I started doing a little Tot School with Marin last August. When all my teacher friends were going back to school and setting up classrooms, my teacher genes got motivated to set up a space for our girls as well. So this week we have started our 2nd year of Tot School here at Brednich Academy. :o) I steal all of my ideas from all the creative, smart mommas out there in cyber world. There are about a billion blogs with great curriculums and if you add Pinterest as a resource, I have more than enough ideas! But some of the online curriculums I refer to often are....
- Last year, I used Letter of the Week curriculum from Confessions of a Homeschooler quite a bit. We use bits and pieces of it now, but I do get quite a bit of ideas from her blog.
- The Reading Mama also has a great Pre-K curriculum called Reading the Alphabet. It's free and covers all the letters. She has lots of different activities for each letter.
- And the Letter of the Week Preparatory Curriculum also has some great ideas and a great curriculum to follow.
But my favorite place for ideas is Pinterest. I have a Letter of the Week board and a Tot School board. There are tons of ideas out there and I steal all of them!
This year for our Tot School we will have a letter of the week, a number of the week, a shape of the week, and color of the week. Plus I have some fun themes that I think the girls will enjoy planned throughout the year. First up, BUTTERFLIES. Our caterpillars are on the way and we will get to watch every phase of its cycle. I have already started a butterfly board for ideas! Other themes we will explore are....
All About Me/Five Senses
Fall
Where the Wild Things Are/Monsters
Pumpkins
Halloween
Farm
Thanksgiving/Manners
Christmas
Animal Homes
Snow
Dental Health
Community Helpers
Transportation
Zoo
Garden
Camping
The Three Bears
The Three Little Pigs
And a little tour of our playroom "school room"....
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| Here are our "work baskets". Some use Tot Trays but I don't have space for trays. So I hung a pegboard we already have and hung baskets from them. Each basket will hold an activity for each or both girls that relate to the letter or theme. More on those later.... |
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| Our pocket chart and number line. The pocket chart just holds any new words I want to introduce. (BTW, Marin saw a white van today and yelled "ambulance". Ha! Close....) It's great language practice for Hollis as well. The number line we use to count out to the number of the week. |
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| Our learning board... I just changed this up a bit because my sweet neighbor friend gave me a set of color posters. I love the big colors and now Marin can practice spelling the words. But the letter cards are tactile cards that I found at the Dollar Tree. Great for Hollis especially to touch the letters. And then theAlphabet Movement Cards (make circles with your Ankle), I found here. Shape and Number cards are just flashcards from the dollar tree. Although, the number will change soon because I found a really great number anchor chart idea! Can't wait to do it with the girls! |
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| Our weather chart and song board. Marin LOVES to do the weather! We just use sunny and rainy cards now (since that's pretty much all the weather we have here in Houston) but will add more later. |
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| Our room is far from finished (or organized) but for now here is our back wall. |
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| Our yard sale kitchen find and artwork gallery. Our artwork is a little bare because I just weeded out for new projects coming. :o) The "Y" in PLAY keeps falling down. Hollis LOVES to help hang it back up though. Sorry for the blurred picture. |
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| Our tangram puzzles and peg boards.... |
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| Magnet board (Hollis favorite!!) puzzles, legos, and books.... |
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| Games, all our cars, trains, play doh, and art supplies (up high out of little hands reach...). |
I'm sure things will change up as we go along but for now here is the plan and our little space to play.
1 comments:
Love it! And thanks for all the links!
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