Tot School - A is for Apple

(Mouse is 34mths old)

Letter Aa for Apple

We used printouts from 1+1+1=1 and Homeschool Creations.

After a demo with me holding his hand, Mouse caught on very fast. He was able to trace the letters on his own and with the right strokes for little A. Big A still needs some work but he's improving every day.

Tracing big and little Aa

More A tracing, plus learning the different names of the A items on the sheet below - Ant, Alligator and Astronaut. Not sure where he learnt it, but he knows what I mean by "circle the ___" and does it correctly!

Circling the A objects 

Next up is the Letter Aa cut and paste activity, but I'm still not comfortable with letting him use scissors and glue yet, so we just pointed out each object (with real life examples wherever possible). He's wearing a child's apron which belongs to his eldest sister and pointing at the apron on the paper.

Letter A objects

Shape reinforcement - new shapes are Crescent, Hexagon and re-learning "love-love" as "Heart shape".

Circle the shapes!

Fruit vocabulary development as shared by 1+1+1=1 - learning the English names of different fruits (he has mostly learnt fruit names in Mandarin so far).

Learn and circle the Fruits

I managed to find some 3D fruits (some real and the rest toys) from around the house to reinforce the names of the different fruits. To my surprise, some fruits which he simply couldn't remember before (eg. kiwi) were instantly named after the objects arrived!

3D fruits always make a better impression

Can't neglect Mother Tongue education d:) Here is an apple jigsaw which he played with last time, and now I've brought it out again.

Apple jigsaw

Counting

Although he can recite 1 to 10, he doesn't really understand the concept of counting. So thanks to 1+1+1=1, here are some counting cards.

Learning the concept of counting

We repeated the counting the next day with dominoes and transparent jelly cups, and I think he's starting to get it this time d:)

Other Learning Activities

Playdough Time! He has never touched playdough before, and really liked it. He can sing the PlayDoh jingle very well. This tool below was his favourite this time.

Rolling the cutter on play dough

And for the grand finale - sensory tub time! I added red beans, rice and marbles, plus some animal friends. Like a child who can't believe his eyes when he receives a much-coveted gift, Mouse stared at the tub for many seconds before he dug in!

Rice and beans sensory tub

During the play, I talked to him about sizes (marbles are big, beans are medium and rice is small) and keeping the mess in the tray as far as possible. At one point he threw a little fit of temper, to which I promptly picked the tray up and said he wouldn't have any more till he apologised and helped return the dropped items back to the tray. He complied d:)

He understands now that each tray goes back to its original position in his workshelf before he takes the next one, and with a gentle reminder from me, is able to carry that out. Yay!

We will be doing Letter Bb next week.

Tot School

I finally got my Tot Trays! Since I decided to go this way (workboxes will maybe come in Kindy stage), I have been on the lookout the past few weeks for cheap, colourful trays that will work for us. There were some trays at IKEA but the smallest ones were square but still too big, and the cost was way beyond justification if I wanted to get at least 4.

Then yesterday I went to Daiso to look for small whiteboard dusters (they were out of stock) and happened to see these.

The colours aren't solid but I think they'll work for me. There's one more solid white tray from a different section, and for only $2 each, I think they're perfect. Just the right size (roughly A4) and not too heavy for Mouse to carry (with stuff on them). I laid out all the materials on the trays and let him decide which one he wanted to do first.

Lacing wooden beads

We pointed out the shapes and colours of each bead as he threaded them on. He's pretty competent at this. After stringing all the beads on, he put the string round his neck like a necklace. Then he decided to stack them. I encouraged him to put the tray back from where he took it. Hope this becomes SOP for him from now on.

 

Wooden beads become building blocks

Next up, he took the wooden pegs. I helped him to grip and press the pegs open to clip onto the cards. "Clip the Shutterbugs". The Shutterbug cards are from the Special Agent Oso Tot Book I created.

Clipping wooden clothes pegs to cards

Lastly, he brought the koala pasta over and practised transferring the pasta with a new pair of tongs, also from Daiso (love that store!). Along the way, he cheated by using his hands to grab a whole bunch d:) Then he also poured the pasta from cup to cup.

Transferring pasta with tongs

That was it for today. I hope to add more trays but have to find a shelf system which can accommodate 6 trays or so.

Tot School

For today's lesson, we focused on A. 

I took out an old set of Apple matching cards I printed long long ago from 2 Teaching Mommies for him to match up. The set looks odd because I happened to print these out at a time when my printer cartridge was really low on red ink so what should have been dark red, pink, yellow and green apples came out as various shades of red/pink plus one set of blue. To make the pairs more obvious, I stuck some star stickers on some of them. He got them right away d:)

Matching up the apple pairs

There is also an Apple Colours mini book in the same Apple Tot Pack which he enjoyed colouring with his special Faber Castell crayons.

