Tot School Winter

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January 22, 2013 By Jennifer Lambert Leave a Comment

Alex loves our Antarctica continent box…It really combines both poles though.

He matches the penguins and whales and goes to play constantly with the Arctic figures in between activities.

He likes drawing on our easel. He was making lovely Os.

Working on a snow tot book (baby lap book). He’s gluing things that are white to a flap book. I gathered printables from Homeschool Share and other resources.

iPad bug building with Daddy.

We’ve been working on tot packs with winter, snow, and penguin themes.

Here are some favorites:

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Christmas Tot School

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December 13, 2012 By Jennifer Lambert Leave a Comment

Tot School Activities for December

Alex excelled on his wreath letter assessment. He knows all his letters and only got a bit confused between K, X, and R, and wanted to switch M and W. Proud mama moment!

Tori helped her Bubba with Christmas tangrams. She collected all the right shapes and colors for him to place on the cards.

His attention span lasted for three matches with these puzzle cards.

He matched 4 shadow cookies before he was done.

He did love gluing the animals and people. He tried to be silly and test me. He knew the difference!

He loved playing with these 3D geometric shapes, wooden and plastic.

I brought out this Lauri letter puzzle and hammer and he thought this was the greatest thing ever!

Mama’s favorite. Just look at that tongue! His dad and sister Tori do the tongue concentration thing. I think it’s the funniest thing! He’s getting so much more control with his tracing lately.
And he loves his camo hoodie. LOVES.

Alex is so non-compliant compared to his sisters. He doesn’t really enjoy “doing school.” His attention span is non-existent. He prefers to play the iPad all day long, or cook, or go play on his scooter in the driveway.
He yelled at me this morning that he wanted to wear these pants! He threw the ones I held out back in his closet and handed me another pair, saying, “Silly Mommy.” Since when did he start making clothing decisions? And he wasn’t being disrespectful. He is always loud.

Our favorite holiday tot and preschool packs and crafts:

Tot Crafts
Christmas Fun from 1+1+1=1
More Christmas from 1+1+1=1
Christmas Trees from 2 Teaching Mommies
Candy Canes from 2 Teaching Mommies
Christmas Printables from Confessions of a Homeschooler
Christmas Cookies Pack Our Little Monkeys
Several Fun Ones from 3 Dinosaurs
Christmas Tree Pack 123 Homeschool 4 Me
Nativity Pack from Over the Big Moon
Book Packs from Homeschool Creations

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Thanksgiving Tot Packs

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December 9, 2012 By Jennifer Lambert Leave a Comment

Yes, I know this is old news, but I just want to share it with you. I forgot to post it! Perhaps you can use it next year or something…better late than never.

Alex loved this Mash the Monster ABC game.

The sisters or I would call out a letter and Alex whacked it with the fly swatter. He was a whole lot gentler than I expected!

Turkey Printables

He cut out cards and “fed” them to a paper turkey. He does love cutting paper.

He cut out turkeys and matched them and glued them. All favorite activities!

He’s starting to like the bottle cap letters activities.

He loves tracing the lines. And these lines were orange (his favorite color!). How much better could it get?

He just wanted to start at the bottom of the page and work up for some reason.

He tried cutting this practice page, but gave up when he thought it was too hard.

Thanksgiving Tot Packs:

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Fall Tot School 18 months

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October 26, 2012 By Jennifer Lambert Leave a Comment

Is there a doctor in the house?!

Alex LOVES cutting and pasting. He knows almost all his shapes.

All proud of himself!

He just recently decided to try tracing the lines in his tot packs. He’s really good when he isn’t silly about it!

Orange is Alex’s FAVORITE color. He colored his ships page for Columbus Day.

He played a dice game with Daddy and graphed the pictures.

Dancing to Wii Kids Dance Gummy Bear song. He loves it!

He begged for me to take a picture of his spelling “frog.” We love the See and Spell!

Playing “pancakes” with big sister Liz.

He begs to roast my coffee beans. We roast 1/2 cup at a time in this popcorn popper. We do a couple batches and let it cool off. The coffee ideally must sit for 24 hours for best flavor. We get our coffee beans from Sweet Maria’s.

Cutting and pasting with counting pictures. I gave up on trying to get him to do patterns and just let him count and glue to his heart’s content!

“tracing” the letters for a scarecrow page

more tracing with markers

coloring the leaves. he really likes this!

proud boy!

he loves cutting so much, he got started before it was ready.

Another fun scarecrow pack here and a fall leaves pack here!

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Tot School 2.5 Years

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September 20, 2012 By Jennifer Lambert Leave a Comment

Alex still loves hammering those golf tees into Styrofoam.

I had to get a new block for him!

Liz played a game and taught Alex fractions with these fun wooden fraction blocks. He loved it.

We made letters with Magneatos!

We stacked our ABC nesting blocks and Alex was excited it was almost as tall as he is!

Look at that proud pose!

And, of course, knocking them all down!

Big sister Lizzie helps Alex with his poster centers. I bought two posters, had them laminated, and then cut one out so he can attach it with Velcro dots. It’s great. He loves it.

