdough and rode bicycles and pushed each other on the swing as well. 

 We learned the letter S - it was so cute having them practice the S sound :). 

Check out that super cute smile!  They loved the fire trucks.

Tot School - Sept 26 - Nursery Rhymes

We talked about nursery rhymes today in tot school.  I would love for the kids to start learning them, so I sing them over and over whenever I can.  Today, one of my kiddos told me, "Miss Amanda, you already sang that one." in a very exasperated voice.  Hahaha!  It was quite funny to me.  We started the day with a little crayon drawing and water color resist painting.  Eeks - which reminds me that their art is still hanging on the fence to dry.  I best scamper back there and gather their books before they get ruined.

 We also played with bubbles and the knock over the cans game from back to school night.  We went inside for a little bit today and mostly played with the musical instruments (as loudly as possible it seemed), Duplos, and wooden Pattern Blocks.  Then we headed back outside to enjoy the sunshine. 

Tot School - Sept 19 - Animals

I loved learning about the letter A and talking about animals at Tot School when we met on Sept 19th.  We started with playing outside as we have been doing for many weeks past.  We played with animal hand puppets and animal finger puppets.  After we washed our hands and had our snack we played downstairs for the rest of our time together.

 We're transitioning to spending part of our time inside and part of our time outside so when the weather is crummy the kids aren't surprised by a different play location.  We did animal puzzles, practiced the letter A book and colored it, and played with all sorts of toys!

Tot School Sept 12 - Dentist

Tot School was so much fun today.  We learned the letter T and talked all about the dentist.  We talked about our body parts and that we have teeth in our mouths.  We decided that teeth are white and had a fun craft activity where we painted egg carton teeth white.

 We are also still working on counting to 5 and played our first "Hop Along the Path" game with the big number mats.

Another fun activity we did was playing with colored masking tape and trying to put in on our papers.