Tot School June 8-12

M&M is 36 months old

M&M did these first two activities on her own. Her Leapfrog phonics bus and nesting dolls, which she stayed with for a while.

I didn't get to finish all of our letter R/Rainbow activities last week so I took the opportunity of a short week to do some more of them. We did a rainbow in a jar using colored sand and a jar. We actually used a salt shaker because that's all I had available. I cut up a plastic bag to put over the top and then I screwed the lid on so that the sand wouldn't spill out.

I thought this idea was really cute and used simple materials. Using pipe cleaners, beads, and styrofoam M&M matched the beads to the color of pipe cleaner. Then bent them over to make an arch for a rainbow. I found this idea at My Montessori Journey.





R is also for rocks. We gathered some rocks at the park the day before and then we washed them in a tub of water with dishsoap in it. Then we dried them and examined them with a magnifying glass. We also used our fingernail, a coin and a nail to do a scratch test to see how hard the rock was. I can't find where I got this idea from, sorry. It was a great outdoor activity.

M&M started her first day of Mother's Day Out, otherwise known as "school" to M&M. She did great and is excited to go again this week. She had to wear her Dora backpack everywhere after school.

Half of the week was spent with family at a reunion.

I was really excited about this first activity that we were able to do as a family. We went to the aquarium where we saw all of these animals/fish. It was a great experience for M&M and she just soaked it all in. I think her favorite was the jaguar. I don't know why there was a jaguar at an aquarium, but it was there. She loves Go Diego Go with baby jaguar.

We celebrated M&M's 3rd birthday with all 18 of her cousins sitting around the table to eat her birthday cake. (My in-laws have 20 grandchildren with two more on the way.)

We spent A LOT of time in the water which M&M loved. I was amazed that she went down some really big slides all by herself because where we were didn't allow two people to go down at one time.

Not a normal week for Tot School, but a very fun one nonetheless.

Tot School-Letter R

M&M is 3 years old

I had soooo many fun activities planned for this week, but I think we only got to about 1/4 of them. If I had known what a busy week for other things this would have been I wouldn't have planned the letter R for this week.

The letter R is for rainbows. There are so many cute rainbow activities out there, but here is just a few that we got to this week. We first read, "What Makes a Rainbow?" by Betty Schwartz. It's just a cute book.

We did a lot with construction paper and our first order of business was ripping or cutting different colored paper so that we could glue it onto a rainbow that I had freehanded. I labeled which line should be which color so she would know where to put it. This didn't last very long and we only got one line done, the purple one of course. I don't have an after picture. You can see a complete one at My Montessori Journey, where I got this idea from.

Another cute and easy craft from My Two Happy Homeschoolers. Again I don't have picture of the finished product. Check out the site to see what it looks like.

I cut out strips of rainbow colored paper and had M&M glue them onto a piece of paper. When it dried I cut it out into the shape of an R. Check out No Time for Flashcards to see the end result because I was very forgetful this week.

I found this cute template at Making Learning Fun to use with Fruit Loops to make a rainbow. M&M didn't actually finish this, I did because she was too busy eating the fruit loops. We have one stray yellow because she had eaten the rest of the blues.

These next activities aren't about the letter R, but I found them this week and wanted to try them out. I found the size board at Montessori Mom.



This magnifying glass activity looked really cute. There are boards with 12 pictures on them and the cards have the pictures on them, but they are shrunk down really small so you have to use a magnifying glass to see which picture to match it to. M&M was really smart though and could figure out what they were by just looking at the small picture. I can't find where I saved this one from, but I know it came from either Montessori Mom or Montessori for Everyone.

R is also for Rabbits. This cute bunny rabbit came from Making Learning Fun. M&M liked how it could stand up on it's own.

Then we made rabbit ears for M&M to wear and then we hopped around the house like rabbits. M&M thought this was way fun because mommy actually got down on the floor with her and hopped around too. These cute ears came from DLTK.

We also did a Tangram rabbit found at Making Learning Fun as well.

R is for Rectangles. We made rectangles usinga geoboard.

M&M used Do-A-Dots to make this rectangle found at Childcareland.

Then she made a rainbow with the Do-A-Dots.

For our last letter R activity of the week we did Rubbings. M&M helped peel the paper off of some crayons so we could use the sides of them to do the rubbings. We used a comb, 2 leaves, pennies and a cell phone.

Random fun. M&M used her blow-up microphone from Chuck-e-cheese to dance and sing.

I got some plastic bugs, butterflies and dragonflies from Target. I throw them all over the yard and she runs and "catches" them in her net.

I don't have anything planned for next week, but we only have two days to really do anything because of a family reunion. I hope to get to some of the thing done that we didn't do this past week and the rest is going to be LOTS of fun with the cousins. (She only has 19 cousins on one side alone.)