I really gotta try to post more... I've had so many things I've wanted to post, but not much time to post them! Anyway I did want to do another Tot School post, so here are the past two weeks of our activities!
We Learn About Magnets
I bought a few small magnet kits at a local teacher store. I got some of those magnetic wands, and little magnetic disks and balls, and some regular magnets. Mostly, the kids just played with the magnets. I hid them in a box of dry oatmeal and had them use the magnet wands to find all of the magnets, and we tried the magnets and wands in water.
Pufferfish also made a fridge magnet with fun foam... I just cut out some small shapes and let her glue them onto a larger square, and then we put magnetic tape on the back. Unfortunately, the fun foam was too heavy for the magnetic tape, and it wouldn't stay on the fridge!
Thats about the extent of the magnet week... I had lots more ideas for it, but I was really sick all week and too exhausted to do much, so it was a light week!
WE LEARN ABOUT FALL
We did a lot of art projects for this unit, using fall colors. Our main experience was learning that in the fall, leaves change colors and fall off of the trees.
Here's a colorful fall leafe Pufferfish made, by sticking pieces of tissue paper onto contact paper! I hung it on the front door. Pufferfish loves it, and every time someone comes in the door she announces, "Look, I made something!"
In Pufferfish's drop-in art class, she also made a scarecrow, and some fall trees using her arm as a stamp.
Remember that magnetic dry erase board I found at Goodwill last week? I made some leaf magnets using fun foam and magnetic tape, and we did a rhyme using the dry erase board like a felt board. The rhyme basically goes like this:
Five autumn leaves on the tree nextdoor.
One fell off and then there were four!
Four autumn leaves sitting on the tree.
One fell off, and then there were three!
Three autum leaves, where the wind blew and blew.
One fell off, and then there were two!
Two autumn leaves, sitting in the sun.
One fell off, and then there was one!
One autumn leaf, all alone.
One fell off, and then there were none!
Obviously, every time I said the part about a leaf falling off the tree, Pufferfish would take a leaf off the board. She loved this, and played it by herself for a while too!
Still a rather light week, and we didn't do everything I wanted to do... but we did a lot of other, non-theme-related things as well!
We made the letters F and G. We FINGERPAINTED the F, and made a GIRAFFE for G!
We did our Alphabet Board! I made this by gluing library pockets onto a poster board. Each week I draw some pictures of things that start with our letter of the week. We talk about the pictures, and then Pufferfish puts them into the right envelope. Sometimes she likes to take the pictures out of all of the envelopes and try to put them back in the right ones, but I have to help her a lot for that!
We played board games together! Pufferfish likes Don't Wake Daddy and the Elmo Birthday Game. We work a lot on following the rules and waiting our turns. Pufferfish really loves playing games!
We went to a bunch of story times. At one of them, the stories were about airplanes, and the kids did this craft that involved gluing plane diecuts onto paper. Pufferfish's planes look like they crashed!
And here's an extra fun one! All of the review games that got sent to me were packed with tons of bubble wrap. So I spread the bubble wrap out on the floor and told Pufferfish it was our Bubble Bridge! She took her socks and shoes off and walked all over it. She thought this was the coolest thing in the world!
On a side note... Pufferfish has become obsessed with the letter B! One day she came to sit by me while I was using the computer. She saw a B somewhere on the screen and pointed to it, saying, "We learned this letter! Its B!" I was so excited that she'd actually learned one of the letters... because mostly I've been just trying to introduce her to the letters, without really requiring her to remember them. But she definitely knows B! She knows what it looks like and what sound it makes, and every time she sees a B she points it out to me!
Thats pretty good, right? I mean, its a little, but its a lot!
Thanks, Tot School!
You are really good at tot school. I'm quite jealous!
Posted by: Shari | October 12, 2009 at 09:43 PM
I love the window art! And the video is so cute, including the puppy!
Posted by: Tanya @ Teenautism | October 12, 2009 at 10:42 PM
Great stuff! It is exciting when things you are teaching come back in different forms!
Posted by: CorrieHwe | October 13, 2009 at 10:55 AM