Tot School

I will probably end up doing Tot School posts weekly, but for now I'm too excited to get these ideas out there. Tuesday we didn't do much because M&M wasn't feeling very good, but we did play Color and Shapes Bingo.

Then today she played with some nesting dolls. She cradled the littlest one like a baby.

Before I could get her to go on to anything else we had to play "Let's Go Fishin.'" Even though this game says it's for 4+ she enjoys playing it and can get some fish every once in a while all on her own. It's great practice for her to try and keep her hand still.

We finally got to our ABC overview since I want to start Letter A next week. We read Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. It's a lot of fun and has a lot of activities to go along with it. I got the book through a book order because my sister is a teacher and it came with a CD. The CD had some fun songs that had good rhythm that M&M loved to dance to. We made a poster with our own coconut tree and letters. I got this idea here. For more Alphabet ideas go to the "Now I know my ABC's" section of the Totally Tots website.

M&M wanted to do more so I got out my ice cube tray number sorting activity that I found here. We counted plastic gemstones. She didn't really want to count after number 8 so we enjoyed just pouring the stones into the tray.

First Tot School....Finally

Click on this button to find out more about what Tot School is all about.

So even though I wasn't as organized as I would have liked to have been I did some activities with M&M today. We started off with doing a lentil tray idea that I found on the Chasing Cheerios blog. I thought that M&M would really like this and I was right. After awhile I put a towel under the tray because she was very messy and the lentils are the same color as our carpet.

M&M spent a lot of time on the computer today doing "her" letters on Fisher-price and Starfall. It amazes me that she can pretty much maneuver these sites by herself. I was tending to a sick baby most of the morning so that was very helpful.

We got a package from grandma today and it had a new book for M&M in it...Purplicious!

She already has Pinkalicious and her favorite color is purple so it seemed only fitting to have this book as well. The book talks about how pink and blue mixed together make purple so I took this opportunity to demonstrate this to M&M. I put blue and pink paint in a ziploc bag and she squished it around to mix it together. I got this idea from a blog a few months ago when I wasn't as good keeping track of which one it came from so I can't link it back.

M&M pretty much knows the alphabet in it's capital form, but we need to work on the lowercase letters. So I bought a matching/puzzle thing at our education store here for her to practice. I wanted to do this as sort of a pre-test to see what she already knew. I was surprised that she could match Q. She got frustrated with it though and only did 4 letters before she wanted to quit. I think next time I won't put out the whole alphabet at once so she won't get overwhelmed.

Posting delay

Sorry about the delay in really starting up this blog. My little Bubba has given us an RSV scare, but he seems to be getting better with allergy meds. so we're hoping it's just allergies. I'm going to start using a schedule board I made for M&M this week and I'll be making plans for Tot School today. We'll be doing an overview of the alphabet this week and if we don't have enough to do I'll start the letter A. I also have some other ideas going on in my head as well as a product review meme to do. So don't give up on me! Stayed tuned.

Unofficial Tot School

(I copied this from my other blog because I wanted it to be on this blog because it has to do with Tot School.)

Even though I haven't officially started my Tot school with M&M I did do a couple of activities with her today. I don't remember where I saw this idea because it was one that I had saved from a few months ago, but we did marshmallow and toothpick building. I did most of the building, but she did have fun poking the toothpicks into the marshmallows. She enjoyed eating the marshmallows as well of course and that ended up being her snack. I ended up making letters and shapes out of them and then asking her what they were.

M&M came into me while she was coloring a picture, held up a crayon and said, "Mommy, my crayon is broken." I look over expecting her crayon to be in two pieces, instead she is showing me a white crayon. It took me a second, but I figured out that she was coloring on a white piece of paper. She thought that since she couldn't see the color on the paper that the crayon wasn't working. I got her a black piece of paper for her to color on so that she could see that the white crayon wasn't actually broken.

The Concept

The concept for this blog came while I was searching online for ideas of how to keep my three year old busy and having fun during the day while teaching her the basics, like the alphabet, numbers, shapes and colors. While she knows these things pretty well now, I still need to keep her busy. I came across blogs that other women have done about how they teach their children and the fun ways they do it. Even though I've wanted to do this since October of last year, being pregnant and then having a baby has really fouled up my plans. I feel like I am in a position where I can really begin to do what I want in a more structured and organized way. I have been gathering ideas and supplies since January and have been trying to get them all organized. Although I don't have everything exactly how I want it, I feel like I just need to start to do something.

What I envision for this blog is my documenting of the things that I do with my daughter on a daily basis during our Tot School. More than that though, is how I will accomplish the title of this blog...Turning ordinary into extraordinary.

My major in college was Home and Family Living. One of the main things that stood out to me in my classes was how to turn everyday, monotonous activities of taking care of the home and family into joyful experiences that we can treasure and remember forever. I want to take the activities of feeding, clothing, cleaning, etc. to the next level. I am at the point in my life where I am just starting to learn and begin to understand how to effectively run a home. This blog will follow me on my journey step-by-step as I try to better my own home through experimenting with new ideas from teaching my children to trying out new recipes.