Thanksgiving Tot school

Love Bug is currently 33 months

Autumn on the east coast is one of my FAVORITE things. I do adore a drive down a winding road with trees painted bright orange, crimson red, and vibrant yellows. But what I really love, is throwing my kiddos out into that gorgeous scenerey and taking some pictures of them. :)

A bit of Love Bug love

Her brother Jedi

 Teenager

 And Junie B

Now on to Tot School, which is probably why you're here.

We worked on a Thanksgiving unit last week that I found at Over the big moon. We'll be doing it again this week, since Love Bug will in the care of Gma and Gpa while I'm away on a little trip with my sweetheart!!

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.)
We worked with our three-part cards. We begin with the card that has both the picture AND word on it. The tots then use the words to match up with the first card. Then we match pictures. This works best in our word easel because adding the picture first covers the word- which is much harder for them.

 We sorted turkeys by size

 We did puzzles

 We classified food and people

We made pumpkin and apple "pie"

 using tongs, scoops etc to put into a pie pan through a pastry cutter (idea from here via Pinterest. Are you on pinterest yet? There is a whole world of tot ideas on pinterest...think about it)

 

We made a delicious thanksgiving feast!!

We began with a pan and spoon for each tot. They could fill it with whatever they wanted to. Then we put all the food back and they had to pick an item that was the same color I called out.

We did LOTS of counting. We started with counting squash and fruit for our cornucopia. There were 10 items. We put ten in, pulled 10 out, and repeat.

 Then we made our OWN cornucopia with icecream cones, goldfish crackers and pretzels, marshmallows, and craisins. Idea from here again..through pinterest.

Each tot had a cone, and 5 of each item listed.

 First we sorted them by type

  Then we counted how many of each type we had, followed by counting as we put them in our cones. 

We counted Thankgiving things on our cards and clipped the right number.

We made the Mayflower with handprints-- pinterest....

And after a very busy Tots together day, we sent the tots home with these so cute (and partially healthy) Indian corn snacks (seriously...you know I saw it on pinterst...right??)

 

This week, Love Bug also worked on sorting turkeys by small, medium, large- which she caught right on to.

 She found which one was different and  put a pumpkin on it

 And she made another pumpkin pie with her pie playdough mat printable (but used the acrylic pumpkins)

Love Bug repeated a few favorites from Tots together day several times this week.

AND she found a cart I left out and decided to use it to play....library, grocery store, mommy, etc this week. She loves to wheel it around. She even helped me put my groceries away using it to put items from bags in and then wheel them to the pantry and fridge. She classified them on the shelves by where they would be going......

Happy Thanksgiving!!! 

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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.

Halloween Tot School

Love Bug is 32 months old

This week for tot school we did a Halloween theme!!

Love Bug and I (along with her older sister) went to the local orchard and did a hay ride and pumpkin patch.

School this week was a lot of fun stuff. We did a really casual unit. Puzzles are always a favorite.

 Love Bug played with the build a monster several times this week. We picked it up from Michael's at some  point in time. It was meant to be stickers you put on him, but I mounted them on paper and laminated the pieces, and added velcro so it's reusable.

 We put the alphabet in order with a few different alphabet sets this week. Magnets, blocks, and cards. We even started working on spelling Love Bug's (real) name. I was totally blown away when she repeated it to her dad later in the evening.

 Love Bug absolutely adores playdough. Every afternoon when Jedi got home from school they played with it together.

 We made pumpkin shaped pbj sandwiches and made them into jack-o-lanterns.

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.)

All the tots brought little pumpkins with them this week. I cut out jack-o-latern faces making the eyes and noses triangles, and all the mouths were different letters. I used adhesive felt for it. My "bright idea" to peel the backs and put them on wax paper for easy removal---was not so bright. It stuck so bad! Mount on plastic or foil instead. (glad I could figure that out for you so you wouldn't have to make that mistake ;)

Love Bug chose the "U" mouth. 

 The tots with their pumpkins

 One got away.....

We practiced the letter "H" with our do-a-dot letters.

Two words: table scatter

If you aren't familiar with them, the you're missing out. Table scatter is the new confetti for parties. All the cuteness without the microscopic mess. I have found them in ALL sorts of fun shapes, colors, etc. These were from the Target $1 zone. I hit up Michael's, Joann, etc after holiday and seasons end to pick up clearanced items to use in school. 

These pumpkins fit perfectly in the circles AND are great for sensory boxes too! 

 We made ghosts out of footprints

We practiced trick or treating- especially learning to say "Thank You".

We played "pass the cookie jar". We passed the jar while counting "1,2,3". The person who was number "3" got to pick a cookie. Next round we picked two cookies, and last round we picked three cookies. Each time we counted as we picked and passed.

And we shared our fun game of catching "falling" leaves!

It was such a fun week of learning!!