Tot School

I am actually attempting to capture three weeks worth of Tot School in one blog post. Even though this one has yet to be completely written, I began to take pictures of Tot School for my next post today. So here goes with some highlights of The Granola Family's Tot School.

It all began with Do-A-Dots. If we are having a rough day or I need a quick, non-messy craft project to keep hands (prone to mischief--when Mom is cooking) busy, this is my quick draw. It always produces excitement and about an hour's worth of entertainment.

I bought a REALLY big coloring pad at Walmart, choosing a pad that has cartoon pictures that are simple in design, with a lot of white space. This allows them to have a large area to create Monet masterpieces.

I have been including Mr. Me-Too in parts of Mr. Smackdown's phonics lessons. We are using Rocket Phonic this year, but I pulled out my Saxon letter cards for this activity. They matched the letter tiles to the correct phonics card. This would have been a fabulous letter recognition and sorting activity for Mr. Me-Too, but he enjoyed lining up his letter tiles, much to the dismay of his older brother who wanted all of the tiles to be gently placed on their respective cards.


They have been using the balance and filling it with cars, letter tiles, and whatever small items they can find. I am not sure what goal they are accomplishing, but they really enjoying seeing the balance teeter back and forth.


Mr. Me-Too has been working on some fine motor skills by lacing alphabet beads onto a string.


We worked on patterns and colors with this Melissa and Doug sorting peg game.

Mr. Me-Too also had to match the magnet to the correct picture in the Alphabet Magnetic book. I said the sound and the object and then he looked for it. Big Brother also enjoyed helping Mr. Me-Too locate the required animal. In fact, it became a little bit of a competitive game.


The boys worked on finishing a Thomas the Train puzzle.


Using an Abeka preschool art book from last year, Mr. Me-Too cut out a lamb puppet that was perfect because it looked like Lovey Lamb from AWANA.


This started out as a educational alphabet recognition game on our front window, but it turned into art 101.


We took a big trip to see our family doctor for Mr. Me-Too's and Mr. Smackdown's yearly physical. They are both healthy and growing strong. While we waited, the boys worked on coloring their Mailbox Bible Club page.

This is our fabulous doctor doing cranial sacral on Mr. Me-Too, who absolutely LOVES it when Dr. P works on him!
On our way home, we had yet to clean the Loser Cruiser from our Canada vacation and stopped by a local car wash and gave the minivan a necessary bath and vacuum. It took some coaxing and prayer to help the boys understand that we weren't hurting our car.

And our recent Tot Time brings us to a close with the introduction of colorful and see-through counters. Mr. Me-Too individually placed each counter into a former cod liver oil container.


Later, the boys sorted the counters and cubes into colors.


The hit of the week, was when my Mother's Helper, Miss. Swan, blessed our household with her calmness and a belated crafty birthday present. The boys had a blast creating animals and insects out of pom pom balls!


And so closes three weeks worth of school. My goals are to get a bit more organized for Tot Time. IKEA here we come!

Check out 1+1+1=1 for more Tot School ideas!