Sunday, December 14, 2008

Tot School

Luke is 3 years 7 months
Kimberly is 2 years 7 months
Christmas is approaching fast, so our Tot-school this past week revolved around our preparations. I found these cute Do-a Dot printables that the kids painted and now hang on our back window. Do a Dot paints are certainly one of the favorite tot-tools that we use weekly.
The four youngest kids made these handprint/footprint reindeer. Kim and Luke's are the two on the bottom. I waited for naptime to get out the glitter glue-I wasn't feeling brave on this day.I recently found this activity packed website: Childcareland. You need to check this site out for yourself if you have any little learners in your house. This week I made a filefolder game.
If you are not familiar with file folder games, as you can see in this picture of Kim, everything for the activity is on, and in, the file folder. This matching game was perfect for Kim. She loved matching up the shapes and colors on the mittens.
Luke, on the other hand, thought it was real funny to mix up the mittens. I think it must be his 3 year old humor, whereas Kim has fun doing this the "right" way.
I made a little pocket on the back to store the cards in. You can also just staple a ziplock bag to the back and put the cards in there.
We also made hand and foot print angels. I think they are the cutest. I did let Luke loose with the glitter glue for this craft.
Kimberly was happy to use these stickers to decorate her angel.
We added yarn hair and a pipe cleaner halo and they are now on display on a kitchen cupboard.
The kids had fun with our Tangoes Jr. activity. I got it years ago for Mark and Grace, and thought I would try it with Kim and Luke. They did very well. Luke could succeed almost everytime, for Kimberly it was more of a challenge, but with help she enjoyed it also.
We did some patterning by making candy canes for the Christmas tree. I showed the kids the pattern on a pipe cleaner and then left it on the table for them to check their own work.
Above is Luke checking his candy cane.
I was surprised how well Kimberly did with this activity. We only needed to fix her pattern two times, and I only did that because I wanted her to "see" the correct pattern. Usually they make anything they want with the beads and pipecleaners, so this was sort of new for them.
Of course, even though she just turned 7, Gracie loves to get into the tot school activities with us.
Make sure you go and visit Carisa for more Tot-School posts.

4 comments:

Rhonda said...

Those Do-a-Dot printables are just too cute and so are the candy canes. They are doing some great work for the holiday season.

Lisa said...

I know where to come for the best pre-school stuff, Joann! I see some reindeer in our future today! &:O)

Liz said...

Thanks for the Do-a-Dot link. We use our Do-a-Dot paints all the time as well!!

Gidget Girl Reading said...

great week! thanks for the dot printables i didn't even know there was a site for those!

my youngest is getting more for christmas!