I never got to post Tot School last week and this week was a short week as we were at the beach, so I've combined the two weeks in this post.
Math/Numeracy
Bear's strong point is letters and letter sounds. She can tell you pretty much what letter/sound any word starts with and can sort objects according to letter sound (when she feels like it). Consequently, I have been putting much more emphasis on numbers lately.
Number puzzles to work on number recognition and one to one correspondence when counting.
This was a Montessori-ish activity which I set up as below.
Bear had to color sort the pompoms and then count the pompoms and put the number tile into the correct pile of pompoms. She managed 0 through 3 but needed help with 4 and 5.
Some other things we did for math:
Number sequencing on the number line. She loves her foam puzzles.
Making shapes. I got this idea on Chasing Cheerios, but recently saw it again on the Shafer Family. I had tried this with Bear without the control mats when she was 18 months, but it was too challenging. The control mats made it much easier. She chose this activity a lot.
Adn even deviated to create her own letter making activity (she loves to make up her own activities). "Look Mommy, an 'H'" she announced to me.
Bear did quite a bit of size sorting with her tree crafts, but when I was cleaning up her school room, I found the Montessori red and blue rods I had printed out and she decided to size sequence those too.
Except, as usual, she got cored of it and didn't quite finish.
Letters/Language
As usual, we wrote a few stories. She sticks stickers to a page in her notebook and then tells me stories about them and I write them down for her. I've decided to focus more on storytelling for the next few weeks, as opposed to the alphabet. That said, Bear adores doing her Dora alphabet puzzle.
And we did play a game (briefly - this girl will never survive in school with this attention span!) in which she used her alphabet drawers to sort the pictures by color so she kind of worked on beginning sounds doing that.
She knows all her colors, so this was more to practice turn taking and talking about the beginning sound of the pictures. I chose very different sounds for her to play with.
Bear likes for me to tell her stories about the pictures, so we ended up doing that for a good thirty or forty minutes. (Her attention span is highly selective!)
I also set up a fun activity (she seemed to enjoy it) in which I hid the letter tiles that spell her name under some colored rice.
She then put the letters in order and almost did the whole thing herself.
Sensory
If this isn't sensory, then I don't know what is! LOL.
Art
We have been doing so many Christmas crafts that open ended art has been pushed aside, but since we usually do only open ended art, I figure it can't hurt.
Science
We've been talking a bit about nutrition and we happened to see a Sid the Science Kid episode (in Spanish) about nutrition while we were at the hotel at the beach.
Publish Post
You can see what others are doing in Tot School here.
Looks like you had a fun couple of weeks! I really like the math / number projects...and the sensory picture :)
ReplyDeleteOh my gosh! SOOOO many great ideas! Thanks for the post- I am going to have to try some of these out with my little girl. Thank you :)
ReplyDeleteThis post is full of so many great ideas. We have the opposite situation here. Savvy loves counting and numbers and has not shown much interest in letters and sounds. Although, recently she has started asking: "What does that say?" So we might start with the letters that make up her name soon.
ReplyDeleteI like all of your numeracy actvities.
I think I might also make up some templates and use the paddle pop stick idea to make shapes. Thank you for sharing this.
The beach is a perfect place for sensory activities - the sights, sounds, smells and there is so much to explore with your hands.
You have been super busy with all of your Christmas crafting and coming up with beautiful creations. Isn't is funny how toddlers can very quickly lose interest in a craft. We sometimes leave a craft out for the whole day and come back to it, or we complete some of our crafts over a couple of days.
As part of our Advent Calendar activities we have planned to make stained glass pictures and wreaths. We're planning on doing these this week. Your coffee filter angels are very sweet.
It is always encouraging to me to read your Tot School posts. I feel inspired to try the popsicle thing with Mrs. Sayuri - I think she would really enjoy that. And maybe use them as a way to practice her letters- and even numbers.
ReplyDeleteGreat post and looks like Bear had a blast at the beach. What fun!
Bear is a very bright girl. I think she is doing fantastic with math. I also like story telling and writing down Anna stories.
ReplyDeleteOh, how I always love reading what you and Bear have been up to. I'm now sitting here, just ITCHING to make some more number activities. Maddie is so similar in that she loves (and knows) her sounds and letters. But... Numbers and counting don't elicit the same enthusiasm. I love your sorting of pompoms and matching with number tiles. I will absolutely be trying that.
ReplyDeleteWhat a great week! I love the number line with the foam numbers! I might have to try that out this week!
ReplyDeleteWhat a great week. I love your number puzzles. Did you make them yourself or did you purchase them. With you color matching game did you have a template or did you just find clip art and cut them out? Sorry for all of my questions, just very inspired!
ReplyDeleteWhere did you see Sid the Science Kid in Spanish? I need to check it out. How is Bear doing with the three languages? Does she prefer to use one over the others?
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