Tot School - The Letter S

~James is 31 months old~

We're chugging right along - it was all about the letter Ss this week. I had planned on extending our S lesson another week, but truth be told, I'm kind of anxious to get through the alphabet so we can have week long lessons focused on specific topics. SO, this week I narrowed down the many S options - here's what we did:



Art & Music:
Since we're saving outer space (and sealife) for lessons later on, I decided to touch upon it by way of this letter S craft and some star sponging.

I saw this cute S idea on No Time For Flashcards and had to copy it.

Since the schools are on break this week, we didn't have Kindermusik. Instead, we sang LOTS of songs, and listened to sounds of the saxophone on YouTube.

Letters & Numbers:
Our S tray from the alphabet box I made was a huge hit. James mastered the S sound thanks to these little items! He'd lay each one out on the mat and say, "Ssss sunglasses" and so on.

We spent lots of time playing with our See and Spell. Always a favorite. In the pic on the right James is making the O sound. :)

We read our S Alphatales book. These books are great - short, easy to read and packed with words beginning with the focus letter. Click here to see what else we read this week.






Counting six & seven with shells. I made these cards and paired them with shells to make a counting activity. At first, James just wanted to lay all the shells on the cards in whatever quantity. I anticipated that since we haven't done a whole lot of quantity counting, but I figured exposure is always a good thing. What I didn't anticipate was that by the end of the week James was putting the correct number of shells on the corresponding card AND he was spelling out the word and saying, "S-E-V-E-N, that spells seven." Lesson learned: never underestimate the power of these little minds!

Science & Nature:

• It rained ALL week, so we didn't get out too much. Instead, we talked about the sun and sky and took notice of the beautiful sunset (pic from our backyard).
• We talked about our skin and read a book from our Time To Discover series.
• We also read Wild Animal Baby, our first book from our subscription to the National Wildlife Federation. This little book has a good variety of things in it from shapes and colors to seek and finds.

Practical Life:
Sorting nuts. This was a great learning experience for both of us. After I displayed how to do the activity, James sorted nuts a few times in a row. At that point I was thinking about offering him a new task since he was acting sort of bored with it. But something told me to hold out. Next thing I knew James was sorting the nuts by size, then counting them, then exploring the squirrel (which he loved btw) and began talking about it's tail, ears and eyes. I was amazed at what a lesson this sorting activity turned into! And if that's not clear proof in Dr. Montessori's concept of "follow the child" then I don't know what is!

Spooning (and pouring) crystal beads. This was intended to be a spooning work, but since I knew James prefers pouring, I was ok with it morphing into that instead. Follow the child, right? :)

Tonging strawberries with a strawberry huller. How cute is this PL work? I loved it! James - not so much. He spent all of 45 seconds on it. I think it was too hard - he needed to use the huller to tweeze the stems of the berries... I should've tried tongs now that I think of it.

Grace & Courtesy:
James has gotten much better about saying sorry, excuse me, please and thank you. Sometimes, he goes out of his way to bump into Buca (our kitty) just so he can say, "Oh! Excuse me, Buca!" :) And on Monday he walked around the house saying, "Thank you so much!" over and over. It's wonderful to see him developing these kind mannerisms.

Other activities:
Happy 40th Anniversary to Sesame Street!! Sesame is a much loved program in our home and and it has a very special place in my childhood memories. So, in honor of the anniversary, we matched our Go Fish Sesame Street cards, and read this Sesame Street shapes book.

I found this spider activity on Kidsoup. James really liked it and the self-correcting aspect came into play when James noticed the one spider card he had left didn't match the shape on the last web card. It was really interesting to see his mind work it out.

More shape matching. James kept putting each shape on his face (and Buca's) and would say, "Hi, I'm a triangle!" LOL Oh that kid cracks me up!

Scarecrow patterns. I came up with the idea for this activity when I read about a similar turkey activity on Chasing Cheerios. The images came from Kidsoup. After printing and cutting them, I put together three different scarecrows, took pictures of them and printed them out to be used as control cards. Then I put velcro on the back of the pieces so they'd stay in place (James gets seriously PO'd if things move on him while he's working). We used a sheet of felt as the work surface. This was a fun activity and James really enjoyed it.

Finally, S is for Snickers, James' other kitty and BFF. :)

Another busy week and another long post. Sorry! I keep hoping to make these posts shorter, but I just can't see how to do it and include everything we do in a week!

To see what others are doing with their children, click on either of the buttons below.

Crayon Roll-Up

I saw this on one of my favorite blogs, My Montessori Journey. Considering I didn't follow any kind of pattern, I thought it turned out great. Paul actually thought I bought it!

I made a button clasp so it'd be easy for James to open and close.

