Saturday, December 31, 2011

Tot School December 26-30

We didn't do that great with tot school this week. I had a really hard time just getting into the swing of things this week. Our theme this week was going to be snowmen. I will share the plans I had made and what we actually go to, so that if anyone gets more motivation than myself they will be able to do them.

Sensory Bin
Tinsel was not as big of a hit as I thought it would be. I'm not sure she really liked the way it felt, and she hated that it stuck to her. She took it all out of her temporary sensory bin and touched it for like a minute and then wasy done.

Tot Trays
*Snowman Letter S worsheet We didn't get to this, so we may do it next week.
*Family matching game. I printed pictures of Mommy, Daddy, and Bug and she had to match them up. This was too easy for her, so I need to make it a little harder next time. She did love it though!
*White playdough - Never got to this either.
*Contact paper build your own snowman:


She LOVED this and went back to it many times throughout the week (I left it out all of the time for her). I will try to do something like this each week since it seemed to be such a hit with her.

Creative Expression
*Fingerpainting - No pictures, She LOVES this. She prefers a brush though.
*Toilet paper roll circle painting - did not get to, would like to do next week
* Gluing cotton balls. She did not like getting the cottons ball fuzz stuck to her hands from the glue, and doesn't quite "get it" yet, but we will keep trying.

We had snowman pancakes this week too. I make a big batch and then freeze them, so I didn't have any perfectly round ones to use. They are orange tinted because I add sweet potato to them so Bug can get some extra veggies into her. If Bug wasn't screaming for them as it was, I would have added some powdered sugar to them before added the raisins and cheese it crumb nose. I couldn't think of anything for a hat, and couldn't really be bothered to do the scarf or arms though I am sure pretzel sticks would have worked perfectly for arms.

Books
Frosty The Snowman
Snowmen at Night

Songs
Frosty the snowman

Gross Motor
We played outside in the snow (even brought some of it in when it was too windy to go out and play).

Saturday, December 24, 2011

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Planning

As I get more organized I will have these more filled out, but this is what I am doing so far for planning. I get a lot of my ideas from pinterest (what did I do before Pinterest?).
I have no idea how to upload this as a file that you can use, but if anyone wants it, I can email it to you. It is fairly easy, so I can imagine it's easy to duplicate, or personalize.
The bottom two sections are for "songs" and "gross motor." Not sure why they don't really show up in the image, but hey at least it is up there. I haven't really had much for sensory bins so far because we just aren't set up to accomodate it yet, and Bug's sensory table is still in the storage unit. I have been trying to do bathtub sensory fun lately to make up for it (shaving cream, bubbles, I am going to make some bath paint I saw on pinterest, and pudding paint to come).

Tot School - December 20-23

Somehow Monday slipped by us without doing anything with Tot School!
Tot Trays:
Sorting Red and green bows.

This was to focus on opening and closing the jar. She has been carrying the package of small beads around for a while noew, so I thought it would be enough to motivate her. We are working on becoming more independent. While we were in between houses (ended up being for 2 months!!!!) we stayed with my parents. She learned quickly that if she whined she could get whatever she wanted from someone there. Since moving into our house (we have been here a couple of weeks now), the whining/grunting has decreases significantly! I didn't know how much more I could take of the whining!

* shaking boxes (no pic)

* snowman matching (no pic, but got from here)





So far this week we have done two art projects. If I think of it I will try to post pictures of the others that we will do this week.
We cut our own Christmas tree this year, and I saved some branches so that we could paint with them. She only mildly liked this, so I ended up giving her paintbrushes to use as well.
Hard at work decorating her gingerbread men. I was really surprised by how much she enjoyed this. We probably worked on this for a half hour or so. I got the foam pieces from the Target dollar section a while ago, and I put out puffy paint (ended up putting on a plate with brushes), glue, buttons and google eyes. She watched me as I showed her squeeze the glue and put my buttons in, and I helped her to squeeze her glue. She knew to put her buttons or eyes into the glue blobs. We will have to work on squeezing so that we can do more gluing activities.
They turned out so cute! I made one too, but I can't remember which one ;)
Art projects we have planned for the rest of this week:
*Paper plate wreath
*Applesauce/cinnamon ornament
*footprint tree
*handprint ornament (we did one for her last year too)

We made Christmas cookies too. I don't have any internet worthy pictures for that, sorry (I don't really want Bug's face all over the WWW).

Tot School December 12-16th

Soon I will add how I do my planning, and what kinds of things I plan for each week. I am still in the beginning stages of Tot-School and we have just moved, so I am sorry if these posts seem simple, or my house looks sloppy. It will get better, the playroom (office/playroom/storage/guest room) is just not on the top of the priority list just yet.

I tried to do as much of a Christmas theme as possible. I don't have the resources right yet to get too creative, but I was able to throw these things together.


One of the art projects we did this week was to decorate Christmas Trees. I forgot to take a final outcome picture, but they turned out so cute and I have them up on my cupboards for decoration.

This is the makeshift storage I have for the trays. When the cable guy came he was soooooo thoughtful to leave like 10 foot of cable wire (you can see it underneath the black shelves), so I have to deal with it for now, lol.

This week's tot trays:
Gems with cups and a spoon.

Sorting red and green pipe cleaners.

Lacing. I used the ends of some tulle I happened to have around for the "beads." Since this is brand new for her I wanted it to be fairly simple. It turned out to be really easy for her.

Lacing. She never actually let it go down on the string, it just sat on the pipe clearn like that resting on her hand.

She carried these gems back and forth. She did a lot of play using the cups, but didn't realy know what to do with the spoon.

We did some sensory play in soapy water. She just got a Kitchen Helper as an early Christmas present and has been loving it! It has turned out to be a great gross-motor activity as she spends a lot of time going up (Bup, as bug calls it), and down.

She got right to work mixing all of the colors, then spent another good amount of time collecting all of the paint brushes. She did get some paint on the paper, some on purpose, but mostly on accident, lol.
This is what she thought about this tray, lmao! She wanted nothing to do with it whatsoever. Ha ha, you win some, you lose some I guess. Stay tuned as I have pics from this weeks tot trays all ready to go!

Monday, December 12, 2011

Welcome!

Things are a little crazy to start with. We have just moved into our house and I am so ready to begin Tot School with my daughter! You will see that we are starting from a very blank canvas. My goals for my daughter are for her to learn new skills and more importantly to have fun. I am working on her gaining more independence, and the ability to play on her own for longer periods of time. We are working away from battery operated play to unstructured (but with a loose "routine") imaginative play.