Tot-school | Week 22 | Letter WMarch 19, 2017
This past week’s tot-school…
…swam with whales
Once again our week was sparse but it included some beautiful elements and we have some rather delightful crafts to show for our time. I’m equally aware as we dredge the end of the alphabet that W is probably the last week where sourcing items won’t be a struggle but that there is also less than a month to go before our first journey is complete. I have no regrets skipping the letter Q, even if it is the only letter he now has hesitation identifying. All the other letters are now familiar to his eyes and he identifies them with a mixture of names and/or phonics.
The letter W itself was quite delightful as we travelled with whales and pretended to pour from our watering can. For the first time in an age we didn’t complete the letter spinner,and we replaced our usual tot-school time on one day with a trip through the blue ‘teach my toddler’ box that hasn’t been out much of late. It was nice to have this week holding a bit more focus to the wider alphabet rather than so narrowed in on one letter.
The pack I’ve made is available for download at the end of the post.
This weeks read more questions:
I loved the whale paper craft from ‘doodles and jots’ which was a mini invitation to play Adam readily took up more than once.
Pen work was pretty much missed this week with Adam showing little to no interest, he does however love his wipe clean books that hold the alphabet so I suppose i just need to diversify the drawing experience.
X is a letter i don’t want to skip but equally there is a real dearth of words suitable for use. Adam has a couple of Xylophones and i’ve some X-ray craft ideas lined up but I’m going to use words containing an x for the letter spinner
Tot-school | Week 21 | Letter VMarch 12, 2017
This past week’s tot-school…
…rolled slowly across the finish line
Letter V didn’t pick up the pace much after last weeks poor show, I’d say we got though roughly half of the possible material, and did no 3d craft. Van’s was clearly the favourite word and having a new toy van to play with did cause a little distraction and it manage to live most of the week outside of it’s letter basket home. The more the week progressed the less we did as nap times fluctuated and became erratic – Friday Adam slept from his usual wake up time all the way through till his evening meal!
However, even with such a brief encounter the letter still seemed to stick. Thanks to Bing Bunny we often call our vacuum ‘voo-voo’ and not a hoover like I had during my childhood, but many of the other words weren’t already familiar. Vase (I don’t seem to use them recently), vegetable (he named the individual ones or the container) and violin (guitar?) didn’t go down so well. I’ve found more and more that the typical items we use for the alphabet can actually be rather confusing. While building vocabulary is a great bonus I’d rather it not be at the expense of the key element – the letter.
The pack I’ve made is available for download at the end of the post.
This weeks read more questions:
The Van, it’s already made it’s way into general circulation, mummy loved the van craft, probably because she spent far too long hand drawing the background!
the sheer lack of stuff covered. I’d really hoped to make a vase out of dough and had looked out some plastic flowers. Overall, tot-school felt like a passing activity rather than a dedicated table time this week.
If I’ve printed material and find an appropriate time to use it up on Saturday then I do, but it’s not part of the plan. Tot-school is never a priority if it’s missed then that’s ok by us!
Tot-school | Week 20 | Letter UMarch 3, 2017
This past week’s tot-school…
…was a damp squib
After the last few weeks of R, S, & T the letter U came as a bit of a shock to the system. While the trusty umbrella dominated we attempted to add in the unicycle and ukulele but in all honestly mostly failed. We ended up with a very weak show for tot-school and while there are crafts left to be completed I’ll probably leave them for the next trip through the alphabet.
After 20 weeks the idea of a shape representing a number or letter is firmly implanted and Adam knows most of them. He’ll correctly identify all numbers and most letters, even ones we’ve not yet covered. He also recognises the idea that names/words start with a letter. He happily points out letters in words though he shows no signs of accepting decoding let alone doing so, he was quite adamant that the car wash sign said ‘C’,’A’,’R’ and not ‘car’ – in my opinion he’s far too young for decoding and I’m not going to push it on him early.
The pack I’ve made is available for download at the end of the post.
This weeks read more questions:
The foam letter tiles were a beautiful and quick activity that really caught Adam’s interest and showed us how well he could remember the letters we’ve covered over the past weeks – this is a review tool we need to use more often.
Everything but umbrellas. While Adam identified well with the idea of the other items beginning with a U he just didn’t identify with those things.
I’m still debating this one though I’m aware it’s now on the horizon. I’d thought of doing colours or numbers but really he’s got those sorted by himself, I may do a focus on sorting or sequencing but I’ll probably head on back to ‘letter A’ quite quickly.