Tot School

 

We missed doing a formal tot-school entry last week, but we’ve been keeping busy!  My grandma was in the hospital and we went out of town to visit her for a few days, so we’ve been pretty low-key lately (I think we’ll always be pretty low-key!). 

A few things we’ve been doing…

1) Eye-dropper Activities.  Ella continues to enjoy using the eye dropper!  My favorite thing about it is that it’s fast and easy to set-up.  It’s been perfect for her to do in the kitchen at the table while I cook dinner, or we just need something to do while we wait for something else (like waiting for her dad to finish getting ready so we can go out to do something fun as a family!). 

2)  Using a magnifying glass!  Ella has LOVED this activity!  Basically, it’s a matching game.  You have to use the magnifying glass to match the teeny tiny pictures with the larger sized photos.  You can download the cards with more detailed instructions here. 

3)  Cooking!  Ella helped me to make a rice-crispy type dessert.  She didn’t help a lot and got bored pretty fast, but she liked touching/playing with the marshmallows!  Good thing I had her wash her hands first…! 

 

4)  I forget what this toy is called, but she played with it at the table for a long time the other day!  She had fun moving the little beads around and problem-solving (she had to figure out how to move the toy or move her hands so that she could reach the different beads). 

5) Stringing Beads.  This is a set from Plan Toys.  It takes a lot of hand-eye coordination and is a perfect beginner bead set.  They’re nice and big, so great for little hands! 

6)  Matching Cards.  She loves to use these cards to match!  When we first started (a month or 2 ago), I laid the cards face-up, and asked her to match them.  Now, they are face down and she has to remember where the matches are. 

She’ll say, “Is this a match?  Nooooo……!” 

Introducing the eye-dropper

We’ve had a busy couple of weeks!  I’m trying to get out of the house as often as possible to avoid tantrums and boredom and laziness on my part! Also, it’s been so hot lately that playing outside just isn’t tolerable for long periods of time.  But, we’ve done some fun activities at home, too. 

I recently purchased a whole bag of eye-droppers.  I wasn’t sure if she would understand how they work—but I thought it was worth a try.  So one day last week, we did some color-mixing activities with them. 

Initially, I filled a tray with red, yellow, and blue, plus some empty slots to do more mixing.   

But then I realized that it would probably make more sense if we only used 2 colors to start with (and then later realized that using just plain water would have been a good place to start, too!).  So our next trial run included yellow and blue food coloring. 

It was a success!  Yellow + Blue = Green!  She got some good practice using the eye dropper and thought that the changing colors were great!

I made sure to do this activity on a plastic tray, because eventually, I knew she would dump it all out.  I was right.  :) 

We have done this several time since, and have used red and yellow to make orange, and red and blue to make purple.  As a bonus, I borrowed the book Mouse Paint from the library and we’ve read that several times too. 

We used the eye-dropper again yesterday for a different science activity—mixing vinegar and baking soda!  It’s very hard to see in the pictures, but when you add vinegar to baking soda, a chemical reaction happens, and it makes great little fizzy bubbles!  I wish I had Ella’s initial reaction on camera—it was priceless!  If I had planned better, I would add some food coloring to the vinegar, just for a little something extra.  ;) 

As you can see in this last picture, she’s really getting the hang of squeezing the eye-dropper.  I’m pretty impressed (although quite biased!).  This is a GREAT fine-motor activity, not to mention all the cool science that happens too! 

Tot School-week 2

What a fun week we had!  Ella did some fun learning activities this week, including:

Alphabet Fun: 

Ella got this fridge magnet set for Christmas and LOVES it.  Without really focusing on specific letters, Ella has already learned and can identify several letters.  She’ll bring me a letter and ask what it is, or she can push a button and this toy will tell her what letter it is.  It also sings the alphabet song.  Lately, she’s been pushing the button to play the alphabet song over, and over, and over again—and she dances and twirls and has a grand old time. 

Montessori-style tot school:

We went to a friend’s house who follows a lot of Montessori inspired philosophies.  Ella jumped right in, and I was impressed that I didn’t really need to show her what to do.  For example, this color sorting/counting game came with multi-colored beads and rods.  She saw the beads, matched the colors to the rods, and voila!  When she was done, I helped her to count the beads on each rod and identify the colors. 

