Tot School

Kayleigh is 32 months

We didn't really have a theme this week but our Letter of the Week was I and we did a lot of the inchworm stuff from over at Confessions of a Homeschooler along with a mishmash of this and that.  

Literacy Activities

We tried our our Scholastic Alphabet Mats this week.  The mats are in random order, so there wasn't one that had just the letters that we've covered.  So I just picked one and had her match capital letter to capital letter as I told her the names.

We sorted capital and lowercase Ii, did some inchworm "spelling", an Ii poke page, and an I is for Inchworm magnet page using our pom pom magnets.  All from COAH.

And we caught up on some of our ABC book.  We did G is for Gold (glitter) and H is for Hearts.

Math and Fine Motor Activities

She sorted inchworms from largest to smallest.  This was the first time we've tried this.  Up until now we just sorted big/little or small/medium/large.  Kayleigh did a great job and was very pleased with herself.

She played with a Geoboard for the first time.  I tried to show her how to make shapes with the bands but she was not interested.  So it was more of a fine motor activity than a math activity.

Kayleigh practiced her writing skills in a varitey of ways.  She worked in her Kumon My First Book Of Mazes, on an inchworm pre-writing sheet that I made for her, and did this adorable number maze from 2 Teaching Mommies.

Learning Toys and Other Stuff

She played with her Lauri Toys Shape and Color Sorter, her Fisher-Price Laugh and Learn Cookie Shape Surprise, and a did a gem balance activity that I saw on Shannon's Tot School.

Be sure to click the Tot School button at the top of the page and see what the other tots are up too.

Tot School

Kayleigh is 32 months 

It was another busy week but we managed to get in some fun activities.  Our theme this week was pumpkins/Halloween and the letter H.  Here's what we've been up too.

Literacy Activities

Kayleigh has been spending some of her free time playing "circle time" with her dolls.  It's so cute to see her singing the songs to her "babies."

We sang lots of pumpkin songs that we found on Carisa's Fall Fun Page.  She had a lot of fun acting 5 Little Pumpkins and both girls loved playing Ring Around the Pumpkin.

We worked on the letter H with some fun Hippo printables from COAH.  She sorted Mommy H and Baby H and helped the hippo spell his name.  We didn't get to our H page for our ABC book but we haven't done G yet either. LOL

Math/Science Activities

I bought some marshmallow ghosts and made sorting and pattern printables for her.  Any activity that involves her eating treats is a big hit.  You can download them HERE.  I imagine the marshmallows will be dirt cheap now.

We went to our friends annual pumpkin carving party and Kayleigh got to check out the insides of a pumpkin.  She wasn't too impressed and quickly ran away from that mess. LOL

We read The Pumpkin Patch Parable and then made faces on felt pumpkins.  I tried to call out different shapes in the hopes that she'd follow my instructions but she wasn't falling for that.  She only made one face before she lost interest.

Fine Motor/Learning Toys

She got out our BRISTLE BLOCKS  and played with those a lot.  She loves the little people that game with them.

She worked on her scissor skills and made a pumpkin.  She's getting quite good at the cutting and actually cut all the pieces herself. Those Kiddy Scissors that we bought really did the trick. She's now able to cut up Mackenzie's math with regular kid scissors. Bless her heart!

The girls painted some little mini-pumpkins.  Kayleigh usually has a 3 minute attention span with painting but she worked on this for a good 20 minutes.  Then we put them out on the patio to dry.  And then a freak thunderstorm came and washed them clean.  Good thing I took pictures. 

She did some Trick-or-treat writing that I found at 2 Teaching Mommies.  They had a pre-writing version and a more "advanced."  She did such a good job!

Ironically, she did better at the "advanced" because she doesn't have the fine motor skills need to trace the lines in the "pre-writing" pages.  Which totally makes sense, when you think about it.  Now I feel a little guilty about all the tracing pages that I gave my former students over the years. LOL  I probably stressed the poor buggers out.  "What do you mean keep my pencil on the skinny line?"  

