Schooltime

This is a Tot School/Montessori Monday mish-mash kind of post. What can I say, I'm feeling lazy about separating them out this week. :)

We've spent the last 2 weeks taking it easy and having fun with all the V-day activities I created earlier in the month. I suppose I went a little overboard because we still have a week's worth of trays to work with!

Practical Life:James' favorites last week. He especially enjoyed the felt rosebuds I made! Hooray! ::Click here for more information about these activities.

I made some homemade meatballs and sauce on Valentine's Day (both of my guys l-o-v-e Italian food). James helped me prep the meatballs. :)

In this pic James is using the smallest cube from the pink tower to check his work. Once the tower is aligned on one side, the smallest cube should just fit along the open rim of the opposite side. I showed him how to do this quite a while ago and this is first time I've seen him do it on his own accord.

Sensory:
The heart size sequencing activity was thisclose from being a total flop. After completing it once he set it back on the shelve never to be touched again. In the upper second pic, James decided Grover should join in on the fun. :) ::Click here and here for more information on these activities.

Letters:
Unlike every other time, James was more interested in playing with the letter objects than matching them with the correct letter. He did match them, but only once. :) And I wished I had printed more pages for the letter-heart-stamper activity; he finished it in no time. ::Click here for more information on these activities.

Math & Misc:
All of these activities went over extremely well. The top left activity I do not have posted anywhere as i came up with it at the spur of the moment. Easy and fun, it's stamping hearts onto pink paper. :) James continues to amaze me with his math skills - the quantifying activity was a breeze for him. ::Click here for more information on these activities.

And if you're not tired of clicking, check out the buttons below to see what other mamas are doing with their children!

Tot School - The Letter M

We hung out with the letter M this week - here's what we did:Art & Music:

We made a mosaic M and painted an M using marbles. James threw me for a loop on both of these projects. I wasn't expecting him to stay focused on putting the little squares of paper on the mosaic grid, yet he did. And then I thought he'd love the marble painting, but nope - he only wanted to play with the marbles. :)

We checked out an art exhibit featuring various masks - it was really neat!

James and I rocked out with his big box of music instruments. Here he is shaking the maracas on his head. Such a funny little guy; always making me laugh!

Letters & Numbers:
One day James asked me to write numbers on sheets of paper so he could jump on them. :) Seriously, he came up with this "game" all on his own. I was so impressed! He jumped around *shouting* out each number as he landed on it.

I had prepared a mitten number sequencing activity, but James though he'd use them to practice his tearing skills instead. :(

We read the Alphatales book, Monkey's Miserable Monday, as well as On The Moon, by Anna Milbourne, and Magic Thinks Big, by Elisha Cooper (such a cute read - cat lovers will appreciate this book).

James spent a lot of time with the M drawer from our alphabet box. The objects are: millipede, monkey, milk, mouse, and moose.

Also on the shelves were the Melissa & Doug See & Spell puzzles. LOVE these.

Science & Nature:
I pulled out our space flashcards and found several that begin with the letter M: Moon, Mars, Mercury, Meteor, and Milky Way. These cards are awesome - very real looking and on the back there are lots of facts about each photo. James would turn the cards over and pretend to read. :)

Geography:
James can find and name a good handful of the US states, so we added to this by finding all the M states: Mississippi, Missouri, Michigan, Montana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, and, our favorite, Minnesota. :)

Of course I had to do a little something extra for my home state, so we read this awesome book: V is for Viking, A Minnesota Alphabet. This book is part of a series that has a book for each US state. While hunting for this link for where to purchase this series, I ran across this site too - it looks to be an amazing resource for anyone teaching older children about the US.

Other activities:
James really enjoyed his M themed muffin tin meal which included: melon, milk, marshmallow, meat, macaroni & mango.

This winter playscene was a big hit - James played with it nearly every day!

These pattern blocks are really fun!

I made a "mommy puzzle" for James to put together. He really liked this and on more than one occasion I found him carrying around my smile. :) Such a sweetie!

