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.

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.

Latches and Letters

In this activity Lauren was able to exercise her hand muscles, memory, and letter knowledge all at the same time. But don't tell her she was learning, she was sure it was just a lot of fun!


To play this game we used our Melissa and Doug Latches Board, six sandpaper letters, and six small letter cards.


Lauren chose a small letter card, identified the letter, and hid it behind one of the doors. She continued until all of the letters were hid.


Then I showed her a sandpaper letter and she traced the letter, identified the letter, and searched behind the doors until she found the letter. She continued until she found all of the letters. I knew this activity was a hit when she asked to play it again the next day!

Tot School Week of October 19

I had more planned this week but illness in our family made this another light week for tot school. Lauren's learning objective this week were:

Fine motor control: pouring, tracing with finger

Balancing while walking on a line

Throwing and catching a bean bag

Understand that print carries a message

Tracking print from right to left, top to bottom

Identifying letters

Ordering objects by size

Here are a few pictures of this week's work:
Lauren had fun painting pumpkins as part of our stART project.


Here she is pouring beans into a cup.


Lauren ordered five lids from smallest to largest...


and then stacked them.


She also ordered five pumpkin pictures from smallest to largest.


She enjoyed walking along a six foot long piece of rope. This took a great deal of balance.


It was even more challenging to walk the rope while holding an object. Lauren carried a bag and walked on the rope to me. Then she said, "Trick or treat" and I put a block in her bag. She liked doing this so much I thought she would never stop!


Lauren tracked the print while we sang her Lauren Song.


We also read our Halloween Pumpkins poem.


She had fun using her finger to write letters in colored salt.


After Lauren traced each of the sandpaper letters I named a letter and she held it up.


When big sister Julia spent some time writing in her journal Lauren decided to join her.


So, here she is "writing" in her journal. She worked hard making several rows of small, pink circles. I love the look of concentration on her face.


Lauren also enjoyed a scooter ride along a local nature trail.


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