Tot-school | Week 4 | Letter DOctober 16, 2016
This week’s tot-school…
…we muddled through!
The great thing about tot-school is that disaster isn’t possible. Our key word the first time through the alphabet is exposure, exposure to new words, new concepts, new letters… not learning, not structure, and certainly not essential. Oh we had hopes for a lovely structured times this week, then God laughed. Amazingly we managed to do at least something each day, though by Friday it was at Adam’s request only. Some days tot-school was an afterthought and others it was thought through well in advance, and really that was totally ok with us.
I’d decided to start the week with the letter ‘D’ and choose the extra concept on Tuesday or Wednesday but that never happened so it’s just the letter this week. We are trying to be diverse rather than repetitive, when the activity is unfamiliar his inquisitive nature really kicks in. It led us to try a craft this week which was a roaring success and to move onto a different style of letter sheet too. Letter matching is still a big aim for us and the inevitable b and d confusion reigned so we tried to concentrate on the capital letter more this week.
This weeks read more questions:
Doing some structured activity daily is fun, it’s a focus to the hours spent trying to do something other than play with wooden trains and it’s good for Adam in terms of concentration and development. Adam’s vocabulary is exploding and I really think this is part of the reason why. His grasp of numbers appearing over the last few weeks is really impressive. Printing in colour has been a big yes and anything with lots of pieces is really attractive. Finding the right level between repetition and novelty is also important. Established activities are taken in quickly but hold less appeal. By starting with table-work we’ve built a foundation for instructed activities that he can spin into his creations, it’s fun to finally get onto crafts and I’m really glad we did it this way.
I don’t think I started with a plan beyond each day to do something. That said a rough plan is emerging with Monday being introduction to the letter, one day being more focused on a non-letter concept, another dominated by the paint dabbers and at least one paper free. I’m vaguely planning to run through the whole alphabet in order at least once before changing things.
Some things are clearly favourites but not what I expected. Many of the free activities emphasis pencil control and he’s just not interested, there is a lot about linking upper and lower case letters and directional work, that, while good, doesn’t suit the level he’s at. I started with the letter activities from 1+1+1=1 and letter packs from ‘This Reading Mama’. Both proved way to advanced for Adam so we only use a small selection. The ‘Back to School Preschool Centers’ from ‘In my world’ have been so successful I’ve bought the whole alphabet packet and I’m looking forward to using the bits we’ve not got to yet. This week I discovered Roaming Rosie which has some great ideas I’m hoping to add in next week. Beyond that it’s been mostly Pinterest finds. I have found myself often botching printouts like, phonics cards at 220% for puzzles, screen grabbed book pages, and putting craft templates through a graphics program to add colour.
Tot-school | Week 3 | Letter C & CircleOctober 9, 2016
This week’s tot-school…
…ran out of activities!
Letters seem to be coming up so fast and yet Adam is far from gripping those he’s already been introduced to. With his knowledge of shapes, colours and numbers expanding rapidly, without any tot-school planning, this week we tried to spend some time recapping letters we have covered already. There was a real focus on matching more detailed items. As part of this letter focus rather than a colour we used the circle shape, one he already knew. I was hoping this would tie into the shape of the letter C as well as expand the activities beyond letters and colours.
I did find myself running through activities really quickly this week. We’ve already abandoned some things that just seem to be far too advanced for him and added in some extra word to letter association, but I’d underestimated how many activities he’d want to do each day. It seems 4 is his magic number with at least 2 being new activities, not the 2-3 I had pre-prepared… Wednesday ended when there was nothing new ready to do!
This weeks read more Questions:
I started by doing a lot of browsing, reading well known totschool sites like 1+1+1=1 and totschooling.net as well as searching through google and pinterest. I usually start with the 1+1+1=1 sheets and add in pieces from other sites or my own library. I’ve obviously clicked with some materials more than others but generally I go by feelings – Would Adam be attracted to this page? Would he understand these instructions? Is this sufficiently different from the other activities? etc.
Adam loves the Cbeebies show – Bing – and some months ago I made him cards with each of the characters to help him develop his new found skill of matching. This week we used the fruit game I’d imitated from the show. It was an activity that boosted vocabulary and included his letter sound – C for carrots. We also used cars because he loves vehicles. We usually tend to go for shows with stories rather than those that nightlight concepts such as letters and numbers.
Tot-school | Week 2 | Letter B & BlueOctober 2, 2016
This week’s totschool…
…was about getting hands on!