I'm saving it as one of James' Christmas presents. Almost all his Christmas presents are going to be homemade by me. I think that's pretty cool, but I wonder if he'll feel like Ralphie in A Christmas Story? :)

Putumayo Kids

Have you ever heard of the Putumayo music series? If not, I highly recommend it. They're children's music CDs filled with cultural music from all over the world. Click here for more info. We have French Playground and I recently bought Asian Dreamland - we LOVE them and have them playing in our car all the time.

Muffin Tin Meal

Time for another muffin tin meal!In today's tin: squash sticks & carrot strings, red pepper hummus, Kashi crackers, tomato, peppered steak, and bananas. Yum!

Counting Cookies

I whipped up a batch of these cute lil cookies.They're counting cookies - each one has a certain number of "chips" on it (0-5) for James to count out. He absolutely loved them and played with them for a good hour a few different times this week.

His favorite cookie was the one with zero chips. He kept saying, "no chips, no chips!" in a sad little voice as though he felt sorry for the cookie. :)
He arranged them in numerical order, played "find zero", carried them around in a basket, and even taste tested them!

Thrifting... A National Pastime

Or at least it should be. I love shopping - especially for a bargain. Unfortunately that's not an easy thing to do in Bermuda. Things are ridiculously expensive here (2-3 times the price in the US). And as far as I know, there are only 3 places on the entire island where a girl can go to find a good deal: The Salvation Army, The Barn, and The Dollar Depot (where everything's well over a dollar).

I only shop for things I can use in teaching James, so this weekend I went to The Barn in search of some practical life materials (for our Montessori lessons). It's usually pretty hit or miss there, and I was sooo excited to find lots of great things - check it out!!Here's what you see:

• A bag of mini strawberries (will use for tonging)
• Duck basket (see close up)
• Mini basket w/ handle
  
• 2 bowls w/ citrus pattern (LOVE these!)
• 2 mini potters (perfect for the spring/garden lesson I have planned)
• 2 colbalt blue egg cups that came with... wait for it... a little spoon! Spooning work ready to go!
• A little handmade basket/box (see close up)
• 2 glass shell bowls (will go great with our shell sorting)
• A beautiful green, ceramic cup (see close up)
• 2 glass fish... things. Don't know what these actually are, but I'm going to use them for spooning.
• And finally, 4 books

All this for $12!! Ok, so I know that probably doesn't sound like much a deal to some of you, but trust me, in Bermuda it's a steal!

Here are the close-ups:
I plan on using these for sorting. That lil basket is handmade and I like that it has a lid. James loves opening things to find surprises. :) And how cute is that duck, honestly? I plan on filling him with some type of spring-themed thing (flowers, maybe?). Lastly the green cup, I just had to show you how pretty it is with that basket looking pattern.

I love love love practical life work and these little goodies will have me smiling all week! Those of you who know Montessori will appreciate my finds that much more.

I love when other Bloggers share their thrifty finds, so I decided to do the same from now on. I *try* not to go thrifting too often (Hubs doesn't appreciate my new hobby), but whenever I do I'll be sure to post about it! And (Hubs is gonna love me for this) I decided that I'll donate something each time I shop. It's a total win-win sitch!

Tot School - The Letter T

~James is 30 months old~

Art & Music:
I thought of two letter T crafts and since I couldn't decide which to do, we did both! As usual, I cut everything out and, with a little guidance, James glued it all together. He did a great job lining everything up - he's such a little perfectionist. :)

There are lots of musical instruments that start with the letter T. (trombone, trumpet, tambourine, triangle, tuba) The New York Philharmonic website has an AWESOME kid's section where you can click on an instrument to read about it and hear how it sounds. Lots of other games and activities on there, too. Check it out!

Have you ever heard of the Putumayo music series? If not, I highly recommend it. They're children's music CDs filled with cultural music from all over the world. Click here for more info. We have French Playground and I recently bought Asian Dreamland - we LOVE them and have them playing in our car all the time.

Letters & Numbers:
I made an alphabet box a few months ago and kept forgetting to use it! I finally pulled it out the other day. This is our T drawer. James really enjoyed this activity. He named the objects over and over, and in doing so increased his vocabulary and cemented the T sound into his brain! :)

We practiced more letter sounds. I like to rotate our puzzles to keep them fresh and interesting to James. This week I pulled out this Melissa & Doug sea life puzzle. James really, really likes this puzzle and played with it several times daily. So, I took his lead and came up with a few learning activites to use with the pieces.

This alphabet train is great and, as usual, James found a new way to play with it. He had no interest in putting it together, but instead preferred to walk on top of it, calling out the letters as he stepped on them. :)

We read lots of books - click here to see our picks for the week.

