Week 1
Letter A
21 months, 22 months, 3 years, & 4 years
Over the past year I have been reading blogs all about 'Tot School.' It took a year of really deciding if I could keep up with this and not let the children down. Now that I have begun there is no turning back! We will focus on one letter of the alphabet each week. I want to also focus on a color as well for the two young boys. The first week of Tot School was a success! The three and four year old could point out a letter A, tell you it's sound, and a couple things that begin with this letter. The young babies could tell you the letter's sound and they learned new vocabulary. One now says, 'alligator.' and the other now says, 'apple.' The children may be on different levels of thinking and processing but it's great to see all the different results each child gets.
Each Monday I only have my three and four year old which is wonderful for the day and what they can learn without little ones running around. I gave them worksheets and let them trace over the letter A repeatedly. Big A's and little a's. They really enjoy tracing letters right now and I want them to have a visual of the letter before we head off to the library to find books that start with the letter A or are about things that start with A. We checked out five different books. We read these books every single day of the week. Their favorite was Arthur's Underwear.
The next few days we started really getting into our activities with the letter A. We also started each morning watching video clips on youtube about the letter A. Sesame Street has awesome clips on each letter! We also watched 'Teach My Alligator Manners' which was a hit with the oldest child and was a God send when the children were being unruly or rude. All I had to say to them for the week was "alligator manners" and they would change their behavior. Awesome!
Here are a few activities we did this week:
I cut and made a tree with construction paper. You can't tell but I drew circle on the tree. The goal was to use the tongs to put the pom poms (apples) on the circles. Most of the kids really enjoyed this activity and I was surprised at how successful they were with using the tongs! Even the young ones really enjoyed this.
I made a felt tree and had the kids go apple pickin'. This activity was definitely the favorite of the week! They all begged to do this one over and over. And the little babies couldn't get enough of picking and saying, "apple" over and over again. They counted each apple they picked and even grouped them by size later on. "daddy apples, mommy apples, kid apples and baby apples"
This tray was a sequencing tray where the children had to match the sequence of the eating an apple with the numbers. This was easy to some and very hard for others to understand. Also I don't think many of the kids have eaten an apple without it being cut up to understand what an apple looks like when taking a few bites and when the apple is to it's core. We will be doing a lot more sequencing!
For this activity I printed out a letter Aa worksheet and laminated it at my mother's house and let the children trace the letters with play-doh, however they would rather just roll the playdoh in balls, if I watched and helped them roll they actually did the activity. ;) Also a favorite!
I also printed out this apple, laminated it, and punched holes around the sides and taped yarn to the back for them to lace the apple. This activity was a dud. The children weren't interested and have a time lacing. I had to do a lot of the work for them so we will try these every now and then and see if they improve.
This is a matching activity. There were six cards, three with BIG A's and matching pictures with three little a's. This was easy and pie! Some kids really enjoyed this one and got really excited to do this one over and over.
We also did a lot of dotting worksheets where the children dotted over A's and traced A's with dotting markers. The children also LOVED these activities. I didn't get many pictures of all the dot sheets they completed but we did one each day.
I also had a sensory activity for them for the week.
I bought a growing alligator from the dollar store. The children named him Al from the youtube show, "Teach My Alligator Manners." We initially put him in the bathtub but I quickly remembered that aquarium starts with A. So we got busy and grabbed a huge pan and went outside to make an aquarium for our class 'pet' for the week. As you can see he also got friends, a snake, dolphin, and a whale. Through out the week they checked on Al and played in the water with the animals. Every morning as I pulled up at the house I was told how much growing Al had done over night. They really enjoyed watching him grow from a 'baby' alligator to a 'daddy' alligator.
I tried to let the children work in the kitchen a lot more than I ever do. I am not the biggest fan of the children in the kitchen with me on most days because I am not a fan myself of being in the kitchen. I am going to really try to work out of this and try to learn new recipes as the children LOVE and beg to work in the kitchen ALL the time. So here are the snacks we made for letter A.
The children did all the pouring and mixing on these applesauce cookies and even rolled the balls of dough. The three year old loved the dough and played with it as if it were play-doh. We used this recipe: Applesauce Cookies
The children sliced up apples by themselves to make our own homemade applesauce. Not only did they enjoy slicing and pouring in the contents we also enjoyed the smell that took over the little house. We used this recipe: Applesauce
Because I don't like celery and I can tell you that more than likely the children don't either I decide to ditch the 'ants on a log' and go with 'ants on an apple.' which they REALLY enjoyed. Apparently raisins, peanut butter and apples are a great pair. The children were ecstatic to also see the 'ants' made an A.
Crafts for the week:
The children used paper plates as the apple core and glued on three seeds, a stem and a leaf. :) Glue is definitely their favorite craft supply to work with.
I also found these little wooden alligators at the Michael's for $1.00 each that come with their own little paints and a brush. The children sat and painted for over thirty minutes! Also the smallest child learned and loves to say, "alligator" after this activity! Keep the new words rolling in. :)
I got the worksheets/ dot sheets and laminated activities off this awesome site:
Next week is the letter B!
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