Of course we did lots of Montessori activities, too - we had a lesson on magnetic vs. non-magnetic items, James poured macaroni, spooned Mung beans, and helped me make muffins. These activities, as well as several others, can be found in tomorrow's Montessori Monday post.

I'll be holding off on letters for the next couple of weeks while we focus on Valentines! Yay for hearts and all things red and pink!

Visit Carisa's blog to see what others are doing with their children.

Tot School - The Letter N

~James is 34 months~

Art & Music:
James had a blast making our N craft, and kept saying: "Numbers begin with N!"

We jumped, waddled, twirled and danced at Kindermusik this week. We also listened to Native American music. We've had this CD in our collection for a while now - I love it and listen to it whenever I want/need to relax. :)

Letters & Numbers:
As always, we read lots of books, but read our Alphatales N book, The Nicest Newt several times this week. We also received this month's Animal Babies magazine and I was excited to see this N is for nuthatch flashcard on the back!

Thanks to Susan, I found out about this awesome site, Making Learning Fun, that has loads of free print outs. The N is for nest and N is for nine pages fit right into our theme. James used flat marbles to cover each dot. Excellent fine motor activity.


Once in a blue you'll find a good deal in Bermuda and such was the case when I stumbled upon a set of number and letter playdoh molds. James spent sooo much time playing with these this week!



I'm pretty pleased about this activity. It's all homemade (including the little drawstring bag!) and entirely thought up by yours truly! Hooray for original ideas! :) I posted about the cute little Le Hoots here.
I created this with the intent of it being a quantifying activity, which has proven to be just the right amount of challenging for James. Well. He blew me away when he began adding and subtracting the owls!! He set all four owls on the branches, placed the number 4 counter beside the tree, then proceeded to say, "4 owls take away 1 owl, now 3 owls!" and he continued on this way until there were no owls left on the tree. Then went the other direction and added them individually back onto the tree. I literally sat there with my jaw open the entire time, not making a peep out of fear of distracting his train of thought. Maybe a lot of 2 year olds do this, but I was just shocked and, of course, very proud!!

Science & Nature:
Lots of outdoor fun was had this week since it was the first week in oh, say, SIX where it hasn't rained every.single.day.

Saturday was a mommy day (knitting class, then hair appt.), so my boys spent the whole day together. They were seaside by 845am! James kicked the soccer ball around the beach and up on the dunes and later they went to the playground. These chickens aren't chicken at all - they'll come right up to you to pose for a photo op.

We went for our usual nature walk and found lots of pretty treasures in our yard and on the beach. That glass bottle we found washed up on the shore and the giant pods are from our tree.

We also counted all the nests around our house. Clearly the birds have declared our house the Hilton For Birds because we counted 6 nests!!





I was inspired by this post and decided to make a nest of our own. James had LOTS of fun doing this. (You'll see in the 4th picture the nest is still drying in the bowl.) I'm noticing more and more each day that James' attention span and ability to focus is increasing. It's great because we can actually get into our projects now.

I was tempted to do a little lesson on Neptune, but decided to hold off for our big space/solar system theme we'll be doing in the spring.

How many of you have heard of a narwhal? I didn't know about it until a few years ago. It's not one of those creatures you hear about too often. But it IS one of the coolest creatures God made!! I was surprised to find this narwhal figurine at the Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute as well as the alphabet card from this beautiful flashcard set. James really likes comparing things, so he spent a long time exploring the narwhal and matching its various features to the flashcard. We also watched this National Geographic clip to learn more about them. Fascinating creatures, really.
** I just remembered this: when James saw the narwhal figurine for the first time he smiled, pointed at it and said, "Hey! You swim in the ocean!" as though he were trying to recall where he last saw it. And then did a little dance. :)
Other activities:
James is c-r-a-z-y about Finding Nemo. (It's one of few movies he's allowed to watch) Good friends of ours gave James this awesome Nemo activity book - it's a storybook with a removable I Spy tube. Throughout the story the child is encouraged to look for various characters in the tube. James loves loves loves it!

I also made a Finding Nemo Tot Book after seeing it on Carisa's blog. I actually made this last fall and forgot all about it. This is such a great little book because it incorporates many learning aspects: numbers, letters, counting, matching. Carisa has loads of Tot Book ideas - check them out here.

