Learning In Grace: July 2012

Tot School- Cowboy is Currently 40.5 Months old

E is for Elephant

Letter E Desk and Chart Set up

Tuesdays Trays
Items on the tray:
Tot Book
My e book
Alphatales Ee Book
My favorite story time bible for toddlers
Trace Letter Ee with Crayola dry erase center
Melissa and Doug Elephant puzzle
Dot Paint with letter E

Bottom trays
Melissa and Doug magnetic letters
Color Cookies game
Fiddlesticks

This week was VBS at church, Cowboy is still too young to go but Lou went so she wasn't here with us this week. We still did calendar time. Here he is going over discussion questions for elephant and tracing the letter Ee and other words. He is also letting his animal crackers walk with the Elephants on the page :) Ok, cant believe I am even sharing this but whatever haha, He wanted to know what an Elephants skin felt like, and seeing as I had no ideas of what to use to show him, I first tried to tell him to touch his elbow, and he just wasn't getting it, sooooo the next best thing?? Moms Knee! Wow, yeah its all I could think of, no I do not have elephant skin, but knees are rough in general and just thought it would give him an idea. I can hear him now talking with friends at church, "Guess what! My mom has Elephant Skin" .....

Tracing his Elephant page... He looks so EXCITED!

We Started with the elephant puzzle. This thing may look easy but it's hard! But he did so good looking for where pieces should go.

The rest of our trays included, dot painting, tinker toys, playdough, marbles and magnets, and color cookies!

Wednesdays Trays

Included on Trays:

Same as above

He did some line tracing in his tot book first before we started trays. Then he did a 3 piece egg puzzle, and some letter stamping.

He did some sequence cards. You can find them here. The objective is to put the number 123 on top of what comes 1st 2nd or 3rd. This did not excite him much. I also worked with him on Vocabulary Development using the flash cards that are also included in the above links pack. These look so simple to someone just looking at them, including me at first. I thought about just skipping them all together but there were a few in the stack that he did not know, for instance sushi, so I figured I would go for it and see how he did.

As I started to flash them to him, I realized I could take these cards to a whole new level rather than just spoon, cup, bowl etc. When I would show him the following cards he would have to say, Bowl of Cereal instead of Bowl or cereal, glass of milk, loaf of bread, cup of coffee, dish towels, pot holders etc. He did really well with these. I was impressed :)

He loved the touch and feel puzzles! First he put all the puzzles together, then we picked out about 5 at a time and put the pieces in the bag and he had to guess which piece he was touching without looking. It was a great sensory tool. He did really good with it!

We had so much fun with tinker toys while Jamming out to some Seeds~! He was so happy :P

I was so proud of myself, I built Cowboy this super cool windmill- but he wasn't impressed, and wanted me to build him a crane. I mean really? A crane! So I tried my best and well once again he wasn't impressed. :( My designs have nothing on Daddy's Lawnmower...

Thursdays Trays

Included:
Same as above
Snow Paint
Lacing card
Dot stickers

Here is a look at our morning routine. When we first start we do calendar time and put up our ______ of the day. At this time he does work in his tot notebook, as you can see, Cowboy is concentrating hard on writing the number 12. After CT we move to the Letter chart and go over letter, letter sound, shapes and numbers.

We started off with this weeks letter craft and made our own snow paint!! This was so fun and real easy. We will be doing this more often.

Then used dot stickers to trace letter Ee.

He put together a 3 piece puzzle for letter Ee, Laced an Egg, we read his bible lesson, shadow matching, and played with his Cars book we got this week thrifting!