Tot School – Weeks 6 and 7

- Adam is 32 months old -

It took us 2 weeks to complete our reading of “Goodnight Moon” because we took a couple days off for trips to the library, park, and then both kids wound up with a nasty cold. And we had to skip a couple activities. But, that’s the beauty of Before Five in a Row, you can do whatever you want, at whatever pace you want!

I loved “Goodnight Moon” when I was kid and Adam has loved it since he was a baby. Our board book version is nicely worn and chewed on and now we have a nice, new, big version of this book to enjoy.

To go along with the book, we….

Colored and pasted a little book of “Hey Diddle Diddle”. Adam can now “read” it himself because he has picture cues to help him remember the rhyme.

We ate “a bowl full of mush”, aka oatmeal, for breakfast. Adam LOVED this and requested “a bowl full of mush” for 3 days straight!
We read a mini ABC book with letters and pictures relating back to “Goodnight Moon”.

“What color was the balloon?”Adam colored the balloons to match the outline I did, and then correctly remembered that “in the great green room there was a telephone, and a RED balloon”.

“A Pair of Mittens”Adam used his hand prints to make “mittens”

We also searched for shapes in the illustrations and talked about how the word “great” can mean “good” but it can also mean “big” and that when the book says, “In the great green room…” it means it is a “big” green room.

For our Tot School activities we played with blocks…a lot!

Adam did a shape matching file folder game that I made from the blog Home Grown Hearts. He knows all the names of the shapes except square and sometimes oval.

Cutting and sawing play doh with a craft stick (tongue depressor)

Matching pictures with the Garanimals Memory Game

We colored with the Toy Story magic color thingys (his Nana gave it to him and I can’t remember what they are called!)

We went for a walk around our neighborhood and he practiced riding his Strider Bike. I love this bike! It is pedal-less so kids (even toddlers) use their feet like a push toy and learn to steer and balance before ever having to coordinate pedaling. The theory is that they won’t need training wheels when they move to an actual bike because they will have already mastered the hardest part of riding a bike…balancing. He is getting fast and if I remind him, he’ll lift his feet up and glide for a few seconds. It looks like fun!

Coloring. I’m trying to figure out how to teach him how to correctly hold markers, crayons, etc. I try to move his fingers into place but he switches back to random holds pretty quickly. Any suggestions?

One day we went to the park. This park has a great playground with lots of big, shady trees and it has a winding river and ducks! What more could you ask for?

Finger painting…which led to using a brush to get all the corners of the tray nice and covered. I love the tongue sticking out in concentration! He did this for 45 minutes and chatted the whole time about spiders and fences and other random things.

This was probably Adam’s favorite activity. He used scissors for the first time! These are little spring-loaded scissors, but I found them kind of hard to maneuver so I’m going to try out some others to see if they are easier to handle.

While cutting some pieces he emphatically said, “Get off piece!” when he was frustrated that he couldn’t move the scissors as well as he wanted to. I had to maneuver the paper for him as he snipped.

With all the little scraps he cut, I came up with the idea to have him glue them down (yes, that seems obvious, but I hadn’t thought about it prior to the cutting activity! I’m learning here! :) ). This was an even bigger hit than the cutting because he got to use real white glue for the first time!

While squeezing out a dot of glue he said, “I’m doing mustard. Stick the bread on the mustard!” and he stuck a piece of paper down.

Seeing how much he loved squeezing out the “mustard”, I picked up a few more at Wal-Mart for .25 each. I have a feeling we’ll be going through a lot of glue!

Sorry for the picture overload! I really love planning and carrying out Tot School and Before Five in a Row. Some days are better than others but when I do make the effort to sit with him and do these easy, simple activities, it always amazes me how funny and smart he is! I just sit and laugh at the funny things that come out of his mouth!

To see more Moms doing Tot School, check out the blog, 1+1+1=1!