Tot School

Samuel is 16 months old

This month our theme is Farms to match our sensory box. We attempted lots of farm themed activities. I say attempted because Samuel is still little and not interested in anything too structured so it was very hit and miss, which is fine. As long as he is happy I am happy!!

So these are the things that worked.

Painting Farm pictures

Matching farm animals to picture cards. This worked well for about 2 minutes before he got bored of it!

Playing with the Farm Mega Blocks

The Farm sensory bin which was a huge hit and played with daily.

Lots of reading

And my favourite, playing in the rubbish bin! The bin was new and clean :) He must have palyed in it for at least half and hour and then spent the rest of the afternoon dragging it around the toy room.

To see what others are doing this week head on over to 1+1+1=1

June Sensory Box - The Farm

This month our theme is The Farm. The kids absolutely love this box. Samuel asks for it at least once a day and when the big kids see it out they are soon in on the fun too. Who says sensory boxes are just for Tots!!

So, in our box this month we have:

Yellow and green split peas. They loved the feeling of these and spent lots of time running their hands through them and their toes! Great sensory experience, just be ready with the vacuum cleaner as they end up everywhere.

Some digging tools

Farm machines and animals

So this box is definitely a winner!!

Tot School

Samuel is 16 months

The highlight of our Tot School week I have no photos off. Samuel finally loves his books. I have tried for so long to get him to sit and read a book with me and he has shown absolutely no inerest, until this week!! We read the same 2 books over and over and over and over again, but I don't mind I am just so happy that he will finally let me read to him!!!!!

Other activities that Samuel enjoyed this week

Stacking his crayons

Playing with the Autumn sensory box again

He spent a lot of time playing in the tent and tunnel that I set up for him.

Samuel also started enjoying trying to do his jigsaw puzzles this week. I found him sitting on his lounge with his puzles many times during the week.

He also spent a lot of time climbing up onto the big kids table to get into their work. He was so proud of himself when he would get hold of a pencil or crayon to do some drawing with!

My favourite has to be these photos of Samuel getting in on the action while the big kids were playing with the Wii. He thought it was great fun to stand on the fit board with the controller just like his big brother.

To see what others are doing for Tot School head on over to 1+1+1=1

Learning With Liam

So, I am discovering that teaching Liam is VERY different to teaching Liana. Liana picked up reading and maths so easily that I never realised it could actually be hard to teach these things!! I kind of feel out of my depth at times, even after having been a teacher for many years. The problem is, that by the time the kids reached me in year 3 or 4 they already knew how to read and all their numbers. So here I am fumbling my way through trying out different things desperately hoping to find something that works with my little man!!

I have looked at some of the awesome reading programs developed by homeschooling mums but none quite meet all of our needs. So I have decided to take bits and pieces from this one and this one and this one and add in a few of our bits and work with that

I am not using the sight words just yet as it was getting too confusing for the poor boy to know when he should be sounding out and when it was a sight word. So for now we are sticking to just the phonics part.

Unit 1 is focussing on the short vowel sound of a. This unit will take us about 3 weeks to work through.

This is what we worked on this week.

Reviewing the phonograms

Matching lower case and upper case letters

Learning our "a" blend ladder

Finding the end sound for "a" words

and reading our 'ca' word wheel.

We also played lots of games and file folder activities but I keep forgetting to take photos. I am going to try to remember to take more photos this week, although sometimes it is impossible with two kids to teach and a toddler to keep out of mischief!!

To see what others are up to this week head over to
Preschool Corner {and 5K too}
and
Teach Me To Read Thursdays

Tot School

Samuel is 15.5 months

We are slowly getting some structure back into our day after our 3 week Easter break. We continued with our Autumn theme this week and went walking to look at all the autumn leaves and collect some. I forgot to take my camera so have no photos of this but we had a lot of fun.

We also did some more dot painting using Autumn colours to decorate some leaves.

We have just started using Tot Trays. I put these out when the big kids are doing their school work in the hopes that Samuel will be occupied enough for us to get some work done. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

This week on our trays we had:

transferring giant pom poms

Putting pop sticks into a cream container. He loved this and did it over and over and over all week!

And, putting plastic coins into a slot.

He also spent loads of time playing with our new foam alphabet floor puzzle. He loved playing with this, mostly pulling letters out and scattering them throughout the house for me to try and find later.

We got a new puppy this week, so Samuel spent a lot of time loving on "Molly". I think they will be very good friends. I caught them today with Molly drinking her milk out of her bowl and Samuel down on all fours next to her with his face in it too!! I wish I had had my camera handy but given that he is allergic to cows milk I didn't particularly want to leave him there while I found it.

To see what others are doing for TotSchool head on over to 1+1+1=1