Tot School

It's been a while. There have been some subjects I've wanted to blog on to get off my chest, but tonight I wanted to share something I've started doing with Sara since I've stayed at home this year. Backstory, I had started a little "Calendar Board" time with her that only lasted maybe a month... and for the past couple months I've kinda felt like a mess of a mom. Don't get me wrong, I've done things with the girls, but I guess I wanted some sort of structured learning again. I came across this "Tot School" and LOVED their ideas. And since every teacher knows it's best to just steal other people's ideas, I have been going through and doing old weeks so I don't have to make anything up. And, if you know me... I love planning and structure. So it's GREAT!

So, here's the site: letstotschool.com Basically, they have put together a year worth of "themed" weeks of learning. They'll give a book, bible verse, and activities to go with it each week. It take a little bit of planning, but it's not to terrible and the activities are only like 10-15 minutes a day.

We started with "Feelings". A lot of the things we did that week had to do with the movie Inside Out! And lucky for us, the book was "Pout Pout Fish" which we actually had. YAY! We love that book, especially me because I'm a really human life Pout Pout Fish. haha Then we made a paperbag pout pout fish and Sara painted it.

I also got this cool new calendar board thing on sale during Christmas and we've been doing this each day (or every other day... oops). 

  

The two things we did were my favorite. First, we did some sorting. I got Sara those sorting bears, And put the Inside Out emotions on each of them. I would make noises and faces when she'd put a bear in the cup and when I did Anger, she was scared... soooo she refused to put any red bears in the cup. It was kind of entertaining for me... haha 

 

 

Jordyn even got a turn with the bears!

 The next really fun activity we did was make these little play-doe stressballs. I found this recipe to make the play-doe and we added some essential oils to the play-doe (how ever so hippy of me) to make them smell. 

 The art project we did this week was painting with a textured ball. And Sara likes to glue... so we cut out fins and eyes and she went crazy with the glue. The face she's making below is her "sad face".

Our Feelings and Emotions week was a big hit! We worked on patterns last week and I'm hoping that I won't give up on this in the weeks to come because it really is worth it to see how much she learns. And it makes me feel like I'm using my time at home wisely and making a difference in the world even if it's just my one kid instead of a classroom full. And I just wanted to share all this because it's a great idea and great ideas should be shared. :)