And we went on our yearly jaunt to the pumpkin patch.  Naturally the weather didn't cooperate.  They said HOT (which is what we usually deal with) so we dressed for hot.  As soon as we got there it got cold and rainy.  That was a bummer considering how we were dressed. LOL  

Tot School~Lite

Kayleigh is 32 months

It was a very easy week here at our Tot School.  Between doctors appointments, errands, and our weekly outing with friends not one Tot School activity done.  It was all we could do to get fourth grade work completed.  Instead Kayleigh just played. 

Wait!  I was mistaken.  She did pull one Tot School activity off the shelf.  Spooning our "fall treasures." However, she never did spoon them.  She stirred them up and called it "soup."  LOL

And she asked for "candy corn math."  We all know her motivation for that request, don't we? LOL 

Here are the other ways that she passed her time...

Finished up her Soccer Tot season....

Rode the "big girl" swing for the first time...

"Painted" our fence...

And rode her bike...she's finally getting the hang of pedaling.  And that's no easy task with the cheap plastic wheels they put on bikes these days.  Shame on you Radio Flyer!  She might be getting a new one soon with "real tires."

And that was our week.  We'll do all the fun stuff I had planned for this week next week.  Be sure to see what the other tots are up to by clicking the Tot School Button at the top of the page!

Tot School

Kayleigh is 32 months

Literacy Activities

We read lots of books about the fall and focused on the letter G this week.

We finally got around to completing our F page for our ABC book.  Kayleigh painted the F with a feather and then we glued a feather on.   She wasn't much interested in doing the craft.  She does spend a lot of time looking at the book in her "spare time."   She loves it!

Kayleigh did her first poke page, from COAH.  She loved it!  

We'll be doing more of these.

G is for Gumball letter sort, also from COAH.  She had no problem

sorting "mommy" and "baby" Ggs.  She also used a pointer to teach her critters about Gg.

So cute!

Of course we had to do Gumball Spelling, from COAH.

Kayleigh always likes those.

Math Activities

We played the Roll-A-Tree Game from 2 Teaching Mommies.



I got this adorable Fall Pattern and Sequencing Card set.  It came with these fall animal counters
that Kayleigh just loves.  We did a couple of different acctivities with them.  We used some of the cards that came with the set.  Kayleigh hasn't totally grasped the concept of patterns yet but she showing progress.  If you can get her to say the pattern with you then she can usually tell you what comes next.

I also made a Fall Grid Game, modeled after the ones over at PreKinders.  You just roll a die and then cover the grid with the appropriate number of markers.  Kayleigh surprised me by recognizing some of the numbers on her own.

Of course her favorite activity was just to play pretend with the critters. LOL



The favorite of the week was Candy Corn Math.  I made four activities that we played using Autumn Candy Mix.  Sorting, graphing (for my older daughter), patterns, and a grid game.  Both girls loved it.  Especially eating some of the game pieces.

Download the printables here.

We did another visual discrimination game, also from PreKinders.  

 Motor Skills

I was excited to find my missing Music and Movement in the Classroom  cd.  I used to use it all the time as a classroom teacher and when I did a brief stint as a dance teacher.  Kayleigh had a blast dancing to "Body Rock."  The top photo is her signature move. LOL

We used halloween colored pipe cleaners for a small spaces activity.
Kayleigh said it was lemonade. LOL

She did some tonging with halloween colored pom poms and our pumpkin ice tray.

She asked to do "work" like Mackenzie so I finally broke out the Kumon Let's Color!  book
I'd bought forever ago.  I wasn't too sure how she'd do, as it involves following directions,
but she surprised me.  She even did two pages.

The girls did autumn leaf prints using toilet paper tubes that were bent into a leaf shape.  Simple and fun!   And the paintings came out adorable.  I got the idea from The Frugal Family Fun blog.

Learning Toys and other fun Stuff

We got a new toy, Alex Little Hands Button Art.  It first came across our radar when we read about it over at Caeden's Corner.  Kayleigh loves to play with it.  She just doesn't like to match the colors. LOL

Our Melissa and Doug Chalk Board made an appearance this week.

And of course, the Magneatos  came out.  She made a crown, a baby rattle, and discovered that they stick to the chalkboard.

And what could be more fun than kicking down the Melissa and Doug Nesting Blocks?

And out came this month's sensory bin.  She loves the stretchy
skeletons, which she calls scarecrows.

Check out what other tots are up to by clicking the Tot School button at the top of the page.