Tot School-C week

M&M is currently 35 months old

I've seen a lot of people doing workboxes with their children when they do homeschooling. I wanted to take this idea and make if fit for what I am doing with M&M in Tot School. I tried it this week and it worked really well. It gave M&M a chance to choose what activities she wanted to do in whatever order she wanted to do them in. I'm trying to give her choices in everything I can in things that don't matter so that she can exercise her independence as much as possible. I don't have a shelf to put the boxes on yet so they are on the floor for now. Also, I have not read anything about how the actual workbox system works, I'm just taking ideas of what I see and putting them into ways that will work for me. This system keeps me organized as well and makes it so that I put together all materials needed for one activity into one box.



I had a lot of activities planned for the letter C this week. We started off reading "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" by Eric Carle. Bubba joined us for this part.

I found this flannel board story for The Very Hungry Caterpillar on the DLTK website. I put felt on the back of them, but they don't stay very well, but I got a lot of great comments saying to use sandpaper instead and I think I'll try doing that next time. At first I read the story while she put the pictures on the board and then I told her to read the story and I would put the pictures on the board. I was amazed at what she remembered from the story after just reading it a couple of times.


Then we colored a mini coloring book about the letter C that I found at the ABC Teach website.


I guess I didn't get a picture of it, but we made a letter C out of cotton balls. M&M enjoyed doing this and she asked to make something else with the cotton balls so I had to think quickly and came up with drawing an outline of clouds on blue paper and then she glued more cotton balls onto the clouds to make white and fluffy.


Next she chose to do a counting activity using little pompoms. I found this activity on the Childcareland website. (Scroll down and look under Pom Pom counting book for the actual activity.)



I threw in a flannel activity that my mom brought down when she came to visit a few months ago. It's really cute because it's a house that has pictures of different rooms. You are suppose to cut out each room and put it all together in a book, but I decided not to do that yet because M&M has enjoyed playing with it like this. There are tons of pieces to go with it from people to toys to furniture.


She made up a story on the flannel board with some of the pieces. I think that the people's faces are covered because there is a dinosaur and they are scared of it. M&M had to cover her face too. My mom used to work with kids a lot doing therapy and she would call this Play Therapy. M&M is acting out her own life through the flannel people.



Another day we did workboxes again.


She started off doing size sequencing with using circles. I found this idea on the Childcareland website as well. I was so happy because this time she understood what she needed to do. Thanks to the book called, "It's not easy being big." It's a Sesame Street book about Big Bird who is too big to do some things, but Elmo is too small to do other things, but they end up helping each other at the end to accomplish a task. The book also includes pages that talk about "big, bigger and biggest" and "small, smaller and smallest." I reminded her of this book and she figured out what to do with the circles based off of what she learned from the book.



Then we made a colorful caterpillar that I found here.


A Paper clip color matching game was her next pick. She had a really hard time doing this one because it's hard for her to get the paper clips on. The strips of color are made out of foam, but I've seen it where they can just be strips of paper laminated. I think I will try that because it might be easier to get them on the paper as opposed to the thicker foam. She did make piles of each of the colors though.



Next I had her color pieces for a cow puppet and then helped her put it together. Well I can't seem to find where I got this exact one from because I printed it out right when I found it. I did find some other ones over at DTLK though.


This car puzzle came from ABC Teach.


More caterpillar fun. Found here.


Another C activity not shown was a another colorful caterpillar paper activity that came from DLTK.

Extra activities include a bulletin/cork board, thumb tacks, play hammer and stapler remover activity. Warning: Do not leave child alone while doing this. I was with M&M the entire time she did this because she is handling sharp and dangerous objects. I would poke the thumbtacks into the bulletin board slightly and then she would hammer them in the rest of the way. Afterwards she used the stapler remover to remove the thumbtacks. She liked doing this a lot. I've had this activity in my head for a VERY long time and I can't remember where I got it from.



This next activity was a kit I got from Michaels for a little butterfly suncatcher. Again I was with M&M the entire time because it has such small pieces. The package says to cut one end of a straw at an angle to scoop the little bead things. This was hard for M&M so I got a little scoop out that I already had. The package says this is for 8+, but M&M liked doing this and of course I helped her a lot and we have a pretty thing to hang in the window now.