Tot School - Aa

Tot School - Aa is for Apples, Acorns and Astronauts!

Owen & Eli: 36 months

We took a long break from Tot School for the summer to make room for travelling and visitors, but now we're back and better than ever! I thought a lot about how I wanted to teach the boys now that they are three, and what I thought would be important to incorporate, and I'm happy with how much we were able to accomplish this week. Last year the focus was mostly on letter identification, crafts and cooking (when applicable), but this year there will be a much stronger focus on letter sounds, math, science and reading.

We started the week at the library, getting books about our theme words and going to story time - the theme at story time was Apples (how appropriate!). Here are the books we read all week, but the biggest hits were I Saw an Ant on the Railroad Track and Zoom Zoom Zoom I'm Off to the Moon.

The Letter A

We started off by reviewing capital A and lowercase a and the sounds they both make. We said lots of words with the long A and short A sounds and created As out of crayons and playdoh just to get the shape down. Education.com has a different animal printable for every letter of the alphabet.

Apples

We did some simple and really fun apple activities this week. I drew a simple tree for the boys to color and then decorate with apple stickers. We talked about when apples grow and what you can make with apples. We also talked about the colors of different apples and how the different colors taste different (sweet vs. sour). To follow that up, we had an apple taste test! I found the apple core activity on Pinterest (my new addiction!) and the seeds are the boys' fingerprints. Mama Jenn's blog had an apple chart printable that I created a dice game to go along with. When a color apple was rolled, a penny was placed over that color apple on the chart. They loved it!

Astronauts

We read a lot of books about astronauts this week and what they do while in space. They learned about rocket ships and that astronauts float in space. We made an adorable astronaut out of paper plates and rocket ships using their footprints that were decorated with alien stickers. Super fun!

Acorns

Science this week was in the form of acorns. We learned about how they grow on trees and start off green, but when they are fully grown or on the ground they turn brown. We also talked about how squirrels eat acorns and looked at them through magnifying glasses. The acorn activity is a slight variation of this one, using do-a-dots instead of just torn paper.

Next week is Bb for Bears, Boats and Bees. Join us! To see what other Tot Schoolers did this week, click here!

Tot School - Aa

What a great week! I came up with about 20 different activities involving 'Aa' so I could pick and choose what to do each day based how much time we had, whether or not Garrett was sleeping and the boys' interests. I focused on A is for Apple, Ant and Animals.

I started the week just showing them uppercase and lowercase A's. They used do-a-dots to fill in the letter outlines, we made A's out of playdoh snakes, used the LeapFrog alphabet magnets to stamp the letter A into playdoh and used this activity from Confessions of a Homeschooler. They weren't as into the apple matching as I would have hoped, but I think it was because they want the paper to 'click' into place like a puzzle piece and they get mad when it's just supposed to sit on top.

I cut out all the pieces needed to make the uppercase A and lowercase a to make the Letter of the Week from Totally Tots. We made them out of foam, which was a homerun because they couldn't rip it. They loved dipping the pieces in glue (which they kept calling paint) and were pretty excited at the end result. They kept asking for 'more teeth?' 'more eyes' to make the alligator and 'more seeds' to make the apple.


We did a lot of painting this week, which they loved! We make ants with their fingerprints and used paintbrushes to paint egg cartons black to make into ants. Going forward, I don't think they're ready for paintbrush painting. I made colored sugar for them to make an apple outline too. I would recommend letting one color dry completely before putting the glue on for the second color. They can help with the shaking to turn the sugar a different color and really liked dumping spoonfuls of sugar into the box to make the picture. This one was a hit! I cut an apple in half to use as a stamper too, but it was hard for them to pull it back off the paper since it was bigger than their palm. A little too messy for my taste.

For snacks, we made ants on a log and apple shakers (apple slices in a sandwich bag with cinnamon sugar).

We did all of our animal puzzles, played with Noah's Ark, and read all of our books about animals, their babies, and the sounds that they make.

The last thing we did this week was Starfall.com. I have read on so many blogs that kids really like it, but I had no idea they would like it this much! Since we were using a laptop, I had to position the mouse and they could press the button to move to the next screen, but I'm sure in no time they'll be pros with the mouse. The last picture is my favorite from this week!

To see what other Tot Schoolers are doing, head over to 1+1+1=1. Next week, Bb!