Shapes Tot Pack

This is the beginning of Bee's Shapes Tot Pack (click the image to download PDF). I've only made things and added things made by others that Bee can currently do and use but there are so many other great shapes resources out there that could be easily used too.  Here is what we've done...

First things first we have a shape train! Bee loves trains so I figured why not make each car carry a shape. I've only cut out the yellow shapes for right now and once he knows what all the shapes are and how to match them correctly I'll cut out the other colors as well. This way it isn't too overwhelming to start with. The idea being that he adds the shapes to the appropriate train car. : )

Next we have the shape matching on other images. This idea I actually borrowed from First-School.  This site has several pages made just like mine. I however found these cute clip art images for pictures Bee already knew so that the shapes would really be the new item.  Bee chooses which of the four he wants to use and then matches the shapes (with much prompting because he mainly knows circle, heart, and star).

Finally I printed the shape puzzles from Confessions of a Homeschooler.  Bee's still not very interested in puzzles so right now I put them together and we just talk about what shapes they are.  Nothing too crazy but I'm going to keep them available to him!

There are so many other great shape activities out there and as Bee's interest and ability increase I'll add more activities to his tot pack. Hope you all enjoy. Please leave a comment if you use my PDF during your tot school time!

Tot School (19 months)

~ Bee is 19 months!

 This week has been a very productive one as far as tot school is concerned! Which is a miracle considering we went to Six Flags too!  In these two pictures Bee is playing with his new cutting toy by Melisa and Doug. I found this brand new at a consignment sale and am so happy I bought it. Bee LOVES cutting the food and pretending to eat it! He's been really into pretend play lately which is a HUGE developmental milestone!

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 This is Bee's latest Sensory Bin! Right now it is mainly Easter things but will eventually be turned into the Spring Bin.  As you can see Bee had a great time making an absolute MESS of my living room. He liked scooping out the eggs, opening them, pulling out all the grass, getting in the bin, throwing the grass, finding all the animal hidden in the bin, and finally (in the end) helping Mommy pick up every piece of grass on our SHAG carpet!

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 I feel this week we've finally made some progress on a number or different skills! Bee has FINALLY started stacking his circles, octagons, and squares on different pegs some of the times! He doesn't do it all the time yet but he is definitely getting there so we've been making an effort to play with his stacker a lot and I'm making a huge effort to really use a lot of helpful vocabulary for him while we're doing it.  He's also started stacking his blocks on his own during his independent play. He's been able to stack blocks for a long time but not until recently would just do it without prompting. So that is pretty cool!

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 As mentioned we've been making a lot of progress this week.  That includes in the area of our felt board.  With Humpty Dumpty, Fidgety Fish/Ocean Friends/ and If You Give a Mouse a Cookie Bee is now able to grab the correct pieces from a pile (most of the time) when we are reading about that piece in the story.  He then either plays with it a little bit (as seen above in the right hand picture where he is sweeping the mouse) or puts it immediately on the felt board.

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Finally this week we've been working a lot on different shapes. I realized the other day Bee knows not only circle but also heart, star, and triangle/rectangle (sometimes).  This knowledge came unexpectedly when Bee pointed to shapes on my clothing and told me they were hearts and stars. AND HE WAS RIGHT!! So naturally I decided it's time to really work with him on shapes! So I made a tot pack which I will blog about separately.  In this picture Bee and Daddy are talking about shapes before Daddy left for work. It is my favorite from this week!

As always, check out what other tots are doing in their tot schools!

Tot School (18 months)

~Bee is 18 months!

Another great week at Tot School. I feel like we are finally getting back into the swing of things. I've gotten around to cleaning again and to doing our hour of Tot School (focused play) at least four times a week. We play with the toys everyday just some days I'm more focused than others! But hey, independent play is good for kiddos too, right?!?!?  I've also learned that if I have new Tot School activities they should be done in the morning rather than the afternoon.  Bee is not interested in doing new activities in the afternoon. He looks at them, pretends to be interested for about... a minute, throws them, then says NO. It's so much fun! haha. Anyway, we have a lot of great pictures from this week so enjoy!


Some repeated activities this week were:

 Playing with Pom Poms continues to be a favorite for Bee so naturally we have continued that at various times this week. This picture in particular shows a new way that we started playing with them. Putting them in our dump truck and dumping them out.

