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!

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.  

Toddler Scarecrows

We had so much fun today learning all about the letter L and scarecrows.  We made a few really cute crafts (a scarecrow hat to wear and a scarecrow face out of Popsicle sticks).  For all our lessons and fun printables be sure to check out the Scarecrows Tot Pack.  Everyone loved the letter L game on Starfall.com and playing with the dry corn was a whole lot of fun.  I was very proud of everyone for helping to clean it all up when we were done. 

 We also had a fun story time where we learned about scarecrows and acted out scaring the crows away from the corn.  It was such a lovely day that we enjoyed the sunshine for the last 10 minutes of class as well.

It was such a delightful day of learning!

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.

Dentist - Tot School

We had so much fun learning the letter T today and talking about teeth and the dentist!  

 I love that the dollar store has packs of 4 toothbrushes.  It makes getting new ones for every class so much nicer on the budget. We enjoyed trying to drop a toothbrush into a wide mouth jar and brushing the "teeth" of our puppets.

Though it has nothing to do with letter T or the Dentist, we worked on throwing soft balls today as well. 

 The kids enjoyed the Dentist Tot Pack and playing the different games like sorting by color, talking about quantities up to 5 and a little Dentist hide and seek.

 One of the activities in the Dentist Tot Pack is lacing teeth.  It was really fun to watch kids pick this up this year when they struggled with it last year.

 For art today we painted the bottom of egg cartons like they were teeth. We used the tooth brush to paint and talked about how when we scrub our teeth with each day it makes them sparkly white.

 The rain finally stopped and we were able to spend the last 20 minutes of our time together outside.  I went to take the cover off the sandbox but the kids had pushed it aside and were playing with the muddy puddle so I let them continue with their game.  We had so much fun!

May Tot Packs

I create all of my lesson plans to share digitally with other homeschooling families and small classrooms.  If your child attends Little Adventures Preschool you can easily supplement their learning at home by downloading the lesson plans.  It will also give you a good idea about what we covered.  I always plan more than we will ever actually get to so there is often a great idea within the plans that you can share with your child to extend their learning.  You can find all of my toddler and preschool lesson plans here:http://www.teachersnotebook.com/shop/LittleAdventuresPreschool
Find the year long theme calendar {here} and follow along with us! This post gives details and pictures of all May Toddler Packs. Be sure to scroll down to see all of them. 

Tot Packs 38-40 Tot packs are about 20 pages in length. They each have 2 pages of activity ideas, book suggestions, and links to the materials I use. You can certainly use all or part of the lesson plans.  The printable pages include songs, matching games, drawing games and other activities. Tot packs are designed to be a first introduction to math concepts, letters, shapes and colors. They are not meant to obtain mastery in any subject. Let them be a guide for educational play between you and your child.


May
{Download all 3 May Tot Packs}

38. Mother's Day {Download}

Printables in this pack:

 Letter Q

Numerals 1-5

All About Mom

Mother’s Day Grid Game

Mother’s Day Short Path Game

Mother’s Day Tracing

Mother’s Day Puzzles

39. Pets {Download}

Printables in this pack:

Pets - A Pre-Reading Book

 Letter Review Beginning Sound Match

What doesn’t belong? Identifying pets and non-pet animals.

Ordinal Numbers Pet Show Winners

Dog Bone Color Sorting

Pet Songs

40. Friends {Download}

Printables in this pack:

Friend Shadow Matching

3 Piece Picnic Friends Puzzles

Friendship Size Sequencing

Friendship Tracing 

 Friendship Songs

April Tot Packs

I create all of my lesson plans to share digitally with other homeschooling families and small classrooms.  If your child attends Little Adventures Preschool you can easily supplement their learning at home by downloading the lesson plans.  It will also give you a good idea about what we covered.  I always plan more than we will ever actually get to so there is often a great idea within the plans that you can share with your child to extend their learning.  You can find all of my toddler and preschool lesson plans here:http://www.teachersnotebook.com/shop/LittleAdventuresPreschool
Find the year long theme calendar {here} and follow along with us! This post gives details and pictures of all February Toddler Packs. Be sure to scroll down to see all of them. 

Tot Packs 33-37 Tot packs are about 20 pages in length. They each have 2 pages of activity ideas, book suggestions, and links to the materials I use. You can certainly use all or part of the lesson plans.  The printable pages include songs, matching games, drawing games and other activities. Tot packs are designed to be a first introduction to math concepts, letters, shapes and colors. They are not meant to obtain mastery in any subject. Let them be a guide for educational play between you and your child.


April

{Download all 5 April Tot Packs}

33. Planting Seeds {Download}
  --I failed to take pictures of this pack before I sent it home as homework on Thursday.  I'll try and grab pictures when it comes back to me. --

Printables in this pack:

Letter Y

Numeral 1

What is one?

Drawing 1 favorite toy

Number Clip Cards

Sequencing a Growing Seed

Color Matching Seed Packets

Planting Seeds Puzzles

The Carrot Seed

Planting Seeds Song

34. Fruits and Vegetables {Download}

Printables in this pack:

Letter V

Numeral 2

What is two?

 Drawing 2 Shoes

Number Clip Cards

Fruit and Vegetable Counting

 Vocabulary Matching Memory

Lacing Cards

Fruit and Vegetables Chant

35. Rain {Download}

Printables in this pack:

Letter Review - Rainbow Writing

Numeral 3

What is two?

Drawing 2 Shoes

Number Clip Cards

Rain Tracing

Color Matching

Worm weaving

Rain Songs

Non-Standard Measurement with Measuring Worms

36. Plants {Download}

Printables in this pack:

 Letter X

Numeral 4

The parts of a plant that we eat

Sorting plants and animals

Shadow Matching Garden Tools

Plant Needs

Parts of a Sunflower

37. Zoo Animals {Download}

Printables in this pack:

 Letter Z

Zoo Animal Bingo

Tops and Bottoms Matching

Tell Me About the Zoo, A Non-Fiction Reader

 Numeral 5

Size Sequencing Zoo Animals