Tot-school | Week 17 | Letter RFebruary 11, 2017
This past week’s tot-school…
…was rather enjoyable.
I’ll admit it, I was looking forward to the letter R appearing, rockets and robots and rainbows are all such beautiful and bold things to work with. I must have mentally checked off 20 odd activities to do and yet when I came to plan I reined in the chaos and forced myself into a simplicity that gave the week a lovely balance. Having a beautiful rainbow to brighten the blustery transition into spring helped too.
With hindsight I’d recognised that Adam only really uses the uppercase resources. When we’ve introduce lowercase he ignores it or gets confused. This week the lowercase bits were the rocket, rather than adapt I decided they could be used next time round. I’ve also recognised that the guided letters in the letter tracing mats focuses his lines really well and so this week I made him a second one for his unsupervised table. He usually begins from the base of the page rather than the number prompts but at this stage that really doesn’t matter to me.
The pack I’ve made is available for download at the end of the post.
This weeks read more questions:
Co-operative crafts. I knew the rainbow craft was far too difficult so we worked together, Adam choosing bits, pushing pieces down and passing them to Mummy. It’s a lovely way to do crafts and while independence is great this teaches co-working skills that he is still mastering.
I think the biggest flop I had was actually before we began when I realised printing all the lowercase stuff would just be a waste of paper.
Nope. We loved R and learning a new word ‘rhino’ and trying to remember the word ‘reindeer’ from Christmas, but existing words really do work best. The word ‘Queen’ hasn’t stuck with him so I’m glad we jumped a week.
Tot-school | Week 16 | Letter PFebruary 5, 2017
This past week’s tot-school…
…was perfectly crafty.
February rolled in with snow still one the ground, it was -6 outside on Sunday and it felt cooler, I write this the following Sunday in the balm of +12. The sudden shift combined with a few other bits means I spent just about all week in my PJ’s getting dosed up and feeling rubbish. Tot-school got creative as I struggled to concentrate and opted for role play and craft over paperwork.
As is often the case children pick up on their parents loves and all the crafting did Adam no harm. It also helped that I had tuned into a couple of his loves, Postman pat and Bing bunny (specifically the character Pando). Their presence dwarfed most other tasks and some activities were almost abandoned when their faces appeared. As P is for play as well as pencils it was a lovely mix of light activities that lead well back into creative play.
The pack I’ve made is available for download at the end of the post.
This weeks read more questions:
The letter basket was really well received and hanging up our crafts at the end of the week felt like a big achievement even though the week was quite light on activities.
The postman pat roll play really didn’t get going sadly. Also, not a flop but a sadness : We never actually got round to covering the standard letter pages or the do a dot sheets that would have involved more conversations on pigs and penguins.
The short answer is no. Next week will be the letter R. Adam can not identify a queen from a king, and there are precious few other options. Q does not exist in Serbian and as this is our first time through I don’t think any harm will come from skipping.
Tot-school | Week 15 | Letter OJanuary 29, 2017
This past week’s tot-school…
…was our refuge.
December and January are riddled with events for us, plans are only good until the next event approaches and messes everything up. This week ended in Slava, a Serbian Orthodox tradition that’s highly valued and holds as much religious significance as the hosts wish. For the layman it’s basically a day long feast table, it’s also a great chance for Adam to practice his social skills.
Meanwhile, tot-school prep feels like it’s been dominating the little time I’ve got for me. As a result the packs are definitely already starting to see a thinning down. This week I tried to use less home-made and more resources I’d sourced and it made a real difference. We also cut down to 3 days of tot-school, or really 2 as one day we only did one activity. While I had made up extra resources I feel Adam really got the concept of the letter quickly, so rather than squeeze in more we threw any screen time limits to the wind and let our overtired and well socialised boy vegetate. (yes terrible parents I know!)
The pack I’ve made is available for download at the end of the post.
This weeks read more questions:
The Mr octopus craft was probably our favourite, we returned to play with it again later in the week too. The ‘O-key-toe-puss’ was a favourite word most of the week!
I’d hoped to use the idea of O for Oven, but Adam just called it a kitchen or a cooker, so, while he loved the image it actually proved a distraction.
This was a cup of hot water with a good dollop of hand soap. Mix with an electric whisk until you get a thick foam. I repeated the process and filled a large shallow bowl – the mixture does reduce when played with. Hot water makes the bubbles warm to the touch, washing up liquid would probably yield more bubbles if you skin can take it.