 The alphabet puzzle is now a regular for our tot school activities. We are working on recognizing the letters A and B. Bee recognizes the letter A about 80% of the time and the letter B about 60% of the time. He likes to call B, the letter C. So hopefully next week's focus on the letter C will help clear that up. : )

 This is how the floor puzzle looks in the end! Everything torn apart and all over the house. By the way, we lost the letter D, uh-oh!

Bee's starting to recognize shapes. He knows circle all the time but frequently calls triangles and squares circles as well. So we have been working on that. He has started saying triangle some of the time but doesn't really know what a triangle is. haha, I love early learning. : )

New Activities:

 This week we worked a lot of kicking! He's pretty much got it down but now that the weather is turning nice we will start kicking outside with bigger balls.

This was a new activity we tried from Confessions of a Homeschooler.  I've been wanting to see if this sort of activity would be interesting to Bee. He seemed interested for about five minutes and will put the colors in the correct places when I point to where the colors go but won't do it on his own yet. We've pulled it out a couple of times for five minutes or so and will continue to do so. Hopefully once he actually knows his colors this will be a more interesting activity for Bee.

 Bee really enjoys his lacing cards.  This is from a Dr. Seuss set that I got a while back. He can't hold the card on his own yet but he can get the string into the hole! Go BEE!!!

 With Easter just around the corner I found some barnyard Easter eggs in a bag (from last year) and decided to bring them out for Bee to do some matching. I pulled out three eggs (a chicken, a cow, and a pig).  Bee loved playing with these. They went for rides on his lion, were torn apart, a he tried putting them back together. We also worked on the names of the animals and what sounds they make.  Bee is very good with the chicken's "buk, buk" and half the time knows that a pig says "oink, oink". We still need to work on the cow's Moo though. For Ben most of the time a cow says Neigh.

 Bee is trying to push the egg halves together. This was difficult for him but with more practice he will get it. : )

 Another new activity we tried this week are the Alphabet Puzzles created by Homeschool Creations. Bee still shows no interest in puzzles. They all landed on the floor and instead we started reading a book upside down! (See photo below!) We will bring out the puzzles a couple more times and see if he becomes interested. If not, we'll wait a while and try when he's older.

 New book about going potty in a big boy toilet. Bee was very interested in "reading" the book himself. And yes It was upside down. When I switched it right side up he became uninterested!

Arts and Crafts from this week:

 We did a LOT of arts and crafts this week! In this picture we are making a birthday card from Grandpa Joe. It was of course late but still, Bee had a lot of fun making it.

The B craft this week involved making a Bee.

After a lot of work together we got the stripes on our Bee and added other letter B photos. This was great for reinforcing vocabulary. We also added on the stinger and antennae after this point. The craft idea is from Totally Tots and the extra B pictures are from Homeschool Creations.

 My favorite photo this week! Bee getting ready to PAINT! He was so excited. : )

 Bee is painting a piece of wood .

Bee is painting himself! He needed to be colorful too!

Bee needed both hands to paint with and more paper!

Bee drew his first circle! This purple ones are my examples and the tealish/blue one was Bee's. He loves circles and points them out whenever he sees so of course he is going to want to draw them too!

 Coloring a B coloring page also from Homeschool Creations. This coloring page is currently hanging up on our fridge and whenever Bee sees it he shouts "baby!" Not B (What exactly what I intended but hey, at least he's learning something!)

 This week we introduced dot markers for the first time. In this picture Bee is dotting the letter B on a ball. He did really well dotting the B's and saying "buh" while doing so. He also went crazy with just painting. This page was made by Carissa at 1+1+1=1.

This was Bee's first activity with the dot markers. It's a little hard to tell now but most of the dots were filled in. He didn't always make it on the dot but sure tried. Then of course, he went to painting all over! This printable is also from Confessions of a Homeschooler.

And Finally:

 This week we went bowling with some friends and had a great time.  In the above picture we created a barricade of chairs so Bee and his friend wouldn't keep running out that way! So naturally, Bee decided to sit on the chairs and Daddy sat with him!

In this picture Bee is getting help bowling from a friend and Daddy. Not to mention the nice little bowling thingy from the bowling alley. They are actually all watching the balls progress down the lane. ; )

Well, another great and busy week in our home. Hope you all had a great time with tot school as well!