Tot School Week 1 - Farm Theme

E is 21 months old

For our first week of Tot School, I chose to do a farm theme. I am planning on continuing this for a couple of weeks, and culminating it with a playdate a friend is giving letting the kids pretend to run a farm stand. I am so excited for that playdate! What a wonderful idea!!

Learning Toys:
E has been working hard on her puzzles. E loves puzzles, she's just not very good at them yet! She is getting better at getting the pieces to fit, but still gets bored or frustrated after only a couple of pieces. This shape puzzle seems to be easier for her than some of the cute animal puzzles.

We got a new game at a garage sale last week, a set of Leapfrog card games. This week we have been working on finding the animal matches with the memory cards. This is a challenging game for E, but she is starting to understand what I want her to do. I put all the cards out face up and have her stack the matches. Look, she found a rabbit match!

She gets bored with this game easily, though, and thinks it is much more fun to mix the cards up and carry them around the house!

Alphabet:
We've been working on letter B since last week. Here is our Letter B Bumblebee fridge art from last week, inspired by No Time For Flashcards:

In addition to the cute bat we made last week, we did a Letter B butterfly craft this week! Check back next week to see a post all about it. :)

Theme - Farm:
This was the first time E had worked with lacing beads. She did a great job! They held her attention for a good 20 minutes the first time I pulled them out. Here she is concentrating on threading another animal on. Look how many she did!

Once she had a few strung, she said, "come on, horsey, let's go!" and took them all for a walk around the kitchen.

Along with our shape puzzles this week, E wanted to work on her new farm puzzle. This involved her taking all the pieces off and making them walk around the living room floor, making their animal sounds. So, not much puzzle learning, but good for recognizing the animals and their sounds and being creative!

We made our own barn picture out of red foam sheets. I cut out a barn shape and cut doors in it. Then I got out some old farm animal stickers, and had E put the animals inside the doors of the barn. She loves to stick stickers!

Reading Basket:
E is definitely a little bookworm. I decided to put together books for our theme in a basket in the living room. She can pick stories to read centered around our theme and they are within easy reach when it's time to relate them to other activites.

Books in our reading basket:

• The Little Rabbit Who Liked to Say MOO by Jonathan Allen
• Big Red Barn by Margaret Wise Brown
• Dora's Eggs by Julie Sykes
• Chuck's Truck by Peggy Perry Anderson
• Hello, Day! by Anita Lobel
• The Rickety Barn Show by Jemma Beeke
• The Rusty, Trusty Tractor by Joy Cowley
• Barnyard Dance by Sandra Boynton
• Little Red Hen by Byron Barton
• Old Macdonald by Pam Adams

Favorite Photo of the Week:

"camera!"