Tot school: Halloween Day

It's Halloween! We had such a fun day. I planned a special tot school lesson for Emma to celebrate today. First, we sang a Halloween song found here. We only own one Halloween book (Where Is Baby's Pumpkin?), so we checked out a few from the library and read those. Usborne Books & More has a few cool options, too!

For our first activity, we made monsters (a ghost and a spider to be exact) out of PlayDoh. This was our first time using googly eyes, and Emma LOVED playing (and chewing) on them.

Afterwards, we played Pumpkin Says (aka Simon Says, Halloween style). I didn't get a good picture while we did it, but some of the commands used were:

•  Howl like a werewolf
• Grin like a jack-o-lantern
• Boo like a ghost
• Cackle like a witch
• Hobble like a zombie
• Show me your scariest face

Emma only did some of the moves, but it was something fun to try anyhow. To celebrate Halloween with Daddy, we went trick-or-treating at the mall in the evening (it was so-so), then in the neighborhood of Phil's co-worker (much better - they gave out full-sized candy bars)! After we got home, Phil made a cute (and delicious) jack-o-lantern pizza and we watched Hocus Pocus.

 Definitely stayed up past bedtime, but fun memories were made today!

Tot School: Body Parts, What's Inside

Awk, I'm still a blog post behind! On Friday, we had our last body parts lesson, which was on what is inside - bones, muscles, and organs. We started our lesson with Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes and read all of our body books.

None of the books really covered what's inside the body, so I brought out my laptop and pulled up (appropriate) pictures of what we look like on the inside and briefly explained to Emma the importance and functions of everything inside. She's now obsessed with skeletons because she thought the bones were so cool, haha.

For our first activity, we made a skeleton out of q-tips (though I made the skull way too small). I pointed to Emma's body and told her where all the bones can be found inside and how they hold us up, help us move around, and get things done.

After we were done talking about the skeleton, we moved on to our next activity, which was an organ dot marker printable. I love how this website made one for the brain, heart, lungs, stomach, and intestines. I showed Emma all of them and explained what they do, but we choose the stomach to work on.  She's getting better with dotting the circles!

This section was so much fun to talk about. It's definitely something we haven't brought up before! This afternoon we're going to have a special Halloween lesson, so I will try to post that in a timely manner, though we have a busy day ahead of us. On Wednesday, we're going to be talking about textures and on Friday we're going to discuss patterns.

Tot School: Body Parts, The Body

On Wednesday, we talked about all the body parts of a person. We started our lesson by singing Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes again, then read all of our body books.  Head, Body, Legs: A Story From Liberia was especially good for today because it talked about how all the body parts work together as a team to get things done.

For our first activity, I brought our Mr. Potato Head. Emma has never played with this toy before, so I wasn't sure how she would react to it, but she loved it! This was a great way to review the parts on the face, as well as other body parts, such as the arms and legs. Emma did not want her picture taken today, so I took pictures of her creations instead. These were her favorites.

I had only borrowed Mr. Potato Head, but since Emma enjoyed it so much (and didn't want to stop) I think I'll get her own for Christmas. Our next activity was supposed to be all about dancing with our different body parts, but Emma didn't want to participate at all, so I just danced by myself, haha. While I didn't show her these videos, this is what I had in mind for our activity, which I think is a great way to teach your child about the various body parts we have.

Tot School: Body Parts, The Face

I am so excited for this week because I think it's going to be so much fun and Emma should learn a lot from it. We're talking about body parts all week, but I've broken it up into three sections: the face, the rest of the body, and the insides.

Usborne Books & More offers a lot of amazing books about the body. Here is just a few of the more popular options!

We started off the lesson by singing Head, Shoulder, Knees, and Toes (a toddler classic), followed by reading these wonderful library books. I loved reading these because they really encourage your child to move certain body parts to along with the story. Emma especially loved wiggling her toes.

I, personally, liked I Love You, Nose! I Love You, Toes! the most because it was the most comprehensive. It seriously covered ALL the body parts in such a cute way (even the private parts that you don't show your friends), which I thought was awesome.

After we read all the books, we went to the table for our activity. Day 1 is all about the face, so we made PlayDoh faces with this printable. Emma has known about eyes, ears, mouths, and noses for forever, so she knew exactly where to put them, which made me proud.

After that, we just sat down and reviewed what's on our face. I briefly explained what each part does (we'll do a more in-depth week on the five senses later), as well as covered new parts of the face, such as the forehead and cheeks. Then I asked her where certain parts were. As I said above, she's known about the face forever, so she nailed it.

 
We'll talk about the rest of the body parts on Wednesday! It should be a good lesson!

