Saturday, August 27, 2011

Tot School - Week 1 Letter A (21 months)


Tot School

Over the last few weeks with S's explosion of new words and continued yearning to try and figure out everything we decided to try a little a little homeschooling. After a little searching on the internet I found this FANTASTIC site called: 1+1+1=1. Within this blog is a great section called Tot School and has lots of activities and printouts to get started.

This week we started with the Letter A and concentrated Apples and the Color Red. Here is how it went.

I didn't take pictures on Monday as I am still trying to figure this whole thing out.
1. Library: We started by walking over the library and stocking up on A themed books. S is still quite uninterested in most books and he would only sit still for the ABC book of CATS while Oscar demonstrated the finer points of cat ABCs.
2. Next we used kitchen tongs to transfer small toys from one muffin pan to the next. This gave me an idea.
3. I got some apples out of the fridge and scattered them in different spots. S then had to find them, say the word "Apple" and put them in the muffin tin. He LOVED this. After playing this game about 4 times he decided it was time for a snack and ate the whole apple.
4. I put some of our A work sheets in a sheet protector and gave him a dry erase marker to practice drawing the letter A.

I got my camera out the rest of the week but until I learn to multi-task a little better there may be a few more words than pictures. Hang in there with me.

Here is how the rest of the week went:
- I tried to show S how to use kid's scissor. But lesson fail. S is not quite ready for scissors. :)
- Let's try some play dough (as momma crosses her fingers that S doesn't think play dough is a yummy treat). Whew. We made the letter A out of red play dough before moving onto to smooshing and pounding the dough.
- One morning we tried the stamps with some finger paints but he was not a huge fan. Next week maybe we will try ink instead of paint to see if that goes over any better.



- The Dot Paints were definitely the favorite product of the week. Not only where they fun to use on the worksheets but the caps also were fun to stack and put on/off the paints. We used the dot paints again to make a cute Alligator A craft that I got off of No Time for Flash Cards. I did all the cutting for the craft and S did all the dot painting and gluing (extra plus in that S didn't eat the glue).


- I got this Lauri Primer Pack from Amazon. S actually spent quite a bit of time putting the puzzle together and working on the weaving portion (no picture since I had to help). I think I now have to get a laminator and laminate the weaving page from each weeks set of printable sheets.


-Of course we couldn't finish the week without a little outdoor time. All he wanted to do was try out his new trike (which I found at a garage sale for $4 - yea me!). S is still trying to figure out how to pedal but is completely content to sit on the trike and ring the bell.

To finish off our A week we participated in the MS Orchard Walk. We ate apple pancakes and picked 2 pecks of Paula Red Apples. Of course there had to be a little goat petting too :).
Not too bad for our first week. Let's see what the Letter B brings!