We played with this Shut The Box game. James doesn't understand how to actually play the game, but I'm a big believer in exposing little minds to lots of things. They take in so much more than we realize. James played with this game many times throughout the week. It reinforced counting and number sequencing.

T is for time - we played with this big clock. James had fun making the hands point in different directions.








Science & Nature:
My favorite thing we did this week was to go on a nature walk and collect colorful items. I've seen this activity on several blogs. You take an empty egg carton and color code the bottoms of the cups. Then you go for a walk and try to find something in nature for each color. We are very blessed to live around so much beauty! James loved this activity and carried the egg carton all around the neighborhood. :)

An impromptu lesson inspired by Mr. James himself. Well, he and his sea life puzzle pieces. He was asking me what a whale sounds like, so I went on You Tube and found a video. Of course that led to him asking what ALL the other creatures sounded like, so more videos followed. This was a lot of fun for both of us!

I put together this tree matching activity in honor of our letter of the week. I simply found photos of trees online, printed and cut them out. I found trees that were very different looking (maple, palm, Christmas, apple & Joshua). This was a great way to increase James' vocabulary, too.

Our lime tree bore a whopping 3 fruits this year! They don't look too pretty, but they tasted yummy! James had fun exploring the fruit - he also shook it, smelled it, touched it, tasted it - a great sensory lesson.

Practical Life:
I made a cute lil button turkey (same concept as the button snake I made). James did a great job with this. He's come a long way with buttoning. (ps: I love that chunky little hand in the pic!) Click here for my tutorial on how to make one yourself.



Spooning couscous. I'm planning to do more of these kinds of PL activities in the future as I found lots of new materials to use - I'm so excited!

Other activities:
I made this tomato sequencing activity so James could practice size discrimination. He did pretty well, but we'll work with it a little more.

Since it's a new month it's time for a new sensory tub! See my post here for details. James was sooo excited to see this and it kept him happily occupied for a good 30 minutes. In the pic above he's saying, "soft" while petting the chenille coil. :)

Finally, we talked about triangles - we counted their sides, colored pictures, and put together the train puzzle from these Melissa & Doug Pattern Blocks.







To see what others are doing with their children, click on the buttons below.

On Our Bookcase

We're focusing on the letter S in Tot School next week, so first up is Soup For Breakfast, by Calef Brown (we love Mr. Brown!). James likes staring at the pictures, which are illustrated by Mr. Brown himself. They have sort of an 'I Spy' aspect to them in that you can stare at them for a long time and find all sorts of interesting details. Our favorite poem is Painting on Toast.

Another S book, which also happens to coincide with the current season, is Scarecrow, by Cynthia Rylant (another favorite author of ours!). This is a serene, peaceful book that explores the life of a scarecrow in a very insightful way.

A Grand Old Tree, by Mary Newell DePalma, is a lovely book with a beautiful message about life.

Finally, Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf, by Lois Elhert, is a seasonal favorite of ours. It's a delightful story about the journey of a maple tree. At the back of the book you'll find lots of wonderful facts about trees and how to plant them.

Button Turkey

I heart my new button turkey! He's so cute! I can't wait to introduce him to James! I love exclamation points! :)

This lil' bird will be a great learning tool to teach James how to button. And bonus - the buttons and feathers create a color matching game!

This was fun and easy to make and I finished it in about 2 hours (sewn by hand). I first found the idea on Itty Bitty Love, but I've also seen it on My Montessori Journey (two of my fav blogs!). I didn't follow an actual pattern to make it, I just eyeballed the photo in the link and copied it as best I could. That said, here's my attempt at giving you a tutorial so you can make one of your own!

Materials needed:

• Felt...
• Brown - for the body. One sheet was enough to make two circles about 5" in diameter.
• Light brown - for the head (fyi, I tried the brown on brown and it was just too hard to see the turkey's head).
• Red - for the wattle
• Orange - for the beak
• Cream - for the eyes
• 5 Various colors of your choice - for the feathers, which I made to be about 4" long.
• 5 Buttons - color coordinate with the feathers.
• Stuffing (I used Poly-fil) - for the body
• Scissors, needle & various color thread to match your felt (if you care about matching, that is!)

Instructions:
Step 1:
Cut out the head and sew it onto one of the brown circles.

Step 2:
Cut out the wattle, beak & eyes and sew them onto the head. I used black thread to make the pupils in the eyes, but you could use sequins instead.

Step 3:
Sew the buttons onto that same circle. Space them out a bit to make room for the feathers.

Step 4:
Stitch the two circles together, but before you close it up completely, fill the inside with stuffing. Not too much though or you'll have a really plump turkey!

Step 5:
Make the feathers by simply cutting feather-like shapes out of the felt and then cutting a slit in the bottom narrow part of the feather. Be careful when you cut the slit - start with a small slit and check it with your button. Adjust the size of the hole as needed. I made the mistake of making too large a slit and the feather wouldn't stay on the button.

