Tot School–“The Big Green Pocketbook”

- Adam is 39 months old -

This week for Tot School we had so much fun reading “The Big Green Pocketbook” by Candice Ransom.  It’s a really cute story about a girl who goes on a bus with her mom to town and all the things she collects along the way.  I used the Before Five in a Row manual and Homeschool Share for activity ideas.

Adam matched crayon cards to their names and then briefly colored a picture.  I worked a little bit with him on proper crayon grip.

We worked on patterns, sorting, and counting with ice cream scoops.  I would “order” something like “2 scoops of vanilla, one scoop of strawberry, and one scoop of chocolate” and he would make it for me.

I purposely chose this book to do during the week of St. Patrick’s Day.  We did all these green activities on that day….although I was on holiday burnout and didn’t really tell him what day it was, why he was wearing green, or why he was doing green things!

He chose between different green markers, crayons, and pencils and colored “Three Green Things” and glued them into the book.

We used blue and yellow food coloring to make green water and then used droppers to drop the water onto coffee filters.

I really liked the art aspect of this project, but he was really into playing with the water.  He spent over 30 minutes using the dropper to transfer water and then pouring it back and forth.

The finished filters.
I think these would make lovely Easter egg decorations so I’m planning on doing this again for Easter.

One of our favorite activities was using this green pocketbook printout from Homeschool Share to use during our reading and to play with afterward.  He recreated the story and played with these cards for several days!

In the story, the little girl types her name in big letters and then in little letters so I helped Adam type his name, then cut them out and paste them into this little book.

The highlight of the week was taking a bus to the library on Saturday!  It was freezing and really windy so it wasn’t the best idea but I was being stubborn and had already told Adam about the bus ride so we did it anyway!  Thankfully there was a bus route that was close to our house that went close the library so we only had about 5 minutes walking time to the bus stop and then from the stop to the library.  On a normal Spring day the walking would have been quite pleasant…not this day.  Oh well.  Adam still had a BLAST!

At the Bus Stop

Riding the Bus!

For other activities, Adam did 2 pages in his Kumon: Let’s Color! book….reluctantly.
We “played” Candy Land a few times
(it’ll be so fun when he actually wants to play by the rules)
And he and Abby watched some Baby Signing Time and Little Pim together.
Little Pim is a set of Spanish DVDs for young children and remind me of the Baby Signing Time DVDs.  I am looking into purchasing some Little Pim DVDs but was able to get the first DVD from Netflix.  I can also get the the next 2 (out of 6) so we’ll continue ‘reviewing’ them until I can decide if they are worth buying.  I really feel strongly that early foreign language exposure is so important and can only help later on when they are ready to actually learn the language.  Hence why we love signing with our babies!

We started our new Handwriting Without Tears Pre-K curriculum this week and Adam is really liking it!  Before even picking up a crayon or pencil, you start with Multisensory Lessons.  These lessons use Wood Pieces, Roll-a-Dough letters, a Stamp & See Screen (like a Magnadoodle) and songs and movements.  The idea is to have fun learning the terms and movements of writing before actually writing which is perfect for Adam because he’s lacking in fine motor skills (as far as holding a crayon and drawing) because he just doesn’t want to.

This week we used the Wood Pieces to learn the terms Big Line, Little Line, Big Curve, and Little Curve (which is the terminology that HWT uses when instructing letter formation).  Both Adam and Abby had a lot of fun, especially with the song where you tap the pieces together, wave them around, etc.

My plan for Handwriting Without Tears is to work on each letter as it corresponds to our Letter of the Week curriculum from Confessions of a Homeschooler that we’ll hopefully start in a few weeks.  I don’t care if Adam learns how to physically write each letter right now, but we will use a lot of different mediums to practice the formation so that when he is able to write with a crayon, he’ll be on his way to writing legibly!

Whew….I talk a lot!  The point of these posts is mainly to document our learning time together so I apologize that they are so long!  I can’t even fit Abby’s Tot School on here so she’ll have a separate post.

I HIGHLY recommend the blog 1+1+1=1 for moms of toddlers and preschoolers.  She has so much information and so many great ideas!