Tot School – Space Theme – 37 Months

Alex is now 37 months old, and he *LOVED* this space theme!  He begged to do Tot School this week, and he loved pretty much everything about it.  We’re finished with it now, and he’s still asking us to sing the “Wocket Song” (Rocket Song) every day.  He knows all the words!

Here’s what we did, and I’ve also included a few pictures of how we’re storing our supplies and our weekly theme items.

This week’s printables are from:

Homeschool Creations
-and-
Musings of Me 

We started with the book On The Moon.  I was hesitant to purchase a new book when we already owned a few space-themed books.  I am *SO GLAD* that we did!  This book was very factual, yet simple enough for a 3 year old to understand.  (I also found it used…and inexpensive…on Amazon, which helped!)

Alex liked this “Color the A” worksheet.  He only did the capital letters, but he found each one!  Afterwards, he asked for permission to color the rocket, too.

Prewriting – SO proud of my boy!

Size Sequencing with astronauts.  (He asked later in the week, “Hey Mom, can I do that Tot School thing with the bigger and smaller?”)

We went through this little “book” several times throughout the week, and Alex hesitated on gray (but got it right!) and mixed up pink and purple.

Vocabulary Cards – I certainly don’t expect him to read the words, but we set out all the cards.  I named a card, and he set it in the little cup from his snack (Alex’s idea…)

Shadow Matching – definitely one of his favorites right now!  (He’s currently fascinated by shadows in general, and one of his favorite bedtime stories is a non-fiction book about shadows.)  I held the picture cards upside-down, Alex picked one, and then he matched it to its shadow.

The “Wocket” SongBuild A Rocket game – roll the number dice, place the correctly numbered piece on the rocket.  He liked it, but wasn’t thrilled with it. 

Bribery.  We usually have a snack while doing Tot School, so today I pulled out the mini M&Ms.  I told him that for each letter he correctly covered with an M&M, he could eat one candy.  It worked, and he correctly covered all 26 letters! Mommy helped him eat (I mean, clean up…) the M&Ms when he was finished. ;)

Tot School storage – I found that shelves and trays weren’t working for us.  It’s too much clutter on the main floor.  We tried putting everything in trays & drawers in the upstairs playroom, but neither Alex nor I enjoyed doing Tot School there.  The kitchen table is so much more convenient. 

I’ve found that putting the entire theme and all of its activities in a file folder works so much better for us!  We now use vinyl adhesive-backed pockets (I didn’t pay that much for those pockets – just linking you to what they are…) to hold the little pieces, then we set all the full-sized papers inside.  When the folder is closed and stored in a file box, all of the pockets are upright so we don’t lose any little pieces. All of our bigger supplies are stored in a plastic shoebox from the dollar store.  When we’re finished with Tot School for the day, it’s easy to set aside or put away.

An impromptu rocket ship lunch – I knew we’d be having a quick lunch of jelly sandwiches one day, and I decided to copy the shapes of the “Build A Rocket” activity to make Alex’s sandwich into a rocket ship.  We had a “moon” made of a cucumber slice and “stars” made of grapes.  It’s certainly nothing fancy, but it made Alex smile :)

 

We also did a quick craft from DLTK Kids and a homemade craft modeled after the rocket clipart on many of his pages this week. (No pictures, but they weren’t very fancy…)

To see what others are doing for Tot School this week, visit the Tot School website!