The new year has begun with a brand new Tot School for my 29 month old boy!  We have begun John’s official letter weeks, starting with Aa.  Our curriculum consists of 1plus1plus1equals1‘s Tot School ABC’s.  We don’t do everything that she includes in her packs, but we do most, and will add or subtract to suit John’s interests.  We couple this with a couple of pages from Royal Baloo‘s Terrific Truck ABCs.  John loves everything truck, so these are perfect!  He has also gotten really excited about his ABC bible verse songs from Songs for Saplings.  These songs are so catchy, and I find myself singing and learning and memorizing the bible verses along with him.  Carisa at 1plus1plus1equals1 has made coordinating ABC Bible Verses which have really helped with his memorization as well.  

I am a huge scheduler.  I like to have it all written down, but every day I know that we will do things that aren’t on my lists and we won’t complete other things that I have written.  But I like a visual of what I’d like to do, to keep myself sane.  I use Homeschool Creations’ great Preschool Schedule. 

We also I have decided to have six tot trays out for the week and I try to be intentional with activities  that correlate with each of the four Montessori learning categories: Language, Sensory, Mathematics, Practical Life.  Our Tot Trays are out on our shelf all week.  John can play with them at any time, but sometimes I’ll take one out intentionally for us to play together.  For A week, we had the letter A out from our Lauri A-Z Pegboard Stacker set, a yellow sensory bin, a pom-pom-tong-sorter game, our Melissa & Doug shape clock, some cute little color bins and color buttons (I wrote about this here), and our letter A is for Apple puzzle.

Bible verse of the week:

Keep me as the apple of your eye.  Psalm 17:8

Letter of the week: Aa!

We colored with markers, crayons, dry erase, do-a-dot markers.  We hang them all up in his room. He is so proud of himself and shows daddy his school work every night.

And John’s new favorite: stamps!

And making an A with his gluten-free play dough on 1plus1plus1equals1′s awesome Animal ABC Playdough Mats!  (That’s his I’m so excited smile.)

Our Aa on our fridge: I have collected the Aa’s we have in our house.  He loves the Leapfrog Magnetic letters — I found this at a garage sale, but I would have paid full price!

Book of the week:

I love the Five in a Row curriculum.  We have Before Five in a Row, and are reading through some of the books in there and also picking books according to our season, theme, or interest. John picked his book out this week.  We had read The Little Rabbit (part of the BFIAR), and I happen to own The Little Puppy too.  He loved loved loved this one.  He has a little stuffed puppy dog that he has now named Charlie and wouldn’t let out of his sight!

These are wonderful books and I think I may get them all — I see that they are selling them for $3.25 and there are stories about a kitten, pig, lamb, and a duck!

Snow!

Cutting cucumbers with dad!

Putting away silverware.

 

Our letter craft of the week can be found as part of 1+1+1=1‘s Animal ABCs.  This was our first try at sponge painting, and John loved it!  We did yellow and blue and explored how the two colors made green!