Tot School - A new beginning

Star is 2.5 years old

Phew!! It's been a long two weeks. I have been totally re-organizing tot school while doing tot school at the same time. I realized I had a lot to share, so I decided to write a few different posts and I will link to them so that if you are interested all you have to do is click the link.

First, the re-organization has been great. Check it out here! I've decided to loosely follow the curriculum given on the website ABC Jesus Loves Me. I'm sure that Star doesn't recognize any real difference, but I feel more organized now that I have a basic outline to follow. I really like their bible lessons as well as the finger plays and little songs they have for leaning things like how to draw numbers and learning bible verses.

The past two weeks we have focused on the first three days of creation. We ate oreos for day one (light and dark). For day two we made a picture of cotton ball clouds and colored salt for the water. (see this post for instructions for the salt)


For day three we made salt dough mountains and valleys since the bible version we were using used these terms and Star didn't know what a valley was.

We also went to the local arboretum to look for flowers and explore the different plants there were.



While we were there we decided to explore the pond. We caught a frog, but he jumped away before we could get a good picture.


Here are some of the other activities from the week.

We sorted small, medium and large pom poms

We painted with sponges

which led to fingers

and surprisingly led to using paint brushes. I've been trying to give star differnt options while painting to inspire her creativity.
I have been saving little boxes for quite some time now, so I was finally ready to put together an activity. Star was given the boxes as follows.

And this is what she found....
Her favorite item was definitely the lock. She liked mixing up the boxes and finding other items to put in them.

We tried learning about patterns using our rubber frogs

but Star preferred to line them all up and count them

Then we sorted and "graphed" them
I am slowly learning that sometimes the best education occurs when there is less structure. A few months ago I would have been frustrated by Star not doing the activity "properly" and probably would have put it away when she started to play with them. If I had I would have missed all of the great learning and fun that followed. Plus, who wouldn't want to play more with these cute little frogs!
If you want your own cute frogs, check out your toy section in Walmart.

Star also took some time to teach Butterbean his letters. Very Cute!

This week we also drew people for the first time. Star has tried before, but this is the first time I could recognize actual parts of a person. This is a picture of me and Star.
We had a couple of surprise 80 degree days, so we got to play with our new sand and water table,
which is where we spent the rest of the week.

There was lots more, but I will leave it for your imagination. Thanks for stopping by and checking out what we did. To see what others have done click the button below.