Tot School Begins

I have gotten very motivated to begin a some-what-scheduled schooling with my 27 month old son.  John is more willing to sit down and focus, so I am taking advantage of his new-found maturity!  I just wrote some of my thoughts about the Montessori approach and so I’m trying my hand at it here.  I want to stay on top of it, so I organized according to Homeschool Creations’ great Preschool Schedule.  I’m using her adaptable schedule and made my own type-written notes and then handwritten notes too.  Here is what we did this week:

Our Tot Schedule:

Trays:

Here are the trays, on the lower half of our kitchen shelf. They are in a communal area, so he can play with them when he chooses, though sometimes, I’ll bring them out intentionally. I wrote the above trays on the bottom of my schedule.  I’m new at this, but I will try to make four to six new ones every week. Measuring cups, Magneatos, water play, blue sensory bowl, lego counting, sandwich baggies.

Our Activities:

Mainly, we have been focusing on one book per week (I have Before Five in a Row, and have been working through it with the books we already own in our very extensive children’s home library), but for the holidays, I want to pick my own age-appropriate books.  For Fall and Halloween, I chose some Fall Leaves books and Jesse Bear, What a Scare, as well as Berenstein Bears’ Trick or Treat.  This month will (of course) be all about Christmas and this week the book was Mercer Mayer’s Merry Christmas Mom and Dad.  After that, our other language element is simply reading books every day.  John loves this, and we usually read 5+ books about 4-5x per day. (Language)

I’m new to trays, but knew that I would have a color bowl. We have already worked with RED and YELLOW and now we have moved onto BLUE.  He loved this, as we collected the items together, and I’ll get it back out with him every morning. (Sensory Visual, Touch)

Here is a Lego counting activity.  This doesn’t have a site name on it, so I forget where I got it.  Confessions of a Homeschooler has something similar.  My son mostly just threw the legos around, but he is finally getting the hang of stacking them.  Here he is, when his creation broke in half (i.e. the world ended). (Mathematics)

And here is an activity John created himself!  I have seen the “Wipes Game” at Counting Coconuts, and have been meaning to make something like it, but here he is with the sandwich baggies that I had out while organizing all the Tots Printables.  He had a good 15 minutes of fun pulling these out and trying to put them back in. (Sensory Touch, Practical Life Environment)

Here is John playing with Daddy and his new Magneatos!  I have been wanting to buy these, but found them at a garage sale for $5!  Score!  These were a hit with the two year old and the thirty-something year old.

Other activities for the week:

• Another John creation on his trays.  Measuring cups.  He uses these in some of our (not so extravagent) sensory bins, but today, he decided they were musical instruments and kept hitting the biggest one to all the little ones!  (Sensory Auditory)
• More tea pot water play!  He absolutely loves this. (Sensory, Practical Life Environment)
• And vacuuming; John got this vacuum for Christmas when he was one, since I vacuum almost every day, so does he!  This toy is great, and I haven’t replaced the batteries yet! (Practical Life, Environment)
• And zipping his baby sister’s Bundle Me on her car seat up and down. (Practical Life, Self)

Weekly Craft:

This idea came from Busy Bees Kids Crafts.

**I plan on beginning 1plus1plus1equals1’s Tot School ABC’s at the start of the new year.  My son already knows almost half of his capital letters and gets excited when he sees them in books, so I think he’ll be ready!  I’m going to couple this with Songs for Saplings cd and Carisa’s coordinating ABC Bible Verses.  We (okay, I) are [am] so excited!