Tot School – Months, Days, Seasons and Weather

It was a very fun, but different week with tot school activities this week.

The theme I chose was: months, days of the week, seasons and weather. They all seem to go together well because you can’t really talk about months without talking about seasons, and you can’t really talk about seasons without talking about weather.

One of the things I really wanted to do was make this calendar that Carissa has featured on her blog. But I didn’t get to it. So, it will have to wait another week or two. We will keep talking about the days, months and weather daily so I still have time.

But I did buy a calendar for the children. It is the same as you would see on bulletin board in a classroom. We hung it up in our tot room and it has been quite the focus this week. (I tried to take a photo but my camera is on the fritz at the moment).

We also learned some of the songs featured on the 1+1+1 blog, including this Days of the week song. The children loved it and especially loved trying to snap. We also learned the 12 months of the year sung to the tune of ten little indians. This was also a big success – Petra started singing it tonight on her own – and did absolutely fantastic rattling off the 12 months of the  year.

We read a lot of books around the seasons this week and the months of the year. Several of these were Jane Moncure books – including Here We Go Round the Year, Word Bird’s Fall Words and Winter Words, and Word Bird’s Rainy Day Dance. We also read the Circle of Seasons which I’ve mentioned before here. And we read Sun Snow Stars Sky by Anholt and First Concepts Time book.

While all this was a lot of fun, Petra most enjoyed cutting with scissors this week. I FINALLY found a pair of scissors with a spring on them (for learning) this past week. I have been looking for months. Evidently I just had to wait for the back to school sales. I didn’t even look at the back to school supplies and a friend just mentioned she saw some. So I went and bought every pair I could find – which was only 5 pairs since I didn’t go until this past week. I kept two here at the house and intended on taking the others up to Sunday School for the toddlers there.

So this week Petra cut ….

And she cut….

And she cut….

She asked to cut every day, several times a day. But these were the only photos I took. In just one week with the learning scissors she has become quite a pro. I actually forgot to take the scissors with me to Sunday School and she was very disappointed when I handed her a normal pair. Before this week she couldn’t cut at all without training scissors. But after just one week at home using the training scissors, she had no problems using the regular scissors in Sunday School! I was shocked to see such a difference.

Also this week we matched the shapes and put them in a row. These made an easy and fun exercise. Easy for me because these are just foam pieces. And fun for the children because they are stickers and they had to pull the backs off each one. Petra did a great job getting her shapes lined up by shape. Jasper put all his shapes in one row.

And then there were other activities. Playing with weebles and reading on their own (notice Petra grabbed a piano book to read).

(Petra is 33 months, Jasper is 23 months)

If you would like to learn more about Tot School, GO HERE.