I’d really debated the order of letters before we started this week. Teaching alphabetically is often discouraged but this first time round I’m just exposing a child to letters he’s never recognised before. Deciding the order doesn’t matter we’ve plumped for alphabetical as he’ll find that in his picture books.
It was a mixed bag of success and it was lovely to introduce some new activities to him as he gets the gist of what our totschool time is about. Less pens and more items to roll in his fingers tied in well with the balloons, balls and butterflies that featured heavily throughout the week. While we didn’t fully manage to grasp what the lower case ‘b’ was we did really improve our vocabulary with colours this week.
This weeks read more Questions:
I wanted something that let me work at me introduce simple educational concepts such as shapes, patterns, letters and vocabulary in English without trying to turn my toddler into an early reader. I firmly believe exposure is helpful but there is evidence that being able to recite your alphabet before you can request to go to the toilet rarely helps in the long term.
Control skill is my clumsy way of saying the ability we are trying to focus and improve on, sometimes that’s liguistic, other times it’s physical or visual or just an awearness.
Totschool mostly happens at the big table and sitting at a table focusing on an activity is a great skill, as is following instructions, fine motor development, exploring different materials and building vocabulary – Tot school is a form of play, options for activities are placed before Adam he can choose if he wants to use them and how to do so and for how long. We use weekly themes to add variety and expose him to letters.
Before totschool, 2 or 3 times a week, we would get out the ‘teach my toddler’ blue box. It was flashcard based and while the numbers and colours packets were firm favourites, overall it didn’t suit us very well. Adam particularly enjoys matching the flashcard to the poster so we are hoping to use it for reviewing. (For other mummies reference Adam is 23 months old)
Week 2 : Letter – B + Concept – Red
(UC – upper case, LC – lower case)
Monday (control skill : none)
Today we kicked off. We’ve known the letter ‘A’ for some time but ‘B’ was new territory so today was about introductions. We talked about objects that begin with B and played with the big letter laminated sheets using a blue whiteboard pen. The paint pallet gave us a bit of variety from the constant B sound by mixing in colours.
a) Letter plus image – UC + LC
b) Linking images, horizontal lines.
c) Pegging letters
Tuesday (control skill : placement)
We started with buttons quickly identifying confusion over the small case ‘b’ and ‘a’. We moved on to a capital ‘B’ threading card and Adam surprised us by how well he did with this with very little instruction. Back to the do-a-dot sheets for more placement practice, this time with the paints. We used both the blank letters with image and a picture image where a ‘b’ is placed in each circle, Adam was very good at “finding the b’s” with his paint and very proud of his achievements. The session ended with Daddy and Adam both stamping away with paint splodges everywhere!
d) Dot painting – LC + UC plus image + find the letter image
e) Button placement – – UC plus image
f) Threading card
Wednesday (control skill : counting)
Wednesday we skipped a day. Rather than do full tot school after nap we chose to go out leaving us with just a few minutes to review numbers with the blue box. After one round of the flashcards Adam happily matched either the numbers or the pictures using the cards and poster, then played with the soft jigsaw until we put his shoes on to leave. He’s got a good grasp of what counting is, he knows to pluralise, and loves the number 2 though he doesn’t really equate any other numbers and only recognises 2 and sometimes 5 by sight.
Thursday (control skill : sound recognition)
Thursday was again back to the letter ‘b’ at the table with our 2 piece puzzles – linking words with the beginning sound – I’d backed them onto cardboard this week and so they were much more successful. We then played with the butterflies and a butterfly do-a-dot sheet saying the letter ‘b’ each time a butterfly was landed in a circle. To extend this concept painters tape was used to draw a big ‘b’ on the carpet which we proceeded to fill with anything begging with that sound, definitely the most fun activity of the day.
g) 2 piece puzzles for the letter sound
h) Butterfly beads placement on butterfly do-a-dot
i) Painters tape floor letter fill
Friday (control skill : sequencing)
Friday came and we are still confusing the small case ‘b’ with the letter ‘a’. Introducing the 3d letters helped a little but it seems like this will be a week of exposure over retention. For review we revisited the basic letter and balloon pages, the pegging paint pallet and the big floor ‘b’, all of which were happily played with for a short time. Adam’s fine motor control is building through he appears to find it frustrating that he can place a pen inside a shape but ends us making only scribble marks over the whole page.
j) 3d felt letters
Next week: Cats and caterpillars and cars will all be crawling across the table!
Linking up with 1+1+1=1 : Blue balloons ~ Letter B {23 mos.}