Princess and Knight Tot School

Love Bug is currently 32.5 months

*I have a feeling that this will be my opening statement for the next several months....*

We had a busy week and didn't get as much tot school in as we had hoped to!

This week we redid our Princess unit- find it  here, and added a bit of Knight from here. These two ladies have some of my FAVORITE tot blogs.

I didn't get any pictures of Tot school alone this week. Love Bug did a LOT on her own. Our big move this week was taking all the toys- save the doll house, scooter, and Buddy Bear, out of our family room. Our toy bins are now full of tot school items, as that's what Love Bug asks to do all-day-long!

This week we also had only one friend join us for Tots together. Everyone else was sick or their mom's just had babies.

Tots Together
(Tots Together is a day each week a few parents of "home preschooled" tots get our kids together to socialize and practice being in a group setting while learning.)

I made crowns out of felt, and Love Bug decorated them with jewels.

We built castles 

 Used our number floor mats (Love Bug used these EVERY day!)

 Practiced pre-writing skills

 Matched words to pictures

 (side note: One evening while I was making dinner, Love Bug got these out again. She would bring me a word and ask if it was - Carriage. It was, so she matched it up. Then wand...it was....this happened for all four words. No one was helping her. I can personally declare that my 2.5 year old is NOT reading. She can read the letters, and maybe she figured it out by the first letter, but I've yet to hear her identify beginning sounds. AND since both castle and carriage start with "c" I call it luck. Unless she memorized what the word said from previous times playing this week. But I truly doubt it.)

UPDATE: After a comment from a reader, I pulled out our cards again to see if Love Bug really could recognize them. I showed her just the words and she only picked out tiera. She kept saying "um...just a minute". I could tell she was really thinking though. So I got out the pictures- and sure enough, she could tell me what every word was and which picture it went to. So yes, she memorized what the word looked like that went with the picture. I'm definately going to run with this one :)

 Practiced "K"

 Decorated and ate cheese and bread crowns

 And worked on AB patterns- which Love Bug is really getting the hang of.

 Love Bug absolutely love to use her magnets on her do-a-dot letters...and she really loves the letter K. I'm sure you can guess why ;)

If you want to see our previous Princess Unit, go here.

Princess tot school

I fell in love with the preschool packs on 1+1+1=1, especially the princess pack. (I fell in love with the entire site- truth be told) Lovebug is obsessed with princesses! It was so much fun making this set and I couldn't wait to use them with her.

This week we were working on the Letter P, so Princess worked right into it.

P is for Penguin. I love the letter craft ideas from Totally Tots.

Okay- I love everything from totally tots.

 We worked on Love Bug's princess puzzle.

This is her favorite puzzle and she wants to do it several times every day.

Love Bug loves stepping on things. She walks on books on the floor, much to my dismay. She walks on school papers, coloring pages, toys, clothes, you name it.

I was thrilled when I saw this idea from Confessions of a Homeschooler. Floor numbers!

 Permission to step on something. Brilliant!

As expected, Love Bug adores them!

These weren't part of the princess set, I made them by printing extra matching cards and setting my printer to print 75% larger. I also used a few pictures from the knight preschool pack since there weren't enough pictures to make 10 cards from the princess set.

 We played with purple play dough and ate popcorn!

 The princess preschool pack.

 Lovebug really enjoyed the matching game.

 Floor counting cards

 Patterns- she doesn't quite get it yet.

 Lovebug likes to point to the shapes. She can't do the number cards yet.

 She also loved rolling the die and helping put Cheerios on the graph.

 We aren't quite to the "what's different" card, but she did love the story and helping me read it.

I love that the preschool packs have room to grow. There are things that she can do now, and things she'll grow into. Lovebug's older brother Jedi is VERY excited about some of the other preschool packs that I've made. (and honestly, so am I)
Thanks again Carissa!