Subsequently, I took out some Letter A activities from 1+1+1=1 for him to colour and draw with a whiteboard marker. We covered A is for Apple, Aeroplane, Angry Birds. As he traced, I kept stressing the "A" sound to him. Ack, forgot to take a pic.

Up next was puzzle time - we have a number of Melissa & Doug basic puzzles which he worked on, while I pointed out the different types of cars or colours etc. After he was done, the cheeky kid started mixing up the doors on purpose, trying to ensure all the vehicles had the wrong door d:)

There are TONS of apple activities out there! I intend to go through them slowly, just picking whatever catches my fancy for him to do.

Tot School - Just at the Beginning

(Mouse is 34 mths old.)

Over the last few weeks, I took some steps to rearrange the furniture for more conducive studying and sleeping areas. Some rooms have been repurposed, so that instead of one room for each child (which was wrong from the very beginning because they just don't keep their own rooms tidy since it's "their" room). It's still work in progress but by the end of it, hopefully, we will have a dedicated schoolroom-cum-playroom and a "children's bedroom".

For today, we started school with pompom scooping. I got a few packs of different sized pompoms from Daiso.

He very obediently helped me to keep the pompoms before we did the next activity, which was line tracing. I used a few tracing pages from Homeschool Creations' Angry Birds Tot Pack and the Transportation Pack. He needed me to hold and guide his hand at first, but after a bit he took off on his own. Here he is doing the page he likes best d:)

 

Last of all, we took out his Thomas Tot Book to do some colouring. I haven't exposed this boy much to drawing and colouring, so now that we're starting school in earnest (well, kinda), I want to encourage him to enjoy the feeling of such activities. He's using some jumbo crayons, and still gripping it his own way, but this is fine with me. I'm not too concerned about the gripping position yet.

I had more planned after this but I think someone wanted to get some action so we came out to the living room for some ball tossing and kicking d:) 

Ding ding! School is dismissed.

Logistics before homeschooling

After a whole lot of homeschooling research this evening, I realise that we really need a proper schoolroom or school area before we can start schooling in earnest. Up till now, for most of Tot School we have been playing/learning anywhere and everywhere in the house, which is not too good because there are lots of distractions from his siblings and other stuff happening in the house.

When we moved to this flat, we had planned to have the two boys share a room in future (currently both boys sleep in my room although the big boy actually has his own bed in the other room). Big boy already does his homework there, since all his stuff - school, clothes, toys etc are there. He just sleeps with me. The opposite side of the room from where his desk is is actually supposed to be for the Mouse when he grows up and goes to school, but there's a toy cupboard that takes up lots of space.

So we are seriously going to have to do some major rearranging of furniture. I've been procrastinating (surprise, surprise) till my parents move house and my stuff that's at their place needs to be brought here, but now I'm motivated to try and get it done these June hols.

Stay away from me, Korean dramas!

Special Agent Oso Tot Book

After making the Thomas & Friends Tot Book for Mouse, I realised that he would really appreciate one on Special Agent Oso. This kid can watch for hours if I let him (which I don't), and he knows practically all the different episodes and the lines of every character. But search as I might, I couldn't find any Tot-oriented printouts along the lines of a Tot Book for SPO. So this doting Mum decided to make it herself. 

Now I am actually quite a failure at this kind of stuff, because although most people are superb these days at doing so many things on the computer, I suck at creating things. Thankfully, I have a neighbour who is awesome in her knowledge of several different software, and she is always generous and ready to share that Powerpoint would probably serve me the best. And of course, my 12yo helped me loads by giving me a very basic tutorial on using the OpenOffice Presentation in my Macbook (I don't have MS Office and have been using OpenOffice for all my office needs).

Results!

Front Cover of Oso Tot Book

Inside Oso Tot Book

 

Back Cover of Oso Tot Book

He loves it!

I'm still trying to figure out how to upload the PDF for this Tot Book to share (as I mentioned above, I'm not too savvy at this kinda things), but in the meantime, if you want to make this book for your tot, please leave a comment.

Update 18 Aug 2013: Download my Oso Tot Book here. Please feel free to print as many copies as you want but do not host the file anywhere else. If you want to link to it, please link back to my post here.

Thomas & Friends Tot Book

Many thanks to Carisa of 1+1+1=1 for the wonderful work she has put into making so many lovely and USEFUL Tot Books and Tot Packs for her children, AND for sharing on the web with us. I've finally finished making this Thomas & Friends Tot Book for our Mouse (the 2.5yo).

Front cover of Thomas Tot Book

 The Tot Book provided by Carisa does not include anything for the front cover, which is cool, because then I could get my own image, print it out and stick it on.

Inside of Thomas Tot Book

This is my first Tot Book (although I've made lapbooks for the older kids before) so I just printed everything wholesale, which works fine for the Mouse.

Back of Thomas Tot Book

I wanted to put his name on the book (so his older siblings couldn't claim it for themselves, lol!) so I did this on OpenOffice Documents together with Takoyaki. Simple.