Tot School ~ Packing...

~Smiley is currently 30 months old~

Tot school was pretty much non-existant these past two weeks. We're getting ready to move next week and as you can imagine, we have been VERY busy packing. Pretty much all of Smiley's toys and tot school supplies are packed up and as a result we took a break from our regular tot school activities. Of course, there were still many learning opportunities, but I didn't have my camera on me for most of them.

Learning Toys...
We did play with two of our tot school toys this week (although I just packed those up yesterday as well).

The one toy I haven't packed yet is Smiley's train table. My son is IN LOVE with his train table right now. All he wants to do all day is play with this. However, he's not using his trains on it. Instead, he's using his CARS vehicles on the train tracks and the roads. He loves this :) He has many CARS in his collection now. I think daddy is almost more excited when he gets to add a new car to his collection. He gets all giddy every time he finds a car that we don't have yet. He even started checking Craigslist, lol. Oh well, at least they are cheap... Probably much cheaper than Thomas the train stuff ;) 

Tot School~Letter T, Week 2

~Smiley is currently 30 months old~

Letter Tt...
This was our second week of letter T activities. We again used many activities from RRSP.

We worked with the letter T vocabulary cards. Smiley already knew all the words and he was very proud of himself going through them so quickly :)

We used the worksheet to trace the letter T. It was more of a coloring the letter than an actual tracing. Still not quite there yet, which is totally fine with me ;)
We also did some more activities that we found at confessions of a homeschooler.

Smiley did the letter Tt puzzle...
He was really really really into this counting activity. Huge hit!

Learning Toys...
Much of our week was spent with different learning toys. Here are a few of the things we worked with:

Connect 4. This has to be in his top two favorite board games EVER. It's right up there with Scatterpillar :)


Some other uses of the game...

We played with pasta again this week. Another activity he can't get enough of :)

And we played with his pegs...

We did quite a few puzzles this week as well...

Fun...

A fun 4th of July picnic with our friends :) The kids even stayed up to see the fireworks. They were completely fascinated by them.

Tot School~ Letter Tt

~Smiley is currently 29 months old~

Letter T~ T is for Turtle; 10 Commandments
We had fun with the Letter Tt this week. Again, we used several of Carisa's RRSP activities.

We talked about the verse for this week and about its application. Smiley then colored the coloring page. He went a little wild with the green ;)

Smiley was really into coloring this week and asked for coloring activities often. Here he is coloring the tablets of the 10 Commandments art activity. He then glued them on all by himself. He did really great with this and loved it :)
He traced the horizontal and vertical lines as a pre-writing activity and did pretty well with this. This is an area I want to continue to focus on over the next few weeks...

We also used several Tt activities from Erin's letter of the week curriculum.

Smiley enjoyed dot painting, but wasn't really into using the template...

Instead, he mainly used the back of the page...

Most of his time though was spent stacking the lids ;)

He liked sorting the turtles by size...

He was really into this activity from Home Grown Hearts! Smiley loves trains, so this number sequencing game was right up his alley :)

He liked attaching the correct number of clips to the turtles...

He found and circled the letter Tt.

He traced lines (he was only able to do straight lines).

I ordered these magnets from amazon last week and Smiley LOVES them. He wasn't very interested in the intended activity (to use them with these fun alphabet sheets), but played with them in a variety of other ways.

He liked finding a specific color (i.e. all the red ones) and putting them in a cup or sorting the magnets into his sorting bowls... Maybe once the novelty wears off he'll actually do the magnet worksheets. I think they are so cute!

Learning Trays

One of the activities on our learning trays this week were lacing beads.

Another activity was his food cutting set from Melissa and Doug.

Dry pasta was a huge hit again this week. He wanted to play with this numerous times this week.

What have you and your tot been up to this past week. Use the button on top to link up :)

Tot School~Letter L, Week 2

~Smiley is currently 29 months old~

Letter L...
We continued to work on the Letter Ll this week. I like spacing our letter activities out over a two week time period as it feels less rushed that way. Also, I have found so many fun things to do for each letter that I really need an additional week to fit everything in :) Check out my post from last week to see what we did for week 1 of Letter L.

I again used Carisa's wonderful Raising Rock Stars Preschool curriculum this week and Smiley enjoyed all the activities we did. As I mentioned last week, some of the activities still are a little too difficult for him, and I therefore adjust what we do to fit his need...

Smiley was really into the popsickle crafts and liked pretending to blow out the candles :)


He liked studying the vocabulary cards again this week...

And measuring the verse. It's so tall mommy...

Tracing the letters is an area that is still very difficult for Smiley. I think I will skip this for now and focus on tracing more basic things, such as vertical or horizontal lines. I might get one of the KUMON workbooks some time soon or just make my own templates...

We also used many Letter L activities from Confessions of a Homeschooler again this week. I absolutely LOVE all the fabulous activities she has for the letters and they seem to perfectly meet Smiley's needs right now :) We will definitely be using them for our weekly letter activities from now on!

I thought this paper clip activity is awesome. Smiley was a big fan as well. Things like this are right up his alley :)


I found colored paperclips to go with this activity and Smiley enjoyed matching the correct color clip with the color of the ladybug. (He used white or black- the color of the dots- if the ladybug was in a color for which we did not have clips)

Some ladybug building...

ABCs...

I got a fun Write and Erase Set from Brain Quest (for the airplane trip to Switzerland), which Smiley was really into. He particularly enjoyed the erasing part ;)

Writing and erasing the letter O.

We worked on this Uppercase & Lowercase letter matching game from Homeschool Creations a few times this past week.

Smiley is really into Word World (on PBS) lately and I therefore made him Carisa's Word World tot pack. He was really into it :)

Random Learning Activities...

I gave Smiley some foam (dishwashing foam from the sink) and let him get to town on his little table. He cleaned for at least 45 minutes!!

We made Salzteig (salt dough). Combine one part salt with two parts flour and one part water and mix. You can then use it like playdough, making different shapes etc. You can then bake and color the finished products. I plan on doing our Christmas ornaments with this technique this year (that way it doesn't matter if they break...).

We made ladybugs and caterpillars, but I forgot to take pictures of the finished product :(

Some puzzle fun...

Smiley was really really really into slugs! It has been a little rainy in Switzerland lately and there are tons of slugs everywhere right now, much to Smiley's delight. He could not get enough of the lovely creatures...

Sorting balls by color.

We made a big circle with his balls and ran around it for a long time. We then proceeded to wash his tractor :)

Some piano fun...
Working on his fine motor skills...
And of course, playing lots and lots of soccer, fitting to the World cup ;)
Unfortunately, our vacation in Switzerland has come to an end. We got back home last night. We're still suffering from jet lag, but I hope we'll feel up for some tot school this coming week. Fortunately, I have our letter Tt stuff already planned out :)