Working with Moveable Letters

Here’s our version of Moveable Letters.  I use foam paper instead of cardstock.

 

Once I completed one set, I used it to name the farm animals Mavi was playing.  He loves to spell the letters and “pretend” that he can read!

Tot School Wrap-Up Week 7

Mavi is 31 months old

April 4 to April 10, 21011.

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Wonderful week, we accomplished a lot of stuff this week because he seemed to cooperate :-)

Painting, drawing and playdough.  He is free to use any materials he wants to use for our art activities.  I just made sure that his crayons, colored pencils, markers and pip squeaks are readily available to encourage him to write and draw and scribble.

 

We seldom do math these days, but this week I sneaked in a few “new” math activities.  We did number matching using clothespin, a math game similar to this, we also did cardboard insets and played his foam letter puzzles.

Then one day, I was in the mood for a little play so I set up a basin full of foam letters and added a few toy boats which I got from Toys R’Us.  He totally love our water play! He played with it the whole afternoon! The only thing he left me though was a messy kitchen and wet floor :(

We also did our farm animal play, putting buttons through a slot, peel and stick foam stickers and playdough.

Cardboard Insets

A few weeks ago, I made Mavi this insets.  They’re made of cardboards and the instead of brads I used pipe cleaners.  I was lucky enough that the store where I get my supplies have pink and blue colored boards, enough to look like Montessori-ish.

Since we can’t use our crayons for this activity I got him colored pencils as well. 

I got out one set and showed him how to  use it in drawing and making shapes.  He tried a few lines then got bored.  He was rather more interested in removing the inner insets and placing it back again... making sure that it fits right in.

Tot School Wrap-Up Week 6

Mavi is 31 months old

March 28 to April 3, 2011

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I’m having a hard time catching up with all the post that I needed to share.  Work has taken most of my time and blogging seems to be my last priority.  So please do pardon me if I make this post as quick as possible and just bombard you with pictures.

This week theme is all about chicken and birds. 

CRAFTS 

 

Dinosaur craft is here.

Lowercase letter “r” craft.  We don’t do this activity anymore wince Mavi seems so preoccupied with this animals.

Bird/chick craft.  This is the first time Mavi encountered a feather.  He was scared of it at first... but got used to it later.  I told him that the feather is light and soft and tickles him.  Good means of sensorial activity.

MATH

 

Counting using popsicle sticks and turtle number cards.  I got the cards from here.

Arranging nests and zebra according to size.

 

LANGUAGE

 

Self correcting alphabet puzzle.

 

Sound and read cards.  Read about it here.

PLAY

Play pretend.  Read it here.

 

    

PRACTICAL LIFE

Using tweezer to transfer pompoms.  First time he encountered this... and he finds it hard to control.  I still have to look for a plastic tweezer because metal ones are very danger.

SCIENCE

Life Cycle of a Chicken.

 

Working with Farm Animals

Mavi is into his farm animals collection.  He keeps asking for them every time he comes home from school.  So what I did was gave him activities related to his interest.

Free play of farm animals toob.

I made him match the animals to that on the book.  I got him the Safari Farm Toobs.  I love this toy because they’re very accurate with their replicas plus it’s lead free.

Then we have the 3-part cards.  I used it to tell him a story, or just match the picture cards to that on the control cards.

That week I also cooked pork stew with corn.  Mavi matched the corn with his plastic corn cob toy hehe.  I was so surprise when he did that.

Chicken grid game.  We didn’t push this through because he wants to play with it on his own way.  He was more interested in throwing the dice in the air and catching it rather then doing the counting.

 

More of animal miniatures.

And this time, we made use of our moveable alphabet.  We name the animals and read the words using phonetic sounds.

Books we read about farm animals.  We also used these books to play matching game.

Preoccupied with Play Pretend

These days my son has a “tot school regression”.  All he wants to do once he arrives from home is play with his blocks and miniature animals.  It started when I bought him a set of shopping cart and play groceries.

He enjoyed this for a moment, his interest didn’t last that long. 

