Tuesday, January 12, 2010

tot school - snow...better late than never!

Tot School
Noah is 15 months old.

I am SO sorry that this is coming out so late! We've actually been moving (into a much bigger space for MUCH less!) so after this week, you'll be seeing different background scenery. Just in case you notice things like that, you know:) Anyway, I've been tied up with that, plus I started my spring semester back to school today, so I've had a full plate!

We're mostly moved in, and should be finished completely by tomorrow, so we should still be able to get in some good tot school for the rest of this week. Now, on to what we did last week...

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Theme: Snow/Snowmen/Winter
I have had an absolute blast planning this theme! I was hoping we would see some more snow to go along with our activities, but no luck. Noah still managed to do lots of fun activities, with several more we didn't get to (but plan to for the rest of this week).

First, Noah enjoyed playing with white playdough..

I helped him make little balls and build a mini snowman...

This was his version....he stacked them all on his own, then proceeded to smoosh it and try to put his little twig arms in his head:)

We did lots of activities with "snowballs" (aka cotton balls)...here he worked on transferring and pouring. Noah also did some one-to-one with an ice cube tray, but I don't have a picture of that.

Noah LOVED his sensory box for this theme! I filled the box with "snowballs" and other supplies you use to build a snowman (scarf, hat, twigs, "carrot" nose, and "coal")
The twigs are from the yard, I cut the hat and scarf out of felt, I made the carrot out of pipe cleaners, and the coal are several black pompoms.

Noah spent lots of time exploring the different materials, stirring them up, transferring them in and out, and so forth. His favorite piece, though, was definitely the carrot:)

I made a homemade matching board with some pictures from our recent snowfall. Please don't judge the sad quality haha! I just used what I had on hand (some construction paper, glue, and my computer printer).

Here is a close up....I was WAY more excited about this one than Noah unfortunately. Hopefully he'll enjoy it more this week.

I cut out a felt snowman for Noah to work on putting it together correctly. The only parts glued down are the parts of the face..

Noah did okay with this. He definitely understood that certain parts went in certain places, but I made the middle and bottom pieces too close in size for him to really recognize the big-medium-little concept. He still had fun with it though!

I printed out this picture from Making Learning Fun, but used pompoms instead of buttons because that's what I had on hand. It was meant to be a color recognition/fine motor activity (find the yellow pompoms and put them on the circles). Noah was totally uninterested though:(

In other fine motor work, Noah really enjoyed using these penguin stickers! They were fuzzy stickers too, so that was another fun aspect of them.

To tie into the stickers, Noah also played with his "winter" Little People animals. I talked to him about how they live in the snow and cold. I don't know if he understood that, but he had fun playing with the animals anyway!

Noah also had fun reading Biscuit's Snowy Day. Believe it or not, that is the only non-Christmas winter book Noah had! But he loves the Biscuit books, so he didn't mind reading it over and over:)

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Noah will continue with the snow/snowman/winter theme again for the rest of this week with some of the same activities and some new ones. I'll be sure to share the new activities we try...on time of course:)

See what others are up to at Tot School...hosted by Carisa at 1+1+1=1!

3 comments:

Cassie said...

I love that felt snowman...it's so cute!

Debbie said...

As always you do the neatest things with Noah! Love all of it, especially his smooshed snowman!

Colleen/And Baby Makes Five said...

You sure are busy, Lauren! In such an exciting way. More space for less is always a good thing :D

Great activities, as always ...