Tot School Time!

My goodness! Our week was packed with Tot School activities. I had a lot more energy this week and Maddie was really interested in doing new things. Bear with me (this is a long post!).

Since she loves her chunky peg board so much (seriously, she plays with it everyday), I thought we'd try a smaller version. She was a little irritated that the pegs don't stack, but quickly moved past that when we started playing "Peg Parade." She has to line up two matching pegs, side by side, and repeat. Sounds boring, but it was great fun for her. Another fun thing we did was when I'd make a line of pegs. They'd all be the same color, except for one. She had to pull the one that didn't belong. Quick and fun and a perfect game for waiting in the doctor's office!

I saw this on Nicole's blog and knew we had to try it. We used our math shaker box (hence the numbers) and 18 pennies. Maddie stood next to the open carton, arm extended, and dropped the penny in. The goal is to get one penny per spot, a task that gets much harder as you go!

One of Maddie's favorite stories on Starfall is the one about the Thanksgiving turkey. I think if I allowed her (and had the patience), she could that one all day long. Since I can not sit through fifty runs of the turkey story, I made her a felt turkey with fun feathers. I was inspired by Melissa's work.

I made it during nap time and when she woke up, it was dry and ready to play with. She has loved it and I think Mike and I have made many turkeys with her throughout the week!

This was a tonging/sorting activity with tiny flower counters and a tray from the dollar store (and tongs from my ice bucket set).

She loved it so much that I later gave her the option of using tweezers to do the transferring. Tweezers are a lot harder, but she really stuck with it.

And so, later in the week, I swapped the flowers for tiny dog manipulatives and kept with the tweezers. She worked diligently on it, sorting and tweezing. I also added in a strawberry huller to see how that would go (she had no interest in using it; I think the novelty and challenge of the tweezers was enough).

This was a really fun math game, using the shaker box, a dot stamper and the turkey printable found here. Her job was to shake the box, name the number that the pebble landed on and then stamp that number on the turkey.

I did need to print out several more turkeys, since we would run out of certain numbers to stamp, but this was definitely fun and a great way to practice number recognition.

This is a paint/draw/write bag that I found on Let's Explore (although, Shannon has a cool version, too!). I filled a Ziploc bag with some paint, sealed it shut (with Duct tape) and then taped it to her table. Then, I gave her some Q-tips and let her write, draw and explore. Something like this is right up Maddie's ally; she doesn't have to get dirty and she gets to create over and over and over again.

I also made one for my tutoring room, as several of my students have some sensory issues and this has really seemed to help them with letter formation.

My mom had this Jell-O tray from years ago (it's meant to make jiggler eggs) and I thought it'd be a perfect transfer activity. I set out a bowl of marbles and a long-handled spoon. She had fun getting the marbles in, as they fit perfectly. We didn't fill up the whole tray, but we got close!

This was a tray that never got touched. She's supposed to transfer the "magic pebbles" into the art palate but I think we just had too many similar activities. I'll leave it out one more week and see how it goes.

Oh my goodness, this was VERY fun!! Inspired by Allie's post, I wrote the alphabet on our big Ikea paper and taped it to the kitchen floor. Then, I got out our bowl of (quickly diminishing) Halloween candy and we set to work.

She had to place the candy on top of the letter that it started with. This was such a great learning activity, as it really showed her to look for the first letter in the word. Also, as she placed the candy on the letter, she would tell me the sound that letter makes. Great fun!

Oh, and I should mention that she also got to choose one piece to eat afterwards (she picked the Hershey because it's Kevin's favorite food; you know, the bird from Up). :)

Oh rats, these got way out of order and now Blogger won't let me move them! Ugh. These are some in-action peg board shots.

And here's Maddie, telling me to "Put the camera away and play."

Ever since making Mr. Chicken and Cowboy, there's been a ton of interest in scarecrows. Thank goodness for MakingLearningFun.com for so many fun printables!

And of course, corn and crows are also fun to stamp... :)

Maddie's very favorite show is still Max and Ruby and Nana was very excited to find these at our new Marshall's. Actually, they're not exactly like the link. We got one Max and one Ruby and each one came with a story book and CD. She loves listening to the CD in the car and following along in the book. She almost has both of them memorized (as do I! Ha!)!

Almost done!

This was the highlight of my week! While shopping for some tutoring things things, I found this Melissa and Doug set that I've been eyeing for a long time. The store had accidently priced all of them wrong, but still honored it for me. And so, I got this for $7.99!

And while I have a couple nagging issues with it, she absolutely loves it and has played with it for a long time.

Wow, that was a busy week for us! Check out other activities at Carisa's blog!