Tot School!

-  Abigail is 23 months old -  
- Adam is 4 years old -

It has been a good 5-6 months since I did anything Tot School related.  And that is because I was busy planning Preschool for Adam (see this ambitious, and completely discarded plan), taking the rest of the summer off, and then becoming pregnant.  I have no doubt that I could’ve pulled off a full preschool curriculum for Adam, but I didn’t factor in how truly exhausting and miserable early pregnancy is.  The morning sickness has long since passed, and now, at 23 weeks along, I’m finally ready to be more purposeful in how our day goes.  The days of laying around, watching too much TV, playing with the same toys, reading the same books, etc. are over.  I’m bored.  My kids are bored.  I’m sure in just a few short months I will be too huge and uncomfortable, and once again slip into laziness.  Then there’s the fact of having a newborn.  And sleep deprivation.  So for now, I’m taking it one week at a time!

We did a few things this week and Adam jumped for joy when I said, “Do you want to do Tot School today?”.  However, the long break has left me with a 4 year old who’s attention span has seemed to have shrunk to nothing and a nearly 2 year old who causes major messes and interferes with anything I try to do with just Adam.  And vice versa.  Sigh.

I’m reading the eBook Montessori at Home! - The Complete Guide to Doing Montessori Early Learning Activities at Home and I’m really interested in the Montessori principles.  I cleared off 6 shelves, 3 for each child, and I displayed activities/”Tot Trays” during the week.  I’m trying to find the balance between saving things for “school time” and letting the kids have access to it all the time.

Our first activity was pouring rice back and forth.  I quickly learned that this wasn’t a good idea.  Not to mention Adam was bored after 20 seconds.

“Cupcake Letter Matching”
Adam was bored after 20 seconds. 
I’m not kidding, he did 4 letters and was done.  He loved this activity a year ago.  Do you suppose he’s too advanced for it now?  Duh, Mom.

I decided to try Abby.  She can identify almost every letter, both uppercase and lowercase, so I thought she’d like this.  Nope.  She was mad that the letters didn’t “stick” to the cupcake.  They are both laminated so they are slippery.  She did a few letters and then was done.

“In a Pickle” File Folder Game
Can you see the look on Adam’s face?  That is him insisting that he can count the dots without touching his finger to them.  I let him mess up a bunch of times, calmly suggesting he touch the dots to make sure he doesn’t miss any.  He finally decided that was the better way to do it.  After much attitude.

Stringing Wooden Beads
I’ve never been able to get Adam to string beads but I think the window is finally opening and we’re going to work on it more often.  He pretended that the beads were cars and once they were on the string, he drove them down the track to the end.  He only did about 5 beads, but hey…progress!

Abby actually enjoyed this activity.  I helped her get the string through the bead and then she’d pull it to the end.  I encouraged her to do more to make it a necklace, but she was done.  I think in the future, the necklace aspect will be what draws her to stringing beads.  The girls loves “pretties”!

That concluded our first day of Tot School.  I was frustrated beyond belief, but had learned some things which helped the other days be smoother and more fun for all of us.

We painted pictures to turn into Christmas thank you cards to Grandma and Grandpa Great.  I was surprised at how unenthusiastic both kids were to paint.  Adam is reluctant to do any kind of coloring or drawing.  He just isn’t interested.  I thought Abby would be since she likes to color right now.  Both of them were ready to be done after about 5 minutes.

The HIT of the week was the rice and lentil sensory bin!  After the rice pouring debacle the day before, I wizened up and let them go to town on their own.

Abby was very into using measuring spoons and cups to scoop rice back and forth.

Adam really loves the funnel.

I had to cut them off after an hour because they started getting too rowdy!  Plus, it was lunchtime and my sweet daughter was getting grouchy.

After lunch, Abby wanted to get out the cupcake letters again, and this time she did about 18 letters.  I would pull out just the letters for one cupcake and she’d match them up.

We did some more wooden bead stringing also.  At this point, Adam was playing his Leapster, not at all interested in “school”.

This week, Abby also played with her fabric squares that I made her for Christmas.  They are minky fabric, so really soft, and I made 2 each of the 10 major colors.  First we just took out the squares and I asked her to name each color.  She knows brown, pink, and white, and sometimes correctly names a few others.
This is her saying, “Two white!”

Then I laid out one of each color, and had her match the second one on top.  She easily did this and really enjoyed it.

During Abby’s time, Adam semi-patiently waited for his turn.  For his turn, we worked on his Melissa and Doug See & Spell Puzzles that he got for Christmas.  We got through 4 puzzles and then he just wanted to make up his own games.

The ever-present toddler.

This was my brilliant way of cleaning up the letters.  They wanted none of it.

Out came the sensory bin.  Surprisingly, they only wanted to play with it for about 20 minutes.  I guess even with a day in between, the novelty had already worn off.

Abby did have fun including a baby doll though.

Adam enjoying running his hand through the rice/lentils.

So that was our first week back at Tot School.  Just a couple of days and a few activities.  I think it’s going to take some time to get in a routine of structured activates again.  I’m hoping it’ll get easier as both kids learn to allow the other one some one-on-one time with me.  And I need to re-learn what level my kids are at.  Adam asked to bring back the calendar and Circle Time, so I think I will next week.  Aside from counting the days and checking the weather, we all enjoy singing and doing finger plays or action songs together so I think it’s a worthwhile thing to do every day.  Or at least most days. :)

I’m linking this to the Tot School post at 1+1+1=1.