Tot School – the easy/short version

- Adam is 33 months old -

I didn’t do a Before Five in a Row book this week because we spent Labor Day hanging out at my parents’ house and Friday we had planned on going to the State Fair, but sadly, it fell through. I didn’t want to cram everything into just a few days so we just did a few regular Tot School-type activities.

Having fun together at Nana & Papa’s house on Labor Day

Cutting and Gluing

I’m frustrated with both sets of scissors I’ve tried for him. It seems really hard to work both of them and because they are safety scissors, they don’t cut very well. I’m thinking about getting regular scissors, just in a child’s size. Of course that worries me that he will cut his fingers, his sister’s hair or any number of things around the house, but I want him to be happy practicing his cutting skills and right now, he hates it.

This is a number chart I got from Confessions of a Homeschooler and Adam put stickers in each square. We worked on numbers but other than number 1, he said 5 for all the others. It was also good fine motor practice getting the little stickers off the sheet. Doing each row in matching colors was totally his idea.

I adapted this color wheel from one that another blogger sent to me. The object was to clip the corresponding clothespin onto the wheel (I colored the ends of the clothespins with markers). I had no idea pinching clothespins would be so hard for him! Aside from having a hard time physically pinching them, he kept trying to put the other end on the wheel. It took lots of guidance and help from me. I want to do this activity often because I think he needs some development of his fine motor skills. We’ve been trying to get him to hold up 2 fingers to show his age forever and he still really struggles doing anything other than 1 finger. Maybe it’s normal…I don’t know. I also see him struggle with some of the ASL signs I’m teaching him because he can’t get his fingers to work. Anyway, I’m going to put an emphasis on all kinds of fun fine motor skill activities in the future.

After the frustration with finishing clipping the clothespins onto the color wheel, we had fun clipping them onto our clothes!

We used wooden blocks and wooden beads to build “cities”

Adam is becoming quite imaginative and loves to make things up. After building cities for a while, all of a sudden he was using the blocks and beads to make popcorn in a popcorn machine. I suggested we add butter and salt and he suggested pepper (which of course made us sneeze ‘cause that’s what pepper does). Before I knew it, there were lots and lots of flies and bugs flying around so he had to get the cleaner and spray them (but not the butterflies because we like butterflies). Then we were back to making popcorn. It was a crazy 45 minutes of playing and was so fun! I’m thinking that some dress-up costumes are in order for his November birthday and/or Christmas. Any ideas for inexpensive, fun boy dress-ups? Other than a cape because that’s the only idea I’ve got right now! :)

Not really Tot School related, (well I guess everything is Tot School related actually) but I loved this picture of Daddy reading to Abby and Adam before bed.

Check out other Tot School posts over at Carisa’s blog 1+1+1=1!