We also sorted nuts and worked with nuts and bolts, but they fall under my Montessori lessons and as I mentioned last week, all of our Montessori/Practical Life activities will be posted on Mondays (Tuesday this week) so I can link up to Nicole's blog. :)

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

Tot School - The Letter O

~James is 33 months~

Well, we're back on track with Tot School and this week we continued on with the alphabet - we're up to the letter Oo!

Art & Music:
I just love owls and when I saw this idea on No Time for Flashcards, I knew we'd have to do it, too! We also made an orange octagon O. Nothing fancy, but it serves its O purpose. :)







We listed to some opera music. Che Soave Zeffireto from Mozart's 'The Marriage of Figaro' has been a long time favorite of mine, so we listened to that song most often. We are a music loving family and enjoy a wide range of musical genres. We're trying to instill in James an appreciation for all different types of music, too. It must be working because he will start swayin' to anything from Bob Marley to Bach to Blondie! :)

Letters & Numbers:
We read the O book from the Alphatales series and made lots of O's and words with our snow playdough.

James has been really interested in spelling lately. Which is amazing to me because I thought spelling was a long ways away for us, school-wise. But, as it is practiced in the Montessori method, children learn to spell before they learn to read, so I suppose it's something we really need to start offering to James.

I made this snowman activity using counters and buttons (print out from Kidsoup). James had fun decorating the snowman with the buttons, but took little interest in the whole counting aspect of it. I don't think it's too advanced for him because he did really well with something similar I made in December. Ah well, we'll try it again another time.

The above activity aside, James is a counting machine. This guy will count anything that can be counted! It seems numbers (and letters for that matter!) are his "thing". He can count by rote to 30 no problem and easily identifies all of the same numbers when he sees them written. In addition to spelling, I'm going to start offering a lot more number related activities going forward.

Science & Nature:
As part of our O week we went on a field trip to the ocean. James is in absolute heaven every time we go to the beach. If he could live there, he would. :)

I also put together this ocean shadow matching activity, which James LOVED. Print outs from Kidsoup (again!).

We also went hunting for things for our nature display. I love going for walks with James because he stops and notices every little thing. It can take us 45 minutes to walk half a mile. :)

Practical Life:
Here are the activities that were on our PL shelves this week:
From L-R:
Pouring oatmeal
Open and close basket
Spooning lima beans
Transferring pom-poms - this was also a great pattering activity!
Sorting foam tiles by color
Button snake

Our new classroom setup made our school week just that much more enjoyable! James absolutely loved having everything accessible and I found he revisited several of the Practical Life activities time and again, improving his skills with each pass. The only thing he completely, flat-out ignored was the button snake. :( You'd think it was a pile o poo sitting in the basket, the way he avoided it!

Oh and we did have one little accident - those lovely blue glass egg cups broke while in transit from shelf to work table. They were only a $1 or so at the thrift shop, so it wasn't a big deal at all. But I sure did think they were pretty. :( On the bright side, the breakage created another PL activity for James - sweeping! James took this job very seriously and kept saying, "oh well, too bad..." :)

James also had (a lot) of practice peeling Clementine oranges. We worked with oranges to make some potpourri, too!

Other activities:
I found this cute activity on Kidsoup. It's great for improving those fine motor skills - the child has to place a Cheerio (or any small thing) onto the tiny circles on the tentacles. Knowing James as I do, I made sure to provide enough cheerios for the octopus AND James' tummy. ;)

We had a blast exploring the sensory tub and pretending to make it snow (i.e. throwing cotton balls in the air).

James colored this O coloring page using his crayons rocks from Santa!

We worked with our Montessori materials, too, but I'm going to post about those lessons (and our Practical Life stuff) separately going forward. Nicole is now hosting 'Montessori Mondays' and I plan on linking up to that each week.

There you go - our 1st school week of 2010 was busy and fun! And I just want to say that I know these posts are long (I can't get around it), and that I'm very appreciative to those of you who take the time to read through it all!!

Now go and click the button to the left to see what others are doing with their children! :)