Tot School - The Letter P

I decided to take the next few weeks off from letters in order to focus on Christmas!! I have LOTS of fun Christmasy type things planned and I'll still link up to TS to share some of what we've done each week.

So, onto Pp, our last letter of the year! There are sooo many things you can do with P, and narrowing down our topics was tough. We started off making our usual letter crafts...






Art & Music:
We made a purple P with pink polka-dots and a puzzle P. (say that 5 times fast!)

We went to a couple of Christmas parties this week and James made some crafts.

We listened to lots of piano music. Oh how I wish I had my piano here - I used to teach lessons and I would love to be able to teach my own child how to play!

Letters & Numbers:
We read In The Pond, by Anna Milbourne and our P book from the AlphaTales series.

James worked on the P drawer from our alphabet box (pumpkin, piano, penny, pig, penguin, present, paperclip). He loves these drawers!!

James did lots and lots of counting this week. This kid is crazy about numbers and is working hard to count to 30. Let me clarify that we aren't drilling the numbers into him - he is just SO curious about them and wants us to count with him all the time. We counted the ornaments on the tree (96!), we counted toes and fingers, we counted pinecones... the list goes on. I hope his love of numbers stays with him throughout his life!

Science & Nature:
I'm planning on spending a week or two on space & astronomy in the future, so we didn't focus a whole lot on planets this week. We did, however, revisit the huge planet mural we made in September.

The moon. It has just finished its lunar cycle and oh my word has it been a hot topic with James. Every night he wants to go out and see the moon. I took this shot of the moon at my photography class this week. James liked the real thing better. ;)

Practical Life:
Pouring peas.

Making mini pizzas! James thought this was the BEST. He enjoyed taste-testing many of the ingredients and then took to blowing cool the pizza when it was finished. :)

Lacing green and red pasta.

Open and close activity was a big hit this week. I put a smooth pebble in each box for an added surprise. :)

Other activities:
We explored a pomegranate. Such a yummy fruit! Such a pain to peel! James pigged out on the juicy seed pockets. (btw, can you tell this pic was taken with an SLR? SO much cleaner than a point & shoot!)

James decorated his little Christmas tree. I put several tiny ornaments in a box and throughout the week he'd take them off the tree and put them back on again.

We played with the peppermint scented playdough I made this week. James couldn't stop smelling the dough and got such a kick out of the Christmas themed cookie cutters! His favorite was the star - he kept singing, Twinkle Twinkle. :)

These gift boxes were a learning tool in disguise! I bought them because I needed the large box, but James got a hold of them and I found him doing this. There were 4 small boxes nested inside of the larger box. Also, each box had its own pattern with a matching cover - a built in control of error!






Finally, we hunted high and low for some pink items. I was surprised we came up with as much as we did!

Click on the button to the left to see what others are doing with their children!