Tot School- Snow!

Last week we were back in full swing with Tot School!  It was nice to be back and have things return to normal.  I think that Little Guy enjoyed getting back to work, too!  Little Guy is 30 months old.

We did make one change to Tot School this week.  I tried to start our work times by reading with Little Guy first.  This gave us some great snuggle time before work started.  I'm hoping that this will help him to work a little more independently.

The first tray was play dough.  I made a new batch of white play dough and printed out this snowman mat from Gift of Curiosity.  I was surprised at how much he enjoyed this!  We got out several of his play dough tools also, but working on the mat seemed to inspire him and he had a great time with the play dough (not to mention that I love when he works with play dough, as it is so great for the muscles in his hands).

Imprinting a triangle nose.

In his next tray, we had to put his new tweezers to work.  There were six pom-poms in 3 different sizes.  Using the tweezers, he had to sort the pom-poms into the labeled cupcake tray.  This was a great introduction to the tweezers, and there were few enough pom-poms that he did not get frustrated if they were hard to pick up.

The next might have been his favorite, inspired by Moms have Questions Too.  I drew simple snowflakes onto blue paper.  Little Guy then had to put glue on the lines, and together we would sprinkle glitter on the glue.  We worked on these several times over the week.  After we finished them, we turned them into thank you cards.  Little Guy dictated a sentence to me  ("Thank you for the...") which I wrote on the back.  He then "signed" his name (drew squiggles) and they were ready to be mailed as thank you cards!

First put on the glue.

Then sprinkle the glitter.

All done!

The next tray put another Christmas gift to work.  I traced some of the pattern blocks to make a snowflake, then Little Guy's task was to put the correct pattern blocks onto the sheet.  He did a great job with matching them up (for some reason I was surprised at how well he did) and seemed so proud of himself when he was done!

This block goes here.

Look at my snowflake!

The next tray was reading and coloring the book "My Winter Things" by Kirstylee Moody at Moms Have Questions Too.  This is a simple pattern book, and Little Guy quickly picked up the pattern.  As he was coloring, he would say the first part of the page and wanted me to complete the sentences!

I am busy reading!

The next activity was a name discovery jar.  I put the magnetic letters for his name into an old peanut butter jar along with some of our blue rice.  He had to shake the jar to find the letters in his name.  This was a nice short activity, as it lasted as long or as little as he wanted it to last.

What letter is that?

The next tray was one-to-one correspondence with snowflakes.  Little Guy had to place a foam snowflake on each white snowflake (this sheet is from the winter pack at Gift of Curiosity).  He is getting better and better at making sure he covers each item.

We have continued to practice patterning, although it is still a little advanced for Little Guy.  In this activity from the winter pack at Gift of Curiosity, he had to simple copy the pattern from above.  He was successful with this activity.

Working on my pattern.

The last tray was to make "shape-men" from the winter pack at This Reading Mama.  First Little Guy had to sort the shapes onto the correct sheet.  Then he had to place them in order from largest to smallest to make a snowman.  This was a great way to practice the names of the shapes and to talk about sizes.

This is a circle snowman!

Stay tuned for more snow activities next week!  What are you working on?

We linked up to the Tot School Gathering Place at 1+1+1=1!