Tot School – Week 4 (and 5 and 6)!

- Adam is 31 months old -

This “week” of Tot School has actually been over the course of 3 weeks. We went on a vacation and then the following week was spent trying to tackle the mounds of laundry, put my house back in order, and dealing with post-vacation nap craziness. The next week was spent reading 4 books and researching for hours on the internet on how to get my baby to SLEEP! She is now 5 months old and has never slept through the night (well, once) and 5 months of having my sleep interrupted has really caught up with me. I was in no mood for planning and carrying out fun activities for Adam. In fact, I could barely manage to function! Sad to say Adam watched a lot of movies and TV last week as I tried to figure out what “plan” worked for me and then trying to implement it. I did manage to do a few things to wrap up our “week” of Yellow Ball and I’m generally feeling hopeful that the plan I have put together to sleep train Abby will work and I will be able to FINALLY get a good night’s sleep and therefore have more energy and motivation….I hope!

With all that said, here is what we have done over the past 3 weeks. We read the book Yellow Ball by Molly Bang (it is out of print but I found it at my library) and used ideas from the book Before Five in a Row and printables from Homeschool Share.

We used yellow Do-a-Dot Markers to make yellow circles (balls) and to practice dotting in the circles of the “Y is for Yellow” page from Confessions of a Homeschooler

We put together a “What is Yellow?” flag book. He got to choose which yellow coloring tool to use (marker, mini marker, crayons, colored pencil) and then he helped me glue the flag pages into the book.I was impressed how he colored the butter, knife, and little pad of butter. It’s so fun seeing how he is growing and changing!
We used a round sponge to make yellow circles (again, balls). I thought he’d like this more but he lost interest pretty quickly. I even asked if he wanted to use different colors but he just wanted to move on to something else.
For a Family Home Evening Daddy told him the story of Jesus calming the storm. In Yellow Ball the ball drifts out to sea and gets caught in a terrible storm. We explained that when we feel afraid, like the Disciples felt, we can pray to Heavenly Father for comfort and peace. He loves to tell us the Bible story now!For our treat that night, we made round sugar cookies with yellow frosting to look like….yellow balls of course!

One of Adam’s favorite activities was playing outside with a yellow ball. We played catch, rolled it, threw in the air, and bounced it.
For Tot School activities he painted, did stickers, built castles and towers with Mega Bloks, and built more castles and towers and Wal-Marts with wood blocks.
I laminated a set of ABC picture cards and used our LeapFrog ABC Magnets to match them up. This was another printable from Confessions of a Homeschooler….LOVE her site!
We have spent lots of time outside and lots of time in the kiddie pool. This particular time he was very enthralled with transfer water from measuring spoons to measure cups, and then pouring it out onto the grass.

Even though it took us 3 weeks to complete, it was a great week of Tot School!

Check out 1+1+1=1 to see what other moms tots are doing!