Tot School Winter Theme part 1

Luv Bug is 33 months old

We started our winter theme this week. I planned on 4 weeks but, because I found so many fun ideas, we may take longer. We had alot of fun this week so this post is going to have quite a few pictures.

 I put out 6 trays this week:

 I found these alphabet stickers in the dollar spot at Target. We used the lowercase stickers with these ABC stamping sheets that I purchased from this package at TPT. The unit was $6.00 but included 94 pages of printables. Many were too advanced for Luv Bug, so I put them away for homeschooling. We pretended the stickers were snowballs. The idea was to "'throw a snowball"  to the snowman with the matching capital letter. I put this on a tray because I figured Luv Bug would just do a few before she moved on and would take several days to complete. She LOVED this. It was the first tray she picked and she worked hard until it was finished. I forgot to take a picture of the stamping pages before, but her are a few of them in action:

 I bought this Animal Matching Game last year and Luv Bug's always enjoyed it. She's a pro at it now, so after she matched them, she found other ways to play with them.

 We just bought this pattern block set, so I thought it would be a challenge for Luv Bug. I underestimated this girls love of puzzles. She had no problem with the card I chose. Next time I'll put out one that leaves some of the lines out.

 I saw this idea for a "button snake" here. I thought it was such a cute idea and it was so simple to make. I've set this out before but Luv Bug was never really a fan. This was the first time she was able to do this herself, but after buttoning 5 or 6 she had enough and didn't return to it again.

I bought this Mind Challenge game at the Dollar Tree. I've been looking for one for awhile since I saw a similar idea here. Luv Bug saw me put this tray together last Sunday evening and, while I was putting the others together, took it down and figured out what to do. She loked it alot and asked for it throughout the week. She would put the tees in the holes, then balance a marble on each one. Since I bought this as the dollar store, the tees fit rather tightly into the holes so she has to work her muscles a little harder getting them in and out.

I finally made a set of these magnetic pompoms. I first saw them at 1+1+1=1, but I've seen them on other blogs too. At first I just set them out on their own but later added a fun sheet.

The penguin magnet page was from Making Learning Fun.

Luv Bug discoverd if she poked at the edge of a pom-pom (think Tiddlywinks), it would jump then land on the magnet. She had so much fun repeating this over and over (ok, I did too) .

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I wish I knew how to put together my own printables, but I am not very tech saavy so I'm thankful for those who are willing to share (even for a small charge) their creations:

I printed this mini book awhile ago. I know that it's from here, but I can't find it to link to the post.

 Luv Bug loves the Tot Time Notebook that Carisa over at 1+1+1=1 created.

 Another one of Carisa's printables. I don't really believe in "teaching" Luv Bug at this age. I expose her to certain things that I think may be fun and if she shows an interest or asks I'll answer her. I would have never printed this for her yet but, the other day she was looking at a potty reward chart with seven rows that were numbered 1-10. Because she has a calendar in her room, she could already count to 31, but always had the numbers to look at. Well, the other day, she started counting on the chart. I figured once she counted to 10 in the first row she start over with 1-10 in the second row. Instead she kept going until she got to 39! I was shocked because I've never counted that high with her before. She asked what came next, so I told her, "40". After a minute, she counted 41, 42, 43....by herself. She figured out that after every 10, you add the 1-9 as you count higher. She kept going only to stop and ask me the name in each 10's column. I printed off this 100' s board and figured we'd color 1 number each day and count to that number. Well, Luv Bug wanted to keep counting and has now taught herself to count to 100!

Another from 1+1+1=1,  great for visual discrimination as are the ones below

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I made Luv Bug a winter sensory bin, which she played with alot.

 Lots of blue and white pom poms, snowflakes, winter table scatter, fake mini candles, and some winter themed toys. Most everything came from either the Dollar Tree or Target's dollar spot.

I gave her these little jars and bucket along with my penguin ice cream scoop.

 She played with this alot and added other toys too. This is probably my favorite. She got out her animals from her Fisher Price Alphabet Learning Zoo. (This is a hard toy to find other than on the FP website, unless you want to spend way more) She put one of the little candles in the middle of her animals and told me that they needed to get warm by the fire. 


Another day, I set out some batting and some of the items from her bin. I added an aluminum foil skating pond.

 She played with it a bit but was unimpressed with the pond. That was tossed aside almost immedietly.
I arranged some of the batting to look like an igloo. Luv Bug added a 'fire' and as shown below a polar bear. She said he was warming up in his "dent":)

 Her favorite part of the bin was playing with the candles "fire". She carried them everywhere. Here her Toy Story Busy Book figurines were cold and needed to warm up. (We love the Busy Books. Luv Bug has several of them that she plays with daily.)