That's it! Now you have a button turkey of your own!

I made a button snake recently, too. Click here to see how to make one.

November Sensory Tub - Thanksgiving

Those of you who live near a Michael's or some type of hobby store don't know how lucky you are! There's no such place here in Bermuda and that, as you can imagine, is a sad, sad thing for this artsy-farsty-craft-lovin' gal.

Of course my husband thinks it's a GOOD thing I can't go out and buy art and learning supplies whenever I have a whim to (which is often). And I'll admit it is kind of a good thing because I've been learning to dig deeper into that creative corner of my mind to come up with homemade versions of the stuff I can't buy.

That said, this month's sensory tub required some creative improvisation. Sure, there's more I could've/would've done if I had the materials, but that's just the nagging perfectionist in me. Truth is James is going to love it and that's all that matters.
Here's what's inside:

• Popcorn kernels
• Mini football confetti
• Mini corn stalks (I cut up raffia and tied it in bunches)
  
• Feathers
• Puff balls
• Teeny tiny wooden bowls/jugs
• Wooden napkin rings
• Leaf die cuts from my scrapbooking stash
• Fir tree embellishments also from scrap stash
• 2 wooden bowls for scooping/pouring
• A chenille stick
• A few Native American figurines (from a Safari Ltd. Toob - I LOVE these collections!)
  

The best part about this is that it only cost me $5 to make (had to buy the popcorn). The rest of the items I had on hand already! Boo-ya!

Tot School - The Letter U

~James is 30 months~
We explored the letter Uu this week and, of course, spent lots of time doing pumpkin and Halloween related activities (am I the only one who's glad to move on to a different theme?!)

Art & Music:
I was really excited to make our underwater U craft this week since I thought it up myself! (hooray for original ideas once in a while!) James had a lot of fun making this - the crayons, the glue, the little fishy stickers - all a big hit.

James had a friend over and we decorated pumpkins. I was sooo excited to see how interested and focused James was in doing this activity. (dare I wonder if the anti-arts & crafts saga has passed?)

In Kindermusik we learned a new song, El Coqui, which means frog in Spanish. We all had to bring in a frog sound to play with the music. Just so happens we had this adorable frog instrument in our stash!


Letters & Numbers:

• We played with these fun alphabeads. James is suddenly interested in lacing things, so these beads were perfect for us.
• I made these counting cookies for James. He LOVED them. I made 6 cookies and each cookie has "chocolate chips" on them for him to count (0-5).
• We revisited many of our pumpkin/Halloween learning tools, such as these pumpkin counting sticks I made.

Science & Nature:
Fall is officially here, so we spent plenty of time outside going for walks and exploring the yard.

We talk about Uranus and the universe - this site is a great resource for astronomy and space related topics for kids.




Practical Life:
James is all about independence these days. He wants to do everything on his own, which is great of course, but bittersweet for me. :) We've added a step-stool to his bathroom and he is thrilled about the fact that he can help himself to a good hand washing or tooth-brushing session any time he wants!

• I made some orange rice, which James used to practice his pouring skills. He did a fantastic job!

• I got this CUTE apron from Montessori Services. One day while I was making dinner James noticed my apron. He wanted to wear his so he could "yook yike mama". Awww!

Geography:

• Another U activity - playing with our USA puzzle. I had one of these when I was a kid and I l.o.v.e.d it. Such a great learning tool. James can identify several states on the map now!
• We also read Scrambled States of America, a funny tale about US states and how they want to relocate.

Other activities:
I found this pumpkin matching/puzzle game on Confessions of a Homeschooler. Initially I set out only 5 puzzle sets in a basket, but after quickly matching them up James asked for more.

We talked about how umbrella and under start with the letter U. James had fun playing with the umbrella.

I created this uncle matching game to go along with our U theme. I printed out 2 pictures each of all of James' uncles. Seeing as we live so far from family and that we don't see them more than once a year at best, this activity was a wonderful way to familarize James with family members. Coincidentally, the day after I created this, one of his uncles decided to come to Bermuda over Christmas. Now James will recognize and be able to greet him by name when he arrives!

Once again I dipped into our game cabinet and found more great learning tools. James sorted these poker chips by color and spent a looong time playing with the peg game.

Our color this week was brown. It was surprisingly difficult to find this many brown things!

A beautiful thing happened this week. We say grace before each meal and one night before dinner, James surprised us by signing the cross to himself and saying, "Father, Son & Holy Spirit"! He also memorized half of our mealtime blessing. Paul and I were very moved to hear those words come out of our little man. :)

Click on these buttons to see what others are teaching their children.