Learning In Grace: Letter I-L Review week

Tot School- Cowboy is currently 43.5 Months Old

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This Weeks Trays

Tools this week Included:

AlphaTales Box Set
Fall Leaves Fall
The Great Kapok Tree My First Steps to Reading Books
Dry Erase Center
Animal Abc Flash Cards
Foam Magnet Pattern Blocks
Pattern Cards
Dot Paint
Cool Crazy Connectors
Melissa & Doug Shape, Model and Mold
Crayola Fingerpaint
Clothespin letters
Stacker Pegs and Pegboard Set
Melissa & Doug Toolbox Fill and Spill Magnetic Silly Faces
Fall Tot Pack

This week was a bit all over the place as I was juggling a lot. I spent all weekend lesson planning for Lou, and ended up having to go on the fly for Cowboy because I was too tired when I finished Sunday night to even think about tot school! So we went over letters I-L but Lou and I are wrapping up a Rain Forest Unit Study/Lapbook So with that being said there was a lot more Free play this week, which I think Cowboy was ok with :)

A look at our Chart this week

For more Ideas on Each letter Click on the links Below.

Letter Ii Ideas

Letter Jj Ideas

Letter Kk Ideas

Letter Ll Ideas

Here are some things that we did daily this week and to save me a little time I mainly took the pictures from letter I to give the examples...

Read Letters I-L AlphaTales Box Set, traced our Letter of the Day using Dry Erase Center

I am blowing this one up because I am just so proud of my little mans tracing abilities. He is getting so good! That is of course, when he takes his time, and actually feels like tracing. He really doesn't like to write, but when he is in the mood, he does Fantastic!

Something New this week we did was clothespin alphabet cards. I found them HERE (free printable) printed them out, laminated and grabbed some clothespins :) This week I only put out letters A-L the letters we have already reviewed. You just clothespin the lowercase letter that matches the Upper Case ... He liked this.

Everyday we went over Each letter I-L in his Preschool Workbook and he had to point to what items started with each letter.

Another thing we do everyday is Bible OF COURSE!! I do not usually put our bible posts in with Tot School because I do Bible lessons during Calendar Time with all the kids and I always "PLAN" on writing a stand alone Bible Lesson Post but end up getting too busy. So here is a peek at our Bible Lesson- For the past few weeks we have been Studying Creation.

Cowboy is putting the pictures under the correct day on our felt board

Tracing all the letters on his - Dry Erase Center .....

Learning With Sissy

Learning how to draw

Watching a Bill Nye experiment on the Water Cycle. He was playing with play dough and heard her watching something so he came over and was GLUED! He loved watching these experiments.

Like I mentioned earlier, we are doing a Unit Study on the Amazon Rain Forest, so that would not be complete with out reading The Great Kapok Tree !! Lou and I took turns reading and doing different voices for the animals. It was so fun. He wanted to read it over and over again.

I have a Daily Drawing sheet in our Calendar Time Notebook, and of course, Cowboys Drawings are always one line from a color or scribble. Lately, He has been watching his sister draw and has been wanting to do what she does. So I was doing Tiny Tot with Butter one morning, and he opened up his notebook and the drawing book and drew me a picture of an elephant. I know that its not fancy and it may not look like anything but a big oval to most people, but, for this mommy... I was totally impressed when my 3 year old who normally hates to draw, write and color said, "Look at my effinnent mommy!!" I totally saw an elephant and was just so full of Joy over this elephant. Homeschooling different age groups at the same time really does have some MAJOR benefits !

SCIENCE FUN!!!

You will need:

Baking Soda
Vinegar
Food Coloring
Little plastic cups
Droppers
Big Dish

Just poor baking soda in dish, fill plastic cups with vinegar and a few drops of food coloring, and start dropping in colors to see it fizz!! and TALK!

Now this was something I DID have planned for Cowboy but Lou just HAD to join in!! What happens when you squirt vinegar in baking soda? Well it -TALKS as Cowboy would say :) It was pretty awesome! They had a blast!

When the squirting colored vinegar was over, I just poured all the cups in to see what would happen, and at first the baking soda turned into a slim type substance, then after stirring it up a bit, it started to first take on a moon dough texture quickly followed by ALMOST as hard as concrete. It was super fun and we will be doing this again and more experiments this year for sure!

I totally forgot to do our L craft last week so we did it this week :P Cowboy wanted to paint it green so I just poured him some Crayola Fingerpaint;in a dish and he painted the L then Glued on the Llamas.

Dot Paint Fall Letters, and Foam Magnet Pattern Blocks with - Pattern Cards

Playing Roll a Fall Tree and Fall Tree Patterns from Fall Tot Pack

Cutting and gluing practice outside and cutting some straws......

Playdough with Melissa & Doug Shape, Model and Mold, and Magnetic Silly Faces book.

Tiny Tot School- Butter is currently 17 months old

Putting together and pulling apart some Cool Crazy Connectors. I would tell him the color of each one as he held it up or took one apart.

This is such a funny shot! Its like hes saying," Hold on mommy- I'm thinking"

Exploring tools with his - Melissa & Doug Toolbox Fill and Spill, and matching colors with Color Cookies ....

And of course- He thought they were REAL Oreos and had to try them.....

I had some ABC Flash Cards and pulled some out and we went over colors and vocabulary.

Counting and pointing to the Pigs in his Little Piglet Book :)

Stacking and Pushing Pegs into pegboards using Stacker Pegs and Pegboard Set...

Butters FIRST Dot Paint experience /> !!! He LOVED this!!

He also loved touching the top of the paint! He had beautiful Green fingers when he was done!!

Building with Blocks

Butter knows his first Color~!!! Wahoooooo....... RED!! He can SAY it and Recognize it!! For this activity I just found a bunch of RED things and he just did whatever he wanted with them and would stop every now and then to remind me they were RED!

Experimenting with Spike balls and tongs... Who cares if he did it backwards!! He felt like such a big boy doing this tray!

Vocabulary Cards theme "Fruit" I would give him a card and he would tell me what it was and point to it if he knew it... If not I would just tell him what it was and he would repeat it back to me.

I had some old Water Beads that were still full of water so I dumped them in our Water Play Table outside.... and with very CLOSE supervision- and a PACI- let Butter explore the water beads. I am very glad that these weren't Fresh Water Beads because he just wanted to squish them... Which was fine but Cowboy was all distraught about it because one of the rules when playing with water beads for sensory play is we DO NOT squish them, unless it is squish day- which in this case it was so once he grasped that it was OK for Butter to be squishing them and that HE could also- they really enjoyed the water play/Squish the water beads day :)

Moms Favorite Memory of the Week

My Favorite memory of the week- Lou and I were working on her school work so this meant that the boys had to play in their play room- I peeped over my barricade of Oriental Trade boxes - (I don't have a baby gate) and found these two sweet boys under some blankets and Cowboy reading his version of Chicka Chicka Boom Boom to Butter! SOOO Sweet :P