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We read several books about winter this week. Here are a few:

This book is so cute. It includes two games (memory matching and bingo)

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 Here are a few random fun pictures that I couldn't resist adding.

 I just thought this was too cute!

 Luv Bug paints at her easel often. She usually starts off like this, and then ends up like this:

 But this is a new one:

Silly girl.

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We did a few other things to, but I didn't get pictures of them. We're having fun with this winter theme. I was going to do 'snow' next, but, because we have quite a few polar bear books that will need to be returned to the library the following week, we'll be learning about polar bears. Lot's of fun things.

Tot School- kinda

Luv Bug is 33 Months old

Because we were away on vacation part of the week, we didn't do too much Tot School wise. But, since Daddy was home, we had some away from home fun. I kept out her trays from last week and Luv Bug played with them a little bit, but mostly we just relaxed and enjoyed having her Daddy home all week.

Here are a few pictures from our week:

 Luv Bug's first time bowling. She loved it - for about 3 frames, then refused to do any more.  I took her back to my mom's house and she was asleep almost as soon as I put her down.

 We went to this little zoo not to far away. It took only about an hour to go through (including a stop at their playground). Perfect for a 2 year old.  We got to see the penguins feed just before we left.

 They knew it was time to eat and they all came up to the fence and waited. They were super cute, but Luv Bug asked to go home. Again, she was asleep almost immediately. (Turned out, the poor kid's 2 year molars were coming through)

 This is a daily site at our house. She will sit and look at books for so long. I'd say this is probably her favorite activity.

 That and throwing them in a big pile :)

This just made me laugh. She has SO many stuffed animals, I had to find a way to store them. I found this bean bag for them at One Step Ahead. It was a bit pricey, but so worth it. It holds tons of stuffed animals and she can easily get to the ones she wants.

 Luv Bug loves puzzles. This was a great Dollar Tree find.

 In a previous post, I mentioned that Luv Bug seems to just look at a puzzle piece and know where it goes. Since then, I've been carefully watching how she puts them together. This made me laugh. See how she flipped the puzzle upside down on the table. She just took them off in order and put them right back on. Another time, she took them off one at a time, stacked them (in order) and put them on again.

We haven't had this out in such a long time. She loved having it out on her little table.

Right before bed. Tired out from a long, fun week.
Next week we'll be starting our 4-week-long winter theme so we'll be back into the swing of things.

Tot School (LETTER I)

  Luv Bug is 33 months old

 

We had a very short week since Daddy needed to use some floating holidays (or lose them) by the end of the year. We decided to go on a little vacation and visit some family and friends.

Since it was such a short (busy) week, I only put together 3 trays:

These Farm Beads are hit or miss with Luv Bug. Sometimes she will sit and do these several times. This time she was just happy to line them up while we sang Old MacDonald.

While she was doing this, I had the idea to add these to her unit blocks, but we ran out of time.

Spooning marbles into an ice cube tray with a melon baller.

Sorry for the blurry picture, it looked normal on my camera. This is a favorite of Luv Bug. Whenever I put this out, it's usually the first tray she chooses.

Sorting Insect Erasers with plastic tweezers. She sorted about 9 of the erasers, then decided they needed to "live together" and proceeded to dump them all in the same compartment. Silly Girl!

 I did manage to get a picture of her sorting  them.

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Our theme this week was letter I. We used a few printables from Confession of a Homeschooler's Letter of the Week alphabet activities. She has several for each letter but since Luv Bug is so young, I only print a few. 

 Inch worm size sorting. Luv Bug is getting the hang of this, but needed a little help. I set a few in place and had her fill in the rest. She had more fun making them talk with one another.

Matching numbers on inch worms to number of holes on leaves. Luv Bug did this easily by herself. I think she's going to be good at math like her daddy. She loves puzzles and counting games.  

 Dot painting letter I. She does really well with these, but recently, once she finishes stamping each circle, she goes back and makes sure there is no white in any of them.

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She asked to play with shaving cream. We did this a few weeks ago and it was a HUGE hit. This time we added some paints and she had the best time mixing them. I wanted to make prints, but completely forgot until it was all cleaned up.

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Just some random things Luv Bug did this week:

This is a common sight in our home. Luv Bug LOVES books. (This is the smaller of her bookshelves). She will sit and "read" for quite awhile. She's now into either repeating what she's heard read to her or making up her own dialogue (sp?) I love to just sit and listen.

While I was organizing our supplies, Luv Bug found our seahells. When I finished, she proudly showed me what she had done. Such concentration!

Although it was a short week, we had alot of fun. Next week will also be short since we'll still be away the first half (this post is being scheduled). We'll probably continue with the same theme when we return.