1.19.2009

We Love Tot School!

Over the past week or so I have begun Tot School with Lorelai. You can find out more about Tot School by clicking here.
Tot School is all about exposing early learning skills through fun play. It takes place before your child enters Pre-K. There is no curriculum to buy and the only rule is that it be FUN. All the glory goes to A for introducing me to the idea :)
Not only has Lorelai been loving out Tot School activities, but I have been getting a huge kick out of creating activities and tools that fit/stretch her capabilities and knowledge. Here are some pictures of us Tot Schoolin'...
Music time with some Sesame Street hits:



Number time on our magnet board (thanks to target we got the board, letters, and numbers for a total of $4.50!):

Lorelai loves this color/shape stacker (thanks to buybuy baby we can all get 20% off their selection of Melissa and Doug toys with those never-ending BB&B coupons!):

Puzzle time:

I had fun creating the color cards, word spelling game, and alphabet garland. I even added a "polka dots", "stripes", and "plaid" card to the color cards. Cute!




I really feel that Tot School has renewed my passion for staying home with Lorelai. I'll be posting more about our learning adventures soon :)

9 comments:

Amy Clary said...

Get OUT! Alex and I just started Tot School today. :) We made our first Tot-Book. Of course, he chose the Big Machines template. :)
He did SO well with our activities and I can not wait to do more. We had such a great morning together thanks to Tot School.
That's so funny you've started that too! I found out about it through a search for homeschooling ideas.

Becca said...

I can't wait to do the tot-books and lap books! lorelai for sure isn't at the point yet where she won't tear them all apart though. we'll get to do them soon though!
Yeah for us Tot-schoolers!!!

Nina Bunk said...

umm ok how much will you charge me to make me a garland??!!! i absolutely love it!!!

Jamie said...

What a neat idea! Where did you have the colors laminated at?

Becca said...

luckily a laminator is part of my husband's home office :)

appleandi said...

YEAH! i'm so excited both of you are doing tot school!

jamie, i laminate at the MISD teacher's workshop. $0.50 per foot, but it is 3 or 4 feet wide!

http://www.misd.net/teacherwkshp/default.htm (there is a price list on here)

there may be something like this near you.

Carisa said...

YAY! Welcome to Tot School! I loved your post, especially about the part of it renewing your passion to stay home with her. I found that when the whole journey began for us it made me appreciate my tot SO much more. He was no longer just -in the way- of big kid stuff.

I look forward to seeing your ideas each week, thanks for joining!!!

Carisa

Pamela said...

My first time to tot school as well. I will be posting pics on Friday and wanted to see what others were doing. I scrapbook as well and I love some of your ideas! Can't wait to try the color cards!

Anonymous said...

Welcome to tot school from me as well, I just started posting a few weeks ago. I loved all your ideas. If you want to find more crafty, relatively cheap (especially with coupons from the craft stores like ac moore, michael's and jo-ann fabrics if you have those around you) activities visit this site that I found on the 1+1+1 blog called childcareland. The teaching ideas section is especially helpful if you want to see more of how to do the ideas and not just print out stuff to make on your own.
http://www.childcareland.com/teach.html