Tot School: Star Shape

Woohoo, today was the last day of our shape lessons. It has been super fun, and Emma has picked up on them so well, but I'm ready to move on! Our last lesson was on the star shape.

We started our lesson by singing Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star (an obvious, but classic choice), followed by reading our shapes books. Our Book of the Day was Touch the Brightest Star by Christie Matheson. It was a cute one!

After our books, we went to the table for our first activity. I printed out this star dot marker sheet (there are others on the website, as well) for Emma to complete, though I couldn't find the yellow dot marker! I'll have to clean out the pantry (it's probably time to do so anyway). But, I improvised and brought out the yellow PlayDoh that we hadn't opened yet. I tried to get Emma to rip it up into little pieces and put the in the circles. Eh, she wasn't feeling it and only put in a 50/50 effort. She just wanted to rip up the PlayDoh.

After we completed the sheet, I brought out big shapes I had cut out earlier and put them on the kitchen floor. I would call out a shape, and Emma would run and grab it. Easy peasy, she knew every shape! So proud. Then I took the shapes from her, laid them out again, and then said to jump on certain shapes. She really enjoyed that! She wouldn't STOP jumping on them, ha!

I'm confident that Emma knows her shapes pretty well at this point, though she hasn't really said any of the words (except oval - random). We'll have to keep working on that. For next week, we'll be talking about body parts! It's going to be divided into three sections: the face, the body, and the innards.We'll see how well this goes.

Tot School: Heart Shape

Today we talked about the heart shape. We went over a heart song found here and read most of our books on shapes. We actually had a featured book of the day too - The Shape of My Heart by Mark Sperring. It was absolutely adorable and talked about how you can find shapes everywhere you look, including the shape you love with. Precious!

I tried to make sure not to make the activity too similar to one you'd do on Valentine's Day (as I want to do a special lesson when that holiday comes around), but I figured Emma might as well wear her one shirt that has hearts on it and at the same time I thought it would be fun to do a special craft for Phil that shows him how much we both love him. I found this cute printable that I thought worked very well for it!

All Emma cared about was the glue stick, as usual, so she wasn't very happy when I took it away and tried to encourage her to actually work on the craft. She's kind of pouting in the picture, but at least she did a bit of it. I'm excited for Phil to see it when he comes home today!

For the shape activity review, I thought since we're talking about the heart shape (and kind of love while we're at it), that we should review shapes with something Emma LOVES. Which is Minnie Mouse all the way. And, you know what? I actually found something that does that! This blog has a post where you match shape hair bows to the shape that's on Minnie's head. (Or you could use them as bow ties for Mickey.) Emma immediately recognized it as Minnie and was SO excited. I explained what I wanted her to do, and she picked it up so quickly! I was so proud. She matched the correct shapes 100% of the time! We did this three times, she was enjoying herself so much. Though she needs to work on how to put on a hair bow, ha!

    
While I try to avoid bringing in electronics during our tot school lessons, I thought it would help Emma learn about shapes a bit more as it's been a more complicated subject. So, I let her watch LeapFrog: Adventures in Shapeville Park on Netflix. She was very attentive the whole time, so I hope she grasps the shapes better from here on out! We only have one more shape to cover tomorrow and then we're moving on to the next topic!

Tot school: Diamond Shape

Woohoo, we're into our second week of shapes! I know there are SO many shapes one can learn and it was hard to choose which ones to introduce to Emma, but I decided that I wanted to go over the ones that are considered more fun - the diamond, heart, and star.

The nice thing about the books we've been reading (and the shape review activities I have planned for this week) is that they also mention other important shapes, such as the rectangle and oval. So, we have talked about more, just haven't put any emphasis in them.

Anyway, today we talked about the diamond. Since we had a full schedule today (since I didn't get around to the lesson yesterday as originally planned), we had the lesson right after breakfast. Hence why Emma is still in her pajamas!

We sang a special diamond song that is found on the same page as the shapes song we sang last week, then read our shapes books. After that, I had Emma decorate a kite. She was more interested in just gluing everything for me to put on (which I don't blame her for - I cut up everything way too small). But, it was still fun to do.

Instead of doing two activities on a certain shape this week, I'm only doing one on the shape of the day, then doing a shape review activity. For today's review, I got out her shape sorter toys (not sure what the official name is for that) for her to... well, sort.

She has had these toys forever (you can't see the other one, but it's a cute turtle), but always struggled putting the shapes in. But, today she did so well! I asked her where a certain shape was, she would pick it up, and (most of the time) slid it in without any issues. This was also a great time to review the colors too! As usual, the lesson took around a half hour to complete.