Week 2: Tuesday and Wednesday

*linking up with 1+1+1=1's Tot School Gathering today*

TUESDAY

Feed the Lion:
(I first saw the idea here at Eyes of a Boy)

Monday night after Scout went to bed I explained my need for a friendly looking lion head to my husband. He thought my attempt was pretty hilarious and agreed to draw me a new one.

Much better :)

When we came downstairs Tuesday morning she was a little weary of the Lion on the table, but warmed up to it. She played with it for a while before getting her pipe cleaners out again. (She really likes those, but I had to take away to container for a little bit because she wanted to bang it against the coffee table and didn't listen when I told her not to.)

Sorry about the poor quality, my flash isn't great.

Skills:

• pushing objects through
• fine motor skills
• in/out
• letter recognition practice

Vocab:

• In/out
• lion
• letters in her name

Stickers:

 After her nap she played with the pipe cleaners again. My homemade paper lid eventually ripped and I had to make another one. Then she did a sticker project but I didn't take any photos of that. I had to peel the stickers off for her, and she seemed a little upset that once they were stuck on the paper she couldn't get them off again.

Here is a picture from today of the finished product.

A couple times while Scout was holding one sticker she'd point to its mate on the paper. After they were all stuck on she pointed to one monkey then the other monkey and one elephant then the other elephant. If I asked her to find a specific one (e.g. Where is the other giraffe?) she wouldn't do it.

Skills:

• fine motor
• creativity
• pinching
• matching (a little)

Vocab:

• Lion, Elephant, Giraffe, Monkey, Tiger, Zebra, Rhinoceros (a new one for her)

WEDNESDAY

Art:

At the Detroit Zoo (and probably other zoos, though I can't speak from experience) they have a station called "Handimals" where a person paints your hand, makes a hand print, and then draws your hand print into an animal of your choice. Last summer I got Scout a tiger print. Its adorable. I was originally thinking I'd try something like that, but the morning really got away from me somehow, so I just let her paint freestyle.

This was her first attempt at painting, and I may have tricked her a little bit by putting the paint in bowls (I thought it'd be easier for her to see and reach and not tip over) and putting a bib on her. So naturally she thought it was a snack and tasted it (though really she's been very picky about new foods recently and wouldn't even touch a strawberry this morning even though she'll eat them in her yogurt...but I digress.)

Once Scout realized what a bad idea that was, and what you are actually supposed to do with the paint, she had a lot of fun. I probably should have named the colors for her, and added more to our vocab, but I was having so much fun watching her paint that I didn't really emphasize learning this time. Maybe in the future if I remember.

Trying out her fingers instead of the brush.

Obviously having a moody Picasso moment here.

I couldn't stop laughing, and she looked at me like, "What?"

Skills:

• holding a paintbrush
• pre-writing (sort of)
• color mixing
• art/creativity

Vocab:

• paint
• paintbrush

So today was pretty laid back. We tried something new, and enjoyed it. I think painting will probably work its way into most our themes. And I think I'll grab a couple cheap table clothes from dollar tree next time I'm there to use as tarps for the table and floor (just in case).

-Jes

Week 2: Monday

MONDAY
I thought I'd get things started by bringing out the the Feed the Lion game. That did not go over well, and as Scout was trying to shove the terrifying thing as far back on the shelf as possible, she noticed the pipe cleaners in the next bin. I helped her bring it over to the table. It was an instant hit.
 ...On the plus side, I learned if I want her to voluntarily pick up around here all I have to do is put scary lions on her things.

Here is an action shot of her putting the lion away.

Pipe Cleaners

She knew what to do with it right away and she worked on it at least 20 minutes before getting bored.

I was originally going to draw and cut out little animal pictures and tape them to the top to go along with our zoo theme, but after poorly drawing the other animal cards we used I decided to skip it. I'm glad I didn't do it now because she got pretty creative and decided to put both ends of the pipe cleaner through the holes.

I counted each pipe cleaner she put in (6 total) and named each color as she did it (red, black, orange, purple, green, yellow). We even worked on cleaning up after we were done, but she did get it back out a couple more times.

Skills:

• fine motor skills
• identifying colors
• counting to 6
• pre threading/lacing
• focus

Vocabulary:

• in/out
• numbers 1-6
• colors

Heads and Tails Game

This started out well. Scout has some easy 2 piece farm puzzles that she likes, and this was very similar.

