In honor of our upcoming pond theme that I am planning for the kids, I made the them a Pond Life Sensory Bin…
The kids won’t see it until we do our pond unit, but I went ahead and made a few bins last week while the boys were still out of town {they are back now, finally!!!!}.
Basically I gathered every frog, turtle, dragonfly, and fish I had and put them together to make the pond.
I used blue aquarium rocks as the base and placed shiny rocks around inside also.…
Maybe I will get really brave and let them take it outside one day and add water to it!!!
We might do a few fun crafts, but I am not so crafty, so we will see about that! I did pin a few I liked and thought I could manage on myIndependence Day Pinterest Board!
Recently God gave me another crazy idea that I was able to put together in a few hours!!! I was brainstorming our current calendar and thinking of making some cute themed calendar numbers when it occurred to me they could be SO much more than just cute. I could teach my kiddos 1 simple {but important} fact each day based around a certain theme. I decided on an Independence Day/America theme for July and got to work brainstorming 31 symbols and facts. I will admit the last few were a stretch but I finally got 31!
I am horrible at remembering historical facts and I do not want my kids to be like me so I hope to use this method to teach facts in an easy and simple way. Obviously these can be used over each year and many facts will also be eventually taught in their school lessons. I thought this would be a great way to introduce and reinforce at the same time {for Mommy too}. Even Ladybug will begin to soak up concepts simply by sitting with us.
This first set was created with PacMan in mind, knowing that for Krash and Ladybug-anything they soak up is just a bonus. I have big dreams of bringing this whole idea to a bigger level and am working with a friend behind the scenes on the idea! I hope to have more to share with you soon!
Below you can see what the cards themselves look like, on the left are the cards you would use for the numbers on your calendar and on the right are the concept cards that go with each card. I made them to fit my particular pocket chart calendar {which is currently out of stock on Oriental Trading}, item # IN-62/2017…
but you could use a poster foam board and velcro to easily create your own set up. You could also use a standard pocket chart. They seem like they would fit in this calendar on Amazon but I am not certain.
I put mine in our calendar to show you how they look, and I plan to share more about how it goes with my kiddos when we begin. I have several ideas of games to play and fun ways to make it more than just calendar numbers too!
I printed my numbers on cardstock and laminated them before cutting them apart. I have the concept cards whole right now, but I think I will cut them. I am still deciding what will work best. I will share what we end up deciding!
You can find the printables for this unit here on the Tot School Printables webpage.
We had loads of fun with Play Dough this week! She asked for it almost every day! This particular day we used a K cookie cutter and also some tiny keys I had for her! She loved squishing the keys into the dough.
She used her scissors to cut her play dough snakes…
We made the letter Kk…
Then used the key to make impressions into the dough, GREAT fine motor work and she loved this!
Pop Pop joined her for some coloring time, they colored her key cards together…
She then colored all of her shapes by herself…
The BIGGEST and most EXCITING event of the week---GLUE! The girl loves the glue. I taught her how to use white glue with a Qtip and a small cup and she mastered the process almost immediately.
She glued her shapes on as I cut them out and we named them together..
She didn’t want to stop there, so we glued her color cards onto a paper…
She still wasn’t done, so I cut up her numbers for her…
Finally, she finished up by gluing her cutting strip pieces down…
She did ask to glue on several other occasions, it is definitely a new favorite.
I finally decided on a spot to officially hang our pocket chart on the wall and she enjoyed using it for her vocabulary cards and her shadow matching cards…
Ladybug’s Tot Trays/Learning Toys have a new home!!! I finally decided on what I wanted and how I wanted it set up. I love the drawers for loose toys, but I also loved the trays for the display aspect, so I found a way to do both! You can see how I had things set up for her at the beginning of the week here. In the future I have grand plans of displaying items on the top also, but we didn’t have these shelves put together until the last minute so I was lucky to even have this!
This was a simple way to reinforce counting 1 to 1 {saying the number and touching the object}. She can count to 11 easily, but I had only 8 cups so we did 8 with this activity and practiced not counting too fast!
I also gave her a large parmesan cheese container so she could pour the balls back into it when she was done.
She got creative and decided to put 1 Hex Bug in each cup and then shut him in with a ball!
We were sent more toys from Guidecraft to review and are so very thankful! She was VERY challenged by this screw block at the beginning of the week and we spent a lot of time together as she just watched me model. I held her hands gently to show her a few days later and the next day she was ready to try on her own!
It was a really neat progression of skills over a few days and although she still can’t do it perfectly, it is just enough of a challenge for her! I LOVE this toy and can’t wait for Krash to see it to!
This is an OLD toy of mine from my teaching days that I found when I cleaned out the school storage room. I remember it used to have a puzzle base but that was missing. We used it anyway!
ABC puzzle {no clue where I got this one}…
Fishing for ABCs {she LOVES this, we got ours at consignment but it looks like this is the updated version}…
TONS of free drawing this week, this girl loves to draw and color!!!
I didn’t get any action shots of her with our iPad this week, but I thought I would still share the apps she played with most. These are the ones she chose on her own and really enjoyed. Some came from recommendations from readers on my Educational iPad Apps blog post last week - thank you!
The boys are out of town so she has been helping them out by feeding the turtle for them and she LOVES her new job. For those of you who are long time blog readers, this is the same turtle we made a labook about years ago!!!! We had 2 turtles and one died, but this one is “Beach” the tiny turtle pictured in the upper right corner of the lapbook cover-s/he is almost 4 years old now and huge!
More Tot School Links…
Tot School 2010/2011 Roll Call {and FAQ Clarification Post} –I have finished updating the Tot School roster, please let me know if you are not on it and you have linked up for at least 3 weeks. You can leave a comment on this post telling me that this is your 3rd {or more} time linking up!
How do I Link up to Tot School? Please be sure to read this BEFORE you link up for the first time!!! If your blog is not linked back here to Tot School {within your post, not just on your sidebar}, and/or your post is not specifically a Tot School post, your link will be deleted to help Tot School surfing moms. If your link was deleted, please email if you don’t know why.
Please put your tot's age (in months) after it, like this: 1+1+1=1 (41 mos)
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