Tot School: Week of November 11

Lauren is 37 months old. Her objectives this week were:

• fine motor control: crumpling paper, gluing, using tweezers, pouring
• observing seasonal changes
• sorting pictures by season
• identifying pictures as the same or different
• putting together puzzles

Here are some of the things she did this week:

We read Corn: On and Off the Cob by Alan Fowler. I provided Lauren with an ear of Indian corn, a magnifying glass, tweezers, and a cup. Lauren could examine the corn with the magnifying glass or use the tweezers to pluck kernels. Kernel plucking was very challenging for Lauren but her five year old sister loved this tray. After a few rows of kernels were removed the plucking was much easier.

Last week Lauren cut strips of fall colored paper for one of her tot trays. This week she glued the clippings onto this Indian corn craft. I got this idea from My Montessori Journey.

Popcorn kernels were an interesting material for dry pouring. They made a very pleasing sound as they poured and it was easy for Lauren to pick up any kernels that did not pour into the cup. That cute little glass pitcher was $1 at the thrift store!

We revisited our neighbors' fruitless pear tree to see how it has changed since September.

Lauren then created a project to represent the pear tree in the fall. She crumpled red and green tissue paper squares and glued them to a construction paper tree.

The front of a greeting card made an inexpensive seasonal puzzle.

Lauren sorted pictures of summer and fall clothes. This is a free download from Montessori for Everyone.

I read the simple, non-fiction book, Scarecrows, by Lola M. Schaefer and then we did a few scarecrow activities. In this activity Lauren chose a scarecrow picture and then used the parts to recreate the scarecrow. I downloaded this from Kidssoup.

Here is another fun activity that I printed from Kidssoup. Lauren needed to pay close attention to detail to find the matching scarecrows.

This is another Kidssoup download. She matched to leaf to the leaf's shape.

She used our turkey stamp with the playdough.

For more Tot School fun visit 1+1+1=1.

Tot School: Week of November 2

I was thrilled to see that the leaves had finally started changing colors around here. Yippee, we can finally do some fall themed activities! But then the weather turned quite warm, with high temperature reaching into the 80s. Somehow talking about cool fall weather just didn't make sense. So, I set aside most of what I had planned and we spent a lot of time playing outside and even snuck in an awesome trip to the zoo. Even so, Lauren enjoyed her tot trays and a few mommy directed activities.

Her objectives this week were:

• Fine motor control: using tongs, squeezing a sponge, cutting, pin pushing, stamping, manipulating playdough
• Counting up to six objects
• Sorting objects and pictures by color and shape
• Identifying opposites
• Identifying letters
• Examining leaves and acorns

Here's a peek at her week:

Tot Trays
Transferring acorns with tongs,

transferring water with a sponge (this was a huge hit),

Lauren picked up a rock on one of our walks so I set up a rock cleaning tot tray.

cutting strips of fall colored construction paper,

stamping letters into orange playdough,


pin pushing an outline of a leaf (This is another great activity from My Montessori Journey. Unfortunately Lauren didn't enjoy it very much.),



examining leaves and acorns with a magnifying glass,

sorting buttons,

and sorting pictures by shape.




Mommy Directed Activities

Lauren had a great time collecting acorns.

We played our squirrel grid game (click here to read about this and download the materials)

Lauren had fun with M&M math.

We read Tana Hoban's Exactly the Opposite and then matched opposite pictures.



For more Tot School fun visit 1+1+1=1.

Squirrel Grid Game

**I have fixed the link to the squirrel grid. My apologies for the error.**

Lauren enjoyed feeding the squirrels as we played our newest grid game. For this game I made acorn counting cards and a grid of twenty squirrels. Real acorns made fun counters but feel free to use any small counters that you have available.

Download the squirrel grid
Download the acorn counting cards

To learn more about grid games check out my explanation of grid games and Teach Mama's additional insights.

M&M Fun

What do you do with that bag of M&Ms left over from Halloween?

Sort them,

graph them,

and play this great game from Making Learning Fun.

stART- It's Pumpkin Time

Michelle at A Mommy's Adventures has a great weekly feature called stART. She reads a book to her little girl and then they do an art project. I've enjoyed seeing the great projects that other bloggers have done with their kids so I thought I would join in this week.

For our story we read It's Pumpkin Time by Zoe Hall and Shari Halpern. This simple story chronicles the growth of a pumpkin. The simple, bold illustrations inspired our project this week.

We copied the style of the illustrator to make these pumpkin vine mobiles.

We began by tracing pumpkin shapes on white construction paper. We used the medium sized pumpkin from Preschool Express' pumpkin patterns.

The girls painted the pumpkins orange.

Then they used a little red or yellow paint to add dimension to the pumpkins.

I love the different colors of the pumpkins!

To make the vine, the girls painted a paper plate green and then added a little yellow paint. They also cut out and painted leaves.

We cut the plate into a spiral.

We used curling ribbon to attach the pumpkins to the vine and hung them from the ceiling fan.

To see what others have done for stART visit A Mommy's Adventures.

Halloween Writing Center

We have some fun new Halloween themed additions to our writing center.

The girls and I had fun making these glittery cards. We glued some white paper inside each card for the girls to write on.

I used Microsoft clip art to make these. The girls can use them to make cards for their friends or they can write a short story inside. Download the cards here.

We have several sheets of Halloween words bound together in sheet protectors.

Here is a sample of what is inside our Halloween words book. I purchased these words from kinderreaders.com.

The writing station also has our usual materials: journals, blank books, story paper, pads of paper, and various writing and drawing tools. The addition of a few new, interesting materials always renews the girls interest in using the writing station.

Halloween Pumpkins Poem Chart

The newest addition to our poem chart collection features simple text with strong picture/text match. The text is easy for my three year old to follow as she practices following text from left to right and top to bottom. This poem can also be used to emphasize descriptive words and opposites.

Download a copy of this poem here.

Pumpkin Path Game

I have recently introduced three year old Lauren to simple path games. I keep the paths short (10-12 spaces) and straight to make it easy for her to follow. She plays these games with a homemade die with 1-3 dots. As she plays she is developing the concepts of left-to-right movement, one-to-one correspondence, and equivalent sets.


The pumpkin path game is played with a game board, a die, and a small pumpkin decoration (I bought a bag of six at Hobby Lobby).

To make the game board I taped together two 4 1/2 x 12 pieces of tan construction paper, glued a clip art scarecrow to the right side of the construction paper, and used yellow sticky dots to create a path leading to the scarecrow.

Each player needs a game board and a pumpkin. A player rolls the die, counts the dots, and moves the pumpkin the correct number of spaces. Play continues until the pumpkin reaches the scarecrow.

For more information about path games check out Sally Moomaw and Brenda Hieronums' excellent resource, More Than Counting.

Halloween Countdown

We've been counting the days until trick-or-treat with our Halloween countdown. Each day the girls color one pumpkin and count how many pumpkins are left. Julia writes the number on a small Post-It note and we read the sentence together. Countdowns provide a fun reason to practice left to right movement, counting, and writing numbers.