Sunday, August 23, 2009

Tot School

Kimberly is currently 39 months old

We had a fun week of Tot-School this week.
I was inspired my Carisa, of 1+1+1=1, and got out the Blokus game for Kimberly to explore this week, and she loved it.
She spend quite a bit of time filling in the board with the colored pieces and then spent even more time using the tall pieces to be people and then she played house with these pieces. They had bedrooms, kitchens and there were even some babies.

She also had a lot of fun doing this, changing the world into different colors. Green was her favorite.
Continuing our "seasons" theme, I pulled out this 4 seasons layered puzzle.
It challenged her at first. I think the total number of piece, dumped onto the table was too much for her. So we grouped the pieces into the individual seasons and she did much better.
After a few times doing this with the seasons separated from each other, she was able to divide them on her own and complete this by herself! Way to go, Kim!
We made a very cute book from an idea I got from an old Mailbox magazine. I really enjoy this magazine and have been saving past issues for years. There are always great ideas to be found within its pages.
Based on the book The Seasons of Arnold's Apple Tree, Kim had great fun making this booklet.
I was very proud because Kimberly did this project in one sitting, as opposed to Luke who needed several smaller sessions to finish this.
This activity included painting, gluing and cutting.
The kids also enjoy reading their books to whomever will listen.
Using our Scholastic Counting Mats we worked on number recognition and counting skills.
Kim's favorite number is 3 because that is how old she is.
Success!!
Working as a team, Kim and Luke completed all the "fish bowls" 1-10.
Counting bears held a lot of interest this week. At first we put the bears into families according to color and size. Next I got out the patterning cards to work on. The cards are arranged in order, from easiest to hardest, so we worked on the first few cards until she got the "patterning" idea.
She then played for the next hour with the bears. Above, the bear families are enjoying "ring around the rosie".
The bears also joined the Sesame Street characters in school on a puzzle that had been completed earlier in the day.
And the bear play continued. I love it when imagination takes over and fills a good part of the day.
It is funny the different ways Kim and Luke played with the bears. Kim played on and off for hours, making families, going to school and taking care of the bear babies.
Luke on the other hand, showed up in a whirlwind, stood all his bears up and commenced in a "bear battle" until all the bears were tipped over and he had a winner. He then departed the table.
All the kids made crayon resist paintings this past week. Kimberly was especially enthralled with this technique. She loved scribbling and then seeing what would "appear" when she painting on the watercolor.
She was also very proud of her art.
Other very important part of this week was reconnecting with some cousins. I think Kimberly was very surprised to get to hold Margie Sue.
She also got to spend time with her "best friend" Emmy!!
We definitely had a great week this week.
Make sure to check out all the TotSchool posts over at 1+1+1=1.

6 comments:

Rebecca said...

I LOVED all your activities!! Thanks for sharing!

Lynn said...

Thank you for the idea about using Blokus. My husband and I love that game, but haven't let my son at it yet. This week we've been letting him play with scrabble (supervised, so I don't lose all of the pieces). Maybe I'll let him try blokus next.

Rhonda said...

Such a wonderful Tot School week. I love all of the activities that you plan for your little ones.

The Activity Mom said...

I love the apple book!

The Attached Mama said...

You always have such great ideas.

Thanks for all of the work you do,
Cathy aka The Attached Mama

Jess said...

We love crayon resist painting! This is part of my plans this week for Sunshine!