Tot School

We are still moving along in this whole home school discovery...and we're having a blast! I've always heard that people make time to do what they love, and that is ringing so true in my life right now. I love spending time with Olivia watching her grow, learn, and express herself. I love figuring out how I'm going to challenge her to learn, yet remembering she is only 3 and needs lots of play time. So with those two things in mind I am making changes to how we approach our Tot School time.

We had been using the Hubbard's Cupboard curriculum for her age and following it to the letter. It started out fantastic with a couple of weeks learning about creation. She still walks into the office and asks to learn more about creation. The first two weeks were all about stories and recreating what we learned...a perfect fit for Olivia. However, as the weeks have gone by the curriculum has become more "academic" and not holding the attention of my little 3 year old with a gigantic imagination. And that's not to say it wouldn't work for other 3 year old's.

I am still using some portions of it...following the Bible Story plan, songs, memory verses (which are working great for her. We add the signs to the verses and every now and then I see her just sitting somewhere practicing. A pleasant surprise.), and occasionally some other activity or book if it seems like it would work for her.

Other than that I've moved more toward following the Tot School from the 1+1=1 blog. Her idea for this age centers more around child led activities and play time. It definitely suits Olivia's personality and age a bit better. I'm also looking for ways to incorporate more books and follow-up activities since Olivia loves to read and then recreate what she read. I'm using ideas from Totally Tots "Once Upon a Book" as well as looking into the Itty Bitty Bookworm. I am still experimenting a lot, and I'm sure even as she grows and changes what we do will grow with her.

So, here's some pictures from our Tot School this week:

Nema has been sending Olivia pictures of everyone from Colorado to create an album, so we spent some of our time putting the two most recent pages together. I help a lot with this, but she is able to help place the pictures and put stickers on the page. She put all the beach stickers on one page...it was a pile of stickers. (And as you can see, Yaya was still in her pajamas with some nice bed head going on (o:

I have started incorporating trays into our time. There are 6 trays and Olivia can choose an activity. She chose her new Diego Underwater Sticker book that we bought at the Boston Childrens' Museum

One of the books we did last week was "The Scarecrow and the Spider." We pretty much followed the directions from Totally Tots, though Olivia felt the scarecrow needed a body too.

Our letter of the week. We did this activity from Hubbard's Cupboard (along with the Bible story theme of Joseph and His Brothers.) She painted the letters and then stuck egg stickers on them.

Our letter "E" tray.

Another tray using the Melissa & Doug see and spell. This was fun, especially toward the end when she discoverd the letter "O" spins and rolls.

Here is another book we read, "Pigs Love Potatoes." We got the book in the mail through Dolly Parton's Imagination Library a while back. After we read the book she acted it out using her blue rice and scissors. She was pretending the rice was potatoes and she was the mama pig cooking up the potatoes. This book and activity was all Olivia...I had done zero planning for it; but the blue rice for one of our other books was already sitting there just begging to be used for potatoes.

A couple other activities I don't have pictures for:

Search & Learn Park Puzzle
Melissa & Doug Jungle Puzzle

Another activity we did this week was from Itty Bitty Bookworm. I downloaded their sample pages for the book "Mushroom in the Rain" and we did a different activity each day (3 days) along with reading the book. For some reason I didn't snap any pictures. But she really enjoyed it. We created a rain drop with blue rice, dressed up in rain gear and pretended it was raining, and created puppets for a puppet show. This method seems to work really well for her as she already loves to act out her books. She even continued acting the book in her free play time.

Another one of her most recent favorites has been "My Lucky Day" by Keiko Kasza.

So, with all that said, one final thought...we spend about an hour each day with our Tot School. Somedays more and somedays less depending on her interest. And, most of these ideas are from the 1+1=1 blog and Totally Tots Blog. There's a ton to explore on that site and it explains in full the "philosophy" behind it.