Another Montessori toy (called “work”) is the pink tower.  Traditionally, the pink tower includes 10 blocks—however for the younger group, the hostess selected 5 blocks to complete the tower.  Ella stacked this tower several times before moving on to something else:

She also really liked to “play” the piano while we were there!  She looked at the book while playing—which I thought was interesting because I don’t think she’s ever seen anyone read music before.  But, she kept turning the pages and continuing with her playing.  Coincidence?  Probably—but I was still surprised by it (this was her “mom!  I don’t want you to take my picture right now!” face). 

A fun sensory/fine motor activity available there was scooping wet sand from one bowl to another!  For this activity, I did have to show her what to do (she just wanted to scoop it out of the bowl into the tub—which is fine also.  But once I showed her that she could put it in the other bowl, she tried that too). 

We had a great time there!  Thank you, Barefoot in Suburbia for having us over! 

Other things we did this week at home included drawing with slick stix.  These are possibly the best coloring invention ever!  They are crayons—except that they draw so smoothly and easily!  Ella got a pack of 5 for Christmas, but I found a 12-pack at JoAnn’s recently and used a coupon to get a great deal.  I highly recommend these!  But, a word of caution: they are not washable.  Some colors may stain (although I have not found this to be a problem yet). 

Not pictured:  Ella is getting really good at doing puzzles and spent a bit of time doing those this week.  My favorite is her love for her baby dolls.  Just today, before naptime, we had to find a blanket and pillow so that her baby could take a nap too.  <3 

I’m hoping to start a letter of the week section with Tot School.  We also have fun plans for this upcoming week, so stay tuned! 

Tot School!

We’re officially going to give “tot school” a shot! I’ve been thinking about doing Tot School at our house for quite some time—and figure that now is as good a time as any! Ella just turned 2, so she’s really at a perfect age to start.

What is tot school? Well, it’s basically just specific activities that will foster learning in a toddler. It can be something simple like seeing what happens to sidewalk chalk if you get the ground wet first, or activities that involve matching and sorting. It can be art, music, reading books… anything fun! And that’s the key—it has to be FUN. Young children learn through hands-on play. It’s not about memorization or flashcards. It’s about exploring their world. Learning happens naturally as a result! Tot School is also about the parents being intentional in how they interact with their kids. It’s my job as her mom to provide her with opportunities to learn and explore!

For more information, visit http://www.1plus1plus1equals1.com/TotSchool.html

So, for our first week, we did simple things. I actually didn’t photograph a lot of things (like playing in the rain, and then later rain puddles!) because some things happened completely spontaneously and I didn’t have time to grab the camera. But a few things we did were:

-Library Story Time. Our local library has the BEST story times! I’ve visited some other libraries and story times (even other libraries within the same system) and Ms. Karen by far is the best story time leader! Ella is a very quiet and observant girl—so even when all of the kids are jumping, she’s just watching everyone and not participating. Usually by the very end, she’ll start smiling more and will even wander away from me to chase after the bubbles (every story time ends with bubbles!). We’re making it a habit to go every week instead of just every once in a while when I think about it.

-Shape sorting/peg board. I can’t remember what this toy is actually called, but it’s basically a peg board with 4 shapes on it (circle, square, rectangle, triangle). Each shape only fits in a specific spot (the circles only fit in the spot with one peg. The square only fits in the spot with 4 pegs, etc.). I got this out a few months ago, and she wasn’t able to put the shapes on by herself very well. However, this week, she was able to put the shapes on in the correct places all by herself! It’s amazing what just a few months of growing up will do.

A local parenting group that I am a member of has started a rotating “tot school,” where it is at a different person’s house each week. I was the first to host 2 weeks ago (and of course didn’t take any photos!) and we went to another friend’s house last week. Again, I didn’t take hardly any photos, but here, Ella is sorting pipe cleaners by color into separate containers. She really liked the sparkly purple ones!

I found these really cool “paintbrushes” a while ago and got them out to try for the first time. Unlike traditional paintbrushes, these look more like cleaning tools! They’re very big and bulky, and leave different textures and prints on paper. Ella had fun trying them for the first time. Next time, I should use really big paper (I didn’t have any this time). Using great big strokes with these painting tools would be a lot of fun!

Over the weekend, we went to a family reunion and Ella was able to use some “gross motor” skills to climb, run, slide, and play!

And lastly, today (before it rained and we got soaked playing in the rain and jumping in puddles), Ella used a spray bottle to spray the walls, some flowers, and even my feet! This seems like such a simple concept—but it really works a lot of hand muscles, teaches her about watering plants, and social concepts, like how it’s only ok to spray people if you ask them first (and don’t squirt faces!).