Tot School- Farms Week 1

This week for Tot School we began learning about farms.  I thought this would be a fun tine to do this, as we will be going to a farm to get our pumpkins.

We read many books during the week.  I had collected books from the library the previous week, so we were all set.  Some of the books we read included:

• Big Red Barn by Margaret Wise Brown
• Little Scholastic Petting Farm
• Biscuit's Day at the Farm by Alyssa Satin Capucilli
• Tractors by Connor Dayton
• Peek-a-Moo! by Marie Torres Cimarusti (This is Little Guy's favorite!)
• A Visit to the Farm by B.A. Hoena
• My Farm Friends by Wendell Minor

We started a new sensory bin this week.  Little Guy helped me get the materials from the grocery store, then I set it up during nap time.  The bin had dried split peas, dried split yellow peas, and dried black beans.  I added some Habba wooden farm animals, and our farm sensory bin was all set.  I also added the letters to spell farm to two sides of the bin to start practicing those letters (I added them later in the week).

Our farm sensory bin.

Woah, checking it out.

As great as I thought the sensory bin with the wooden figures was, Little Guy enjoyed it more with some measuring cups to scoop and pour.

I like the measuring cups!

 It got even better when he mixed all the materials up!

Mix, mix, mix!

Little Guy also had some practice with a life skill.  We have been working on sweeping up the materials that spill.  He is getting better each time.

Sweeping them into a little pile.

Pushing them into the dustpan.

This week I printed out some materials that I have found through Pinterest. (Visit my farm themed Pinterest board here.)  One thing we used is from the Tot Book pack from the blog 1+1+1=1.  I used the activities that I thought were best suited to Little Guy.

Little Guy's farm Tot Pack.

The tractor sequencing was a great skill.  We have been talking about big and little lately, so this was a great extension.  I started with three tractors, then after he seemed to know what to do, we added in the last two, for a total of five tractors.

Carefully considering which is the smallest tractor.

Putting them in order.

Matching heads and tails was another great activity.  This proved to be challenging for Little Guy, but he was able to do it with support.

Putting the cow together.

We have not  used the animal matching yet.  He has colored one page in the little coloring book.  This will be a great color review, and we will continue to use these activities next week.

An activity that I thought would be great fun was Sticky Sheep from Two-Daloo.  I traced a sheep outline onto clear contact paper, added an S, and set out a box of white pom-poms.  I thought that Little Guy would enjoy adding the pom-poms to the contact paper.  Not so much.  He enjoyed sticking his hand to the paper, and after being up for 4 days, we now have 3 cotton balls stuck on the sheep (we found the cotton balls stuck better than the pop-poms).

The best use of this project was when Little Guy spilled his pom-poms and got more practice sweeping.

Making a little pile.

One last activity we did this week was a discovery bottle.  I used some of the materials from our sensory bin and put them in a water bottle along with the foam letters F, A, R, and M.  Little Guy seemed to enjoy shaking the bottle!

Using his big muscles to shake!

I see the letters!

This was a fun first week of learning about farms.  We will continue this theme next week.

What farm activities have you done?

We linked up to No Time for Flash Cards Kids Activities Linky Party!

We linked up to the Tot School Gathering Place at 1+1+1=1 (I was featured from last week!).

Little Guy's Color Book

During our 5 week unit on colors, Little Guy made a page for each color.  His pages included:

• red apple
• orange fish
• yellow giraffe
• green turtle
• blue bird
• purple snail
• black and white zebra
• brown bear
• rainbow

I punched holes in the pages and put them into a small 3-ring binder.   I made a simple cover and Voila!  Little Guy had his very own color book!

The cover of Little Guy's book.

Checking out his new book!

Look at that smile!

I think the book is a hit!

How does your little one enjoy their artwork?

Our Favorite Color Books

We have done a lot of reading over the last month about the different colors.  Here are some of the books that we have enjoyed!  These are the books that Little Guy pulled out over and over to read again and again and again.

The series of pop-up books by David. A. Carter was by far Little Guy's favorite books.  We spent hours reading and re-reading the books, taking time to look for the different things hidden on each page.  If you haven't seen the books before, you have to check them out!  The books include:

• One Red Dot
• Blue 2
• 600 Black Spots
• Yellow Square
• White Noise

We also really enjoyed two books by Eric Carle: Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See and 10 Little Rubber Ducks.  The version of Brown Bear that we have is a slide and find, where there is a little tab that you slide to see that the animal sees.  It is fun, and makes the book more interactive. At the end of 10 Little Rubber Ducks, there is a button to push to make the rubber duck squeak.  Little Guy loved that button!

Little Guy really enjoyed Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss.  I think he  really liked saying "Sam I am!"  An additional bonus is hearing all the rhyming words, which is a very important early literacy skill.

Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes was another big hit.  It was especially fun to watch this YouTube video and sing along.

This list wouldn't be complete without Blue Hat, Green Hat by Sandra Boynton.  Little Guy especially loved reading the "oops" pages.

A great find from the library was Colors by Heidi Goennel.  There are wonderful descriptions of the different colors in this book.

What are your favorite books about colors?

Tot School: Learning Our Colors- Rainbow Wrap Up

This is our fifth and final week of our Learning Our Colors series.  This week we are wrapping up our unit with a week about rainbows.  We have previously learned about red and orange, blue and purple, yellow and green, and black, white, and brown.  We have enjoyed this unit and hope you have, too!

This week we reread many of the color books that we we had read over the last few weeks.  Little Guy really enjoyed having a big tub of books to choose from.  One new book was Colors by Heidi Goennel.

A fine motor activity we worked on was a button snake, from Happy Hooligans.  I sewed a button on the end of a ribbon and cut squares out of felt with a slit in the middle.  Little Guy had to "button" the felt onto the ribbon.  He really enjoyed this activity!

Putting on the first piece of felt.

Adding some more.

All done!

We also did several sorting activities.  The first one we did was sorting M&M's onto trees.  I cut out trees in red, orange, yellow, green, and blue (I omitted the brown M&M's).  Little Guy got a little cup of mini M&M's that he had to sort by putting them onto the correct tree.  At the end, he chose two colors of M&M's to eat.  What a sweet reward!

Sorting is hard work.

All done!  Can I eat them now?

We also sorted colored Goldfish crackers, inspired by this blog.  I cut four "bowls" for the goldfish out of red, green, orange, and yellow paper.  Little Guy had to sort his goldfish into the bowls before he could eat his snack.  This was not as motivating as the M&M's (since goldfish appear at our house more often), so he quickly tired of this activity.

Working on the goldfish sort.

Can I eat this one?

Our book page for this week was a rainbow.  We worked on one color each day, except for the last day when we did both the blue and purple stripes.  Little Guy really liked adding the cotton balls for clouds.

Our rainbow book page.

This has been a really fun unit to work on.  It was a great way to start off our Tot School.  I hope you enjoyed reading about our activities.  Our next unit is a farm unit!  Stay tuned!

We linked up to No Time for Flash Cards Link and Learn.
We linked up to 1+1+1=1 Tot School Gathering Place!