Then I got him a blocks to play and it was a sure win!  Here he is enjoying his Imaginarium blocks together with his zoo animals.

At first he doesn’t know what to do with it, so I showed him how to play the wooden blocks.  To make sense out of it, I made our animals a zoo.  Added some trees and tada! he can’t stop playing!

Another version of animals not... in the jungle.

Then I got him Safari Farm Toobs.  He enjoyed his collections all the more.  These toobs are amazing! I love every single bit of them... and I plan to hoard hehe.  It doesn’t come cheap though, but the quality is good.  It feels like a hard rubber rather than plastic, and the most important is these toobs are lead free.  Because he loves animals, our theme for this week (Week 8) is all about farm animals.  Will post about our detailed activities soon.

    

These are miniature erasers.  I got them from a random store and I wanted to use them for our object box and pink series.  Apparently, he discovered where I kept them for future use so I took it all out and he started playing with them.

Lastly,  here’s what he did for our water play.  Bought the boats for PHP100.

So these are the things my son is enjoying right now.  And like I said, I am regressing from formal tot school to allow him explore things on his own.

Our Dinosaur Craft

This idea came from No Time for Flashcards.

I draw a dinosaur on a piece of cardboard and prepared shades of blue, yellow and green as our paint.

I let Mavi do the painting.

While we let our dinosaur dry, we painted the wooden clips green.

I cut the dinosaur and Mavi assembled the Dinosaur.  I just gave him the instruction and he did it all by himself.  He was so happy with his work. It’s just sad that this dinosaur is one of its kind and doesn’t have any friends around here.  So maybe we’ll create another one using different colors.  It would also help if we have dinosaur models.  Too bad we left all his dino toys back in Belgrade... tsk tsk tsk.  I regret leaving them, they’re really nice toys and even if I bought them in just a random Chinese store, they’re in good quality.

Tot School Wrap-Up Week 5

Mavi is 30 months old.

March 21 – 27, 2011.

 

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• Eric Carle’s The Very Busy Spider.  The story about a spider who was very busy making her web and didn’t have time to play, eat and mind her friends.
• Papa, Please Get the Moon for Me.  It’s a story about a girl who wants to play with the moon and asks her father to get it for her.  The book also presents the waxing and waning of the moon. Mavi learned a lot of vocabulary words from this book.
• Where the Wild Things Are.  This is about a boy named Max who was told to stay in his room.  Later he started to imagine all of sorts of things and adventure while inside his room, including being with the wild things!

CRAFTS

We painted the moon inspired by this book.  Read more about it here.

MATH 

 

Mavi asked for this wheel so he can match colors and numbers again.

 

I made a Montessori Number Rods for him.  It’s a very simple math material but Mavi got hooked.  I didn’t present the Number Rods the way Montessori schools do,we just counted the rods and match it with the right number symbol.  Hopefully next time, when he’s in the mood to do things my way... we can study the rods using the 3 period lessons.

LANGUAGE

 

Enjoying the letter puzzles.

PRACTICAL LIFE

      

He wants to eat on his own.  Something that he learn from school.

  

I gave him a metal scissor to put his cutting skills onto the next level.  He love this and can spend so much time cutting!  I tried to put lines so he can use it as his guide but he just cut anywhere hehe.

PRETEND PLAY

 

Play pretend! Using the all-time-favorite bedsheet cover/blanket, shopping cart and toy fruits and veggies and tin cans.

Mavi’s space.

LANGUAGE

 

We did letter “r” of the sound and read booklets.  Read about it here.

Continuously reading our books... and this week’s favorite is the Where the Wild Things Are.  Mavi loves this book... he pretends that he is Max.  Though I find the graphic of the monsters scary, Mavi was never scared at all.  He loves the pictures of the monsters, even imitating their faces and how they are in the pictures.  This is a really a nice read because it made my boy imagine a lot of things... even asking me to put a jungle in his room!

OTHERS

 

We form shapes and objects using popsicle sticks.

Mavi was into the IPad... but he doesn’t want to put it down once he start playing so I have to keep it away from him.