Tot-school | Week 11 | Letter KDecember 4, 2016
This week’s tot-school…
…was hopping!
There is something heartrendingly adorable about the way Adam says “Kangaroo-u” and we heard that a lot this week. It was a really popular theme and let us do a nice range of activities, coupled with the ever popular kite, one of which we hung up in the room to play with, the letter ‘k’ was well cemented. While our tot-school sessions were short we covered all the major bases and on Friday we let tot-school slide as we put up the Christmas tree lights and explored the model winter village.
This is our last week of tot-school before breaking for Christmas. I hope to do some Christmas related activities before our Christmas travels but we’ll not be concentrating on a single concept. Hopefully we’ll launch back into the alphabet sometime in January.
The pack I’ve made is available for download at the end of the post.
This weeks read more questions:
Without a doubt it was the kangaroo footprints. We printed four sets and taped them to the carpet then spent a crazily large amount of time taking turns jumping like a kangaroo! It was also great to play with a real kite!
The kangaroo craft was tough slog. I tried twice to introduce this to Adam and though he recognised what it was and what I was asking him to do the interest wasn’t there. 
Decorations come out on the first of December (Thursday this year). We have 2 Christmas celebrations, the first is the more widely celebrated Advent run up to the 25th of December, the second is the orthodox date of January 7th. As 12th night falls on Orthodox Christmas eve it can feel like an endless celebration. We will travel to see grandparents for whichever Christmas celebration they hold a greater ownership for. Rather than do a letter based tot-school I’m hoping to make some Christmas decorations with Adam and perhaps do some Christmas themed activities.
Tot-school | Week 10 | Letter JNovember 27, 2016
This week’s tot-school…
…was Joyful!
Oh if i could repeat this week I would do so willingly, it was fabulous. This week routine returned to the household and totschool thrived. The key concepts of juice and jumper were readily accepted and explored, the accompanying ideas of jam and jumping went down really well too. Again, the week ended with unused ideas but having covered so much there was no sadness in filing them away. If anything, the only regret I have this week is that we didn’t get to do the large motor activities, taping letters on the ground to jump in and out of would have been great.
This is our 10th week of tot-school and next week (K) will be our last letter before breaking for Christmas activities. It was fantastic then get back to the full 5 days, even if one came just before our evening bath time. I’ve noticed more and more Adam is trying to write the letters when he first sees them, drawing a wobbly line inside the wide letters lines – while we always praise him for this it’s for his pen control. He prefers to start at the bottom of the letter and work up, I’m no expert but I’ve decided not to correct this, after all he’s only 25 months old! (if there is any expert reading who feels this needs correcting do let me know)
The pack I’ve made is available for download at the end of the post.
This weeks read more questions:
The jumper was clearly the favoured image with the craft being the favourite activity. I cut the pieces from craft-foam and perhaps it was the vibrant colours or the texture that had Adam assembling that jumper so many times!
The paint stampers. We literally managed 4 dots before quitting. while i may use these for Christmas decorations I’m happy to shelve them to the new year – the dot pages are much better received with buttons than paint.
Again the font I’ve chosen to use was a hindrance this week. for some reason it’s lowercase ‘j’ did not curl at the base. After making up a custom letter I realised that I prefer the uppercase ‘J’ with ‘a hat’ because I think it’s easier to distinguish so another custom letter came through. Apologies to those of you who would prefer the other.
Between preschool and flashcards…November 26, 2016
We visited friends the other week and saw their flashcard book. They were involved flashcards, by which I mean they posed questions about position, size, order and other relative concepts as well as absolutes like colours. Another parent learnt I was doing tot-school and quizzed her nursery about it: Was it something she should be doing? Was her child missing out? She was assured it was totally unnecessary. I totally agreed. When I started out on our tot-school journey I downloaded the pre-made packs from a few websites, I find myself using painfully little of the activities.
Tot-school for us is the middle ground.
We chose tot-school
At times it’s a maze to resource
It’s not flashcards, neither those of straight memorisation nor involved concepts.
It’s not a preschool lite
It’s not a journey on the route to reading and writing
It’s not parent directed play
Equally it’s not nothing.
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