One thing that really upset her though, and kinda ruined her interest in it, is that they don't fit together like two puzzle pieces. If she pushes them too far they overlap. She only got the ends together correctly if they were in the right order to begin with; if the right piece was on the left side she still tried to just slide it over and didn't care that the picture wasn't complete.

I love this look of concentration.

Skills:

• matching
• very basic animal anatomy
• puzzle work

Vocabulary:

• Dolphin
• Giraffe
• Panda
• Elephant
• together/apart 

She also had fun dividing her sensory/discovery bin. She didn't like her toys being mixed up with her rocks.

Not a bad start to our week. I have an art project or two in mind for Wednesday or Thursday, and maybe the hubs (who is a much better cartoonist than I) will draw us a friendlier lion so we can play our Feed the Lion game without worry.

Thank you all so much for your encouragement last week. Tot school is intimidating at first but I am very glad I decided to give it a try.

Jes

Week 2: Zoo Theme Supplies

I almost gave up on my zoo theme this week because I was having a hard time producing what was in my head into an actual activity. I never got around to setting up our printer, so I had to get creative. However, I am glad I stuck with it, even if its not as "zoo-y" as I hoped it would be.

Here's what I came up with:

Feed The Lion:

 This is basically a reuse of materials we used last week. I drew a lion's face and taped it onto the empty baby wipe container. The hole is where his mouth is. The idea is that she will feed the lion the bottle caps with her name on them. When I got it out this morning though, she seemed to hate it and banished it back to the shelf. (It could be because he looks more like he just walked of the stage of Cats The Musical than an actual lion...I'm no artist).

Pipe Cleaners:

I didn't have an empty Parmesan cheese container handy, so instead I used a glass jar for creamer and made a "lid" using paper and a hole punch. I secured it on there with a rubber band. I was surprised at how well this held up. I expected the paper to rip or for the rubber band to slide out of place, but she played with it quite a bit this morning and it still works well. More on that later though.

Heads and Tails:

These are slightly less terrifying, (except for that "dolphin" over there who kinda looks like he's from the wrong side of the tracks). You match the left half (head) to the corresponding right half (tail). I only know how to draw a panda sitting up so he's not really a head/tail match. Apparently he is also very much not in the center, so when I cut them all together he only lost an ear, an elbow, and a knee. I put these in a ziplock bag in the bin, hopefully we wont loose them.

Sensory Bin:

 I added toys to her rocks and some scraps of fabric that looked like tiger stripes. I thought this would develop more imaginative play, but she just got upset and threw the toys out and played with the rocks again. So plain rocks it is! 

....and in case you were wondering, yes that one giraffe did start out life as a dog toy, but has since (to the great sadness of our pup ...and after a good washing...) been adopted by Scout.

Puzzle:

We have an animal puzzle so I got that out and our animal books for some more theme play. 

By the way that library trip did not go well. It was our first trip there and I know she loves books, so I anticipated our biggest problem being me running behind her picking up everything she pulled off the shelves. However, as soon as we walked in the children's section, she spotted the librarian's bath duck collection (we're talking around 50+ ducks lined up of every color and character imaginable). Lining up ducks is right up her alley, so all she wanted to do was play with them. She whined and whined until the librarian kindly gave her two to carry around. Then when it was time to give the ducks back and go home she screamed "Duck! Duck!" at the top of her lungs, but with her little toddler voice it sounded more like "Cuck! Cuck!" Everyone was staring as we left. I may wait until my husband gets home and go by myself next time...

I'll follow up throughout the week on what she played with, what she liked and didn't like, and any changes we come up with. Thanks!

Jes

Ideas for Week 2

For our first week with a theme I want to try "Zoo Animals"
(this is all subject to change)

What we have:
Wooden Zoo Puzzle, Little People Zoo Train, 2 Animal Books, Giraffe Elephant and Monkey Stuffed Animals, Rocks

To Make:
Printable animals to cut in half for "Heads and Tails" Game (from Ironic Adventures), Printable for "Feed the Bear" game (idea from The Eyes of a Boy).

To Buy:
Stickers, maybe some stuff for the sensory bin


Bin 1: Zoo Puzzle
Bin 2: "Heads and Tails"
Bin 3: Stickers
Bin 4: "Feed the Bear"
Bin 5: Sensory Bin

Library:
If I Ran the Zoo, Curious George at the Zoo, ...