Tot School: Ee is for Elephant and Eggs

Our princess is currently 26 months old.


 Our focus this week was the letter Ee.  I did something new and actually planned what I was going to do on each day.  Novel idea, I know.  Up to this point, I was just printing out a bunch of activities and doing whatever I felt like, whenever I felt like it.  This resulted in missing several activities each week or doing 5 the first day and only doing 1 on the last day.  I like the planning idea.  We ended up doing 3-4 activities a day, which was the perfect number for her attention span.

We began by making an elephant.  You can find the template on the first-school site.  She enjoyed making elephant noises as she pasted shapes in place.  I also drew the letters Ee at the top for her to trace, and she enjoyed coloring those in more than tracing.

We did this week's left-to-right tracing from 1+1+1=1's Ee printables.  She did a really great job of tracing the lines this week!

But when we moved on to the next activity (also from 1+1+1=1), I wanted her to color each object as we talked about it.  Instead, she kept drawing lines from left to right.  :)

She practiced putting the lids back on the markers.

The bottlecap activity from COAH was not a big hit this week.  After 1 letter, she decided to play with her trucks instead.

We tried again later in the week, with similar results.  She liked dumping the bottlecaps out and stuffing other objects in the jar...but she had absolutely no interest in matching the letters.  I think we will skip this activity next week and come back to it later.

 

She made an Ee page for her alphabet book this week.  This week's pictures featured Elmo, Eeyore, egg, elbow, ear, elephant, and envelope.  You can see in the picture on the left that she's making an elephant sound as she glues him in place.  :)

Her coloring page for this week was "Ee is for Elephant" from DLTK's letter E coloring pages. 

And again, you can see her making an elephant sound as she colors :)

We tried this activity from 1+1+1=1's Tot School printables.  This sheet served as a way to talk about colors, numbers, and the letter E all at the same time!  I would tell her to color a certain number of Es a certain color, and she would occasionally follow directions. 

We tried these coloring sheets from 1+1+1=1's letter E printables. She did a great job of listening to directions and coloring the eggs the colors they were labeled.

She also did this Ee egg puzzle from 1+1+1=1. This was a bit simplistic for her.

This week was our first attempt at doing any sort of sequence (from 1+1+1=1), and I did not think she would be very good at this.  She got it first try!

She colored shapes and numbers.  Shapes are definitely something we need to work on.

I attempted to let her stamp the letter "E" on her big "E".  She was not a fan of this activity.

We had a great week, and planning ahead really made it a lot more fun for both of us.  We are going to take a break from the alphabet this coming week, in order to wait for more printables from 1+1+1=1.  :)  I am looking into doing some Easter focus, so we will see how that goes!

Training the Tot: Outdoor Fun

I am attempting a lofty goal.   This week, my daughter and I began some more "Tot Training".

Our church has outdoor evening church services every summer, and last year was difficult.  The princess loved to run around during the services and play.  That's to be expected from a tot, but it can be quite distracting to those around her.  I also believe children meet the expectations that are set for them.  That's why we began training for outdoor evening services this week.  (The weather was actually warm enough to do this!!!) 

My goal is to train my daughter to be able to sit on a blanket and play quietly outdoors for 30-40 minutes, regardless of what is going on around her.  On Wednesday (our first practice session), she played with an old sensory bin for 9 minutes without attempting to get up!  I was so proud of her.  I tested her after about 7 minutes by walking away and weeding the flowerbed that was nearby.  She was interested in what I was doing but continued to sit for another 2 minutes before getting up. 

Today was session number two.  She played well for about 8 minutes before beginning to get a bit antsy.  At that point, I suggested she sort some objects by color.  She did this and ended up playing quietly on the blanket for a total of 13 minutes.  Again, I was a bit surprised and impressed.

My goal is to increase her time by 2 minutes or so each session, until we have worked up to 30-40 minutes. I know this is a lofty goal and will take a lot of discipline on my part, but I really think she can do this. We'll see! :)


Have any of you attempted similar training with your tots? What were the results?

Tot School: Dd is For Dinosaur, Doggie, Duck, and Dolphin

Our princess is currently 26 months old.

Wow...I took a lot of pictures this week.  This could be a very long post.  Here goes!

We worked on the letter D this week.  I was really excited about the new alphabet printables at 1+1+1=1, and I used a few of her ideas this week.  I also used some from COAH and DLTK. 

The following three activities are from COAH's D is for Dinosaur printables. We tried clipping clothespins to dinosaur cutouts. This did not go over very well. Her fingers just aren't strong enough for this yet. She did enjoy pulling off the clothespins I put on though.

The Dinosaur matching game was a little better.  She did well putting capital D on one side lowercase d on the other.

 

The bottlecaps were not such a big hit this week.  We only did this activity once, and she didn't even complete it that time.

She was more interested in playing with the bottlecaps and dumping them out of the jar.  She also enjoyed seeing how many clothespins she could fit into the jar.

We had an impromptu diaper-sorting by color.  That of course turned into a game of pile-everything-on-the-princess-in-the-basket...a favorite at our house.  :)

 

She really enjoyed this Doggie craft from DLTK.  I was just encouraged that she got the ears, eyes, nose, and mouth all in the correct order.  :)

 

We tried these pre-writing sheets from 1+1+1=1, and she did a pretty good job of tracing left-to-right.  She needed a lot of verbal instruction though.

Our coloring sheet this week was from DLTK's Dd is for dolphin. 

We are a week behind on our alphabet sheets, but we did the letter C this week.  My idea to paint with a carrot actually turned out pretty well!  The princess' little Buddy was here that morning, so she joined us.  Neither of the girls ate any of the paint, so I was very encouraged.  :)  I do love to watch as the girls' little personalities come forward.  Princess is a cautious, watch-and-see little girl and prefered the dip-and-swirl method of painting.  Buddy is a jump-right-in, fun-loving girl and went for the dip-and-dot method.  So cute.  :)

And finally, our "Dd" page this week featured a dolphin, dinosaur, dog, duck, Daddy, her "D" uncle, and her 5 "D" cousins. 

 This week is the letter Ee.  I just printed off some projects, and I am excited about this week!  I just love doing Tot School with my girl.  It's so much fun.