Dinosaur stamping was a favorite this week. He also played quite a lot with stickers.

The Piggy Bank toy is still a favorite.

Alex can play Boggle Jr., but he quickly tired of it.

I made a painters tape road for him to drive his cars on in the basement. He loved it. For a minute.

I am impressed by Alex’s general compliance with helping to clean up his works and mat. He is mostly eager to do this and I am glad I trained him to put away his work this way.

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Montessori 2.5 Years

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September 11, 2012 By Jennifer Lambert 2 Comments

I gathered many new materials for Bubba this week! Some were a hit!

I did some geoboard work with the girls and Bubba just loved putting rubber bands all over his board. Fun!

Alex impressed us all by matching his letters to the name plates I made for his sisters a couple years ago.

He really liked this activity. He wants me to make him more cards. I also need to make more bottle caps!

Cars shapes and color matching…3 part cards

poster center with Velcro to match up the pieces

…and marbles on no slip bath shapes

Alex really loved practicing with these beginner chopsticks. He picked up pipe cleaners and sorted them by color. He kept going back to this again and again.

I finally found all the pieces to this Lauri shape and color sorter.

Stacking pegs with sister Tori

Alex asked to sort his snack in his fishy plate. nuts, Goldfish crackers, and M&Ms went into three different spaces. Smart guy!

Alex was so excited to dig in to some homegrown watermelon!

A new favorite: pinning shapes

Alex still loves vacuuming and demands to do it whenever someone pulls out the vacuum.

And just like Daddy took the T-Bird away, Mama took the vacuum away and we got pouty face!

An old favorite: nesting blocks. These things are barely held together with packing tape!

Alex asked to try our spelling boards and he was really good at it with a little help.

Measuring rice. He was soooo good at keeping it in the bin.

Over the week, Alex demolished this styrofoam board with hammering in golf tees.

I saw this on Pinterest. Flipping “pancakes.” He demanded a plate for these. So cute.

He’s a busy boy!

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Letter H Work

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September 4, 2012 By Jennifer Lambert Leave a Comment

We are totally doing delight=driven school with this one. Otherwise, he runs wild and refuses to do anything productive.

Alex is still obsessed with Hungry Hippos and Perfection games. We play those LOTS.

H is for Hippos with Animal ABC Tot School.

He’s coloring the hippos. He’s doing more paperwork than the last few weeks. Still not very interested. Once in a while he will do it.

He does really like cutting and pasting though.

He’s saying “hippo” and showing me his H.

Here are all the letters Alex has completed on our clothesline.

He’s beginning to show interest in writing and reading now and I guess since he knows all the alphabet and their sounds, we’ll be moving on at his pace!

He was writing letters on his little magnet pad and we were quite excited.

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Reading with Bubba

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August 22, 2012 By Jennifer Lambert Leave a Comment

Tori read Good Night, Gorilla to Alex (and Katie) since it’s G for Gorilla week for Tot School.

It was precious. He even has his gorilla pillow pet! aw! He was so cute and attentive. I love it.

Alex decided he needed some quiet time and started looking through his Bible books. He loves this Baby’s First Bible!

They’ve been in the basket for years and I love it that he’s finally discovering and enjoying them! He’s reading Baby’s First Prayers.

What’s your baby’s favorite book?

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Tot School 28 months

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August 6, 2012 By Jennifer Lambert 2 Comments

We’ve been fitting in Tot School wherever we can this summer. We haven’t done much formally and I often didn’t have a camera available to get cute shots of the Bubba!

I gave Alex his share of dough when we made our salt maps. He loved doing this!

He’s often working alongside his sisters.

Salt Dough:

1 cup flour
1/2 cup salt
1/2 cup water
food coloring (optional)

Homemade play dough is great. I really can’t stand the smell of the name brand store bought stuff. I often make ours yummy-scented and use really neat colors. I store them in bags in the fridge and they keep forever.

Alex likes to help with chores. He likes to use the spray mop. I guess he needed that stool for leverage or something. Maybe he’s got a little Captain in him.

He really loves mopping! But I had to dry the floor with a towel when he was “done”.

Coloring his “Rose Window” for history. We studied medieval cathedrals. I love it when he participates with his sisters. He’s getting to be such a big boy!

He really loves the early readers on the iPad. Alex knows all the colors of the rainbow!

I found this great little fishy tray on clearance at Walmart and knew I had to have it. We used it to sort Goldfish crackers by color, of course.

Alex is saying, “I did it!” and is really just excited that he gets to eat them now.

Alex does love “his” iPad. He has really learned so much from the apps in the last year. He loves Preschool Adventure lately. His favorite is the arcade, especially the rocket letter game where he gets to blast the robots. I am impressed that he can identify and differentiate the uppercase and lowercase letters. The sounds remind me of the Cybermen in Doctor Who. creepy!

Alex got a cute big boy haircut at JCP. They’re free for kids all of August!

Some of my favorite shots. Alex started gymnastics with his sisters (different classes). He got some slick sunglasses in a kids’ meal from Arby’s. He loves feeding the ducks. And his darling spiky new big boy haircut. He was so thrilled to get a sucker.