Tot School

Nathan is 31 months old.

As usual, we had plenty of fun this past week during tot school.  As we change the structure of our tot school time to accommodate preschool and summer fun, I find myself missing the days when we’d sit for an hour or two together, one on one, and my little one would soak up knowledge. These days, we both savor the tot school time, as we both know it’s more limited.  I’m thankful, however, for the wonderful preschool Nathan attends, and the things he’s learning there, as well as the fun that summer brings!
Speaking of fun, how about some building/physics time with daddy!  Between the marble racers and the hot wheels race tracks, they build together almost daily and it’s so fun to watch the creating!

Pre-Reading fun
Nathan and I both enjoyed this activity!  I wrote 4 words on a page (words which I thought he could sound out) and then drew 4 squares.  I handed him a tray with the word/square paper and 4 corresponding stickers.  He did a great job figuring out which stickers went where!  Then, I gave him the same 4 words written out again (the colors did not match) but this time in all lowercase or vice versa (see pics) so that he could match the word in uppercase to the same word in lowercase.  Since it involved glue, it was certainly a favorite.  We did two trays of these, and will certainly do more!
   
Nathan glued more word families together and again surprised me with his ability to correctly complete these given the nine letters in a pile.

Playdough fun!!!!! 
This is one activity which builds skills all around… fine motor, cause and effect, creativity, a little pre-reading, and tons more!
 
Everyone needs to make their own “umi-goggles” don’t you think?

Making letters out of playdough snakes
  
Number fun:
This idea came from one of Carissa’s tot packs.  While Nathan correctly matched the groups, the concept that it was an egg puzzle is something I sort of left out.  Oops!  :)  The first two had 2 pre-glued and the 2nd 2 had just 1 glued down before he got to it.  We’ll complete 5-10 soon!

This idea also came from Carissa and you can find it here.  Instead of using pompoms, we used stickers and it was truly a hit!
    
I love Nathan’s concentration and precision when he works on things like this. 

Puzzle fun!
We did puzzles all week, but these 4 were by far the favorites!  He is getting really good at pulling them off the shelf and completing them one by one without any assistance or encouragement from me sitting next to him!  The other day I found that he’d completed 3 all by himself while I was putting laundry away and he was working on the 4th when I came back in! :) 

The pool… oh the pool.  So many opportunities for learning… self control, respect for rules, gross motor, hand/eye coordination (as seen in the scooping below), breath control, taking turns, sharing, cause and effect… and the list goes on.  We do this as often as possible, sometimes 4+ days a week.

Our little fish is quite confident in the water.  He usually doesn’t have to wear his wetsuit in the neighborhood pool as it is quite warm, but this particular day it was chilly.  He can now jump off the side and swim about 20 feet underwater unassisted.  Here’s a sampling of the swimming fun from one chilly day. :)
 
 
Buddy, we are super proud of you!
If you’d like to view more tot schools like this one, or to link up a post of your tot school, please visit Carissa’s homepage and take some time to look around.  You can get to her site by clicking here.