Tot School Update - 32 months

And so begins our monthly "Tot School" updates for 2012.

"The Queen" is 32 months old and is excited to learn new things each day. I have committed to blogging once a month about our learning adventures.
My focus for our "Tot School" will be on early literacy & math skills, sensory activities, seasonal crafts, nature experiences, and if I can get my act together - tot trays. I have the best intentions with setting up tray activities but haven't quite been consistent with it!

Reflecting on things the Queen is doing now:

• Letter Identification - identify 20/26 upper case letters. Can identify 9/26 lower case letters, all which happen to look identical to their capital letter counterpart (c, o, s, w, u, p, z, x, v).
• Letter Sounds - Has associated a person's name with almost every letter of the alphabet! Often tries to 'sound out' words that she's reading but starts every word with the /p/ sound. It's so cute but I refrain from laughing because she clearly is focused and working hard!
• Numeral Identification - can id numbers 1-9 but sometimes confuses 2 as a 1 or 5.  
• Matching numerals - is OBSESSED with playing UNO and is very proficient at matching Uno cards 0-9. Insists on playing Uno 3-4 times daily and has a fit if she doesn't get a Skip card in her hand! 
• Counting -counts orally to 12. Can count a set of objects to 4. Has 1:1 correspondence to 4. 
• Reading - pretend reads many of her favorite books. I read aloud to her at least 30 minutes a day and she listens as her brother reads aloud.  She will browse her board book collection in her crib in the morning and will often pick a couple of books, "Me read this one." 
• Colors - knows all the rainbow colors and pink, black, and white.
• Shapes - names and id all the basic shapes, often forgets the word rectangle. Can sort shapes by more than one characteristic (i.e. sorts all the squares and then sorts by size or color)
• Fine Motor - had lots of fun this month with beading pipe cleaner snowflakes. Can independently put hair ties onto her door knob. Has begun to snip with scissors but still developing the proper grip for scissors and pencils.
• Gross Motor - began swim lessons this month and I've been impressed with how she follows directions. Keeps up with active games with her brother. Refuses to go sledding and prefers to play games indoors.
• Behavior - testing her limits and has gotten really good at pouting out her bottom lip, folding her arms across her chest, and saying "Hmmph." Her second favorite saying is "It's not fair." Overall though she is a happy go lucky kid most of the time.
• Art - her favorite activity has been doing stickers. I had several fun winter crafts planned but she prefers her own projects and not something I've prepped for her. Much of our 'art' time is spent with her in my craft room reorganizing and looking for things she wants. (I need to make that space more kid-friendly since both the kids like to play in there. It was my big project for the month but it's taking me way too long to finish.)
• Crib - the Queen is still in her crib. Hoping she stays there for as long as possible.
• Potty training - still in diapers...need to focus on this ASAP!
• Communication - I can understand 95% of what she says. She often will ask in multiple ways if someone doesn't understand her.

Next month's focus for the Queen:

Potty Training

Fine Motor work

Letter sounds 

Pick a few lower case letters to match to capitals

Open ended art

More sensory experiences

Next month I promise to make this post a bit cuter with pictures!

Tot School 2012!

"Tot School" is a term that many homeschoolers use to describe their work with their toddlers. Tot School is not an actual school and the purpose is not to push 'academic' skills but rather to have fun learning early skills.

For us, "Tot School" is a focused time that I spend each day with my 'tot' -- a.k.a. "The Queen"! I was inspired by this website - http://www.1plus1plus1equals1.com/TotSchool.html  to start "Tot School" around this time last year. I had big plans of doing a weekly blog post about our progress but I never could seem to get into the rhythm of a weekly post.

We did "Tot School" throughout 2011 and had lots of fun learning and playing together. She and I both look forward to this one-on-one time!

I decided that I could get a bit more organized in 2012, and commit to doing a monthly blog post about our Tot School adventures. The Queen is at an exciting time of growth and change. The monthly post would help me remember these special moments & will help me reflect on where we are going. These posts would also be fun for my family who live far away to stay connected!


So what do we do during our tot time? We do a variety of fun play activities. It's a special one-on-one time that I dedicate just to her. Though I usually have a plan about what I want to work on, I follow her lead. Sometimes it's just a tea party and other times it's more structured.

When is tot time? I find this time when my older son is at school or when he is engrossed in a project with my husband. I try to drop everything else and get onto the floor and focus just on her. I know that I did better job of this when I had just one child...but we get in as much tot time as we can! We are not a homeschooling family but we do lots of 'homeschooling' types of activities with both of our children!

The Queen will be three in May, and will begin preschool in the fall. I am excited that she will be in my classroom, and that will be a whole new adventure in itself! But until then...on to Tot School 2012!
This weekend I will do our first post of the year...I know I can do this! ;)

2D Shapes - Tot School

This week we have been exploring 2D shapes! My plan was to introduce shapes to my 2 year old as I reviewed some basic geometry concepts with my 5 year old. The plan worked beautifully, and my son really enjoyed the 'tot school' time and did much more of the 'teaching' than me!

Here is our shelf at the beginning of the week. We have lots of shape activities but I didn't want to overwhelm the little one with too many choices.

Trying to pull a button through a felt shape. We have squares and circles to sort and then put onto the "snake" ribbon. This idea came from one of my favorite blogs, Counting Coconuts! This is more than my daughter can do independently but it's great fine motor practice when we do it together.

 

We practiced "using basic shapes and spatial reasoning to build things and do puzzles". That sounds pretty fancy huh! These are great foam shapes from a Mother Goose training I went to a couple of years ago. My son asked for a certain shape for her to find. As she went searching for the shape, he continued to build. They worked so well together on the this project and when they were done we decided to keep it set up until Daddy could see it!



"We're going on a shape hunt"...we're going to catch a big one! Several times we went hunting for shapes and then matched the shapes to pictures in a book or to a puzzle. I was amazed at how quickly my daughter picked up the names of the basic shapes! And the way she says triangle is enough to melt your heart!

Even in the crib she was practicing shapes...here trying to match shapes

Our shape exploration will continue next week. I will get out the 3D geometric solids and we will work on finding objects in the house that match them. We will go on a triangle walk in the woods to see how many naturally occurring triangles we can find. We will sort shapes into groups and continue to build interesting shape pictures with the foam shapes and will make some paper shapes to glue onto card stock. Hmmm....maybe even make our own shape book! 

Have any great shape ideas for us? I'd love to hear them!