Tot School: Week of December 7

Lauren is 38 months. Illness interrupted our tot school routine but we were able to get a few things done.

I want to include more literacy activities in our tot school so this week I suggested that Lauren and I draw a picture and write a story. Lauren didn't want to draw but she was very excited to write her own story. As you can see in the picture she drew squiggly lines across her paper. I was happy to see that she wrote from left to right, top to bottom.


Lauren then read her story to me. I regret that I did not write down what she said!

Lauren wrote letters in colored salt.

We worked on the alphabet puzzle.

Lauren loves to sort by color so she decided the sort the letters.

After reading Clifford's First Christmas we played this activity from Making Learning Fun. We took turns hiding Clifford under a stocking. This activity provided a fun way to practice reading family members' names.


Lauren got lots of counting practice. Here she is creating counting cards. I gave her an index card, told her a number, and she placed the correct number of dots on the card.

She then used the counting cards with our Christmas tree counting activity.

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

Tot School: Week of November 30

Lauren is 38 months old. Lauren worked on the following skills this week:

• recognizing letters
• functions of print: following a recipe
• fine motor control: manipulating playdough and buttons, using tongs
• ordering objects by size
• recognizing shapes
• sorting objects by color and size
• extending and creating patterns
• counting up to six objects

Here are a few of her activities this week:

Lauren helped me make green playdough.

She used cookie cutters to make playdough trees and then decorated them with buttons.

She matched shapes on this wreath from First School.

Lauren used tongs to sort pom poms. The pom poms can be sorted by color or size.

She ordered felt Christmas trees by size.

Lauren sorted small present ornaments by color.

I created a pattern with the presents and Lauren extended the pattern.

Then Lauren surprised me by creating her own pattern with three colors!

We played our Christmas tree grid game.

Lauren has been enjoying typing on the computer. I select a large font, Lauren chooses the font color, and then she types letters.

For more Totschool fun visit 1+1+1=1.

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.

Tot School: Week of October 26

Lauren is 36 weeks old. Her objectives for this week were:

fine motor control: squeezing an eyedropper, using playdough, stringing beads, lacing, spooning, painting

gross motor control: balancing while walking on a line, throwing a bean bag

recognizing and identifying letters (A,C,L,O,P)

counting up to six objects

identifying shapes

matching identical pictures

creative expression: painting, sculpting playdough

reciting songs and poems

Tot Trays
For Tot Trays this week I followed Karen at Monkeyin' Around's idea and set the activities at each of the chairs of our kitchen table. Lauren moved around the table doing the activities that she wanted to do. This worked out really well! One day my older daughter, Julia, joined us for Tot Trays so you will see a few pictures of her.


Painting with fall colors was a fun activity. An ice cube tray makes a nice paint tray. When Tot School was over I covered the tray with foil and put it away until the next day.


Orange playdough with rolling pins and pumpkin cookie cutters are always a hit.


I bought this puzzle at Target's dollar spot. She loved this tray and chose it everyday.


Stamping pumpkins with orange ink was only slightly interesting to Lauren. Later in the week I put the stamp on the playdough tray and Lauren made impressions in the playdough.


For this activity she used a spoon to transfer orange and green pom poms into a pumpkin ice tray.


The idea behind this tray is to push the chenille sticks through the holes in the salt shaker and then put the beads on the chenille sticks. I got this idea from My Montessori Journey.


Julia enjoyed pushing the sticks through the holes but did not want to add the beads.


On the other hand, Lauren loved stringing the beads onto the sticks but did not want to push the sticks into the shaker. Either way, each girl enjoyed this tray and had some practice using that all important pincer grasp.


This was a fun activity. Lauren chose a small pumpkin card and then used the magnetic facial features to recreate the pumpkin. I downloaded this from kidssoup.com. Kidssoup is a subscription site that I have used frequently this past year.


For this tray Lauren paired the matching pumpkins. Later in the week I added three more pumpkins so she could match six. The pumpkins are very similar so she needed to look closely to make sure they matched. This was another Kidssoup download.


Mommy Directed Activities
She really enjoyed playing Latches and Letters. Here is a post that explains what we did.


We sang this rebus shape song to the tune of Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes. I printed this chart from the Mailbox Magazine online companion a couple of years ago when I subscribed to the magazine.

Lauren practiced counting to six during this activity. She rolled the die, counted the dots, and then placed the correct number of little gourds on the mat.

She laced a paper pumpkin. She has lots of experience with lacing cards but usually she laces haphazardly. This was the first time I showed her how to lace around the card.

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