Tot School – Letter Ff and Fire

Alex is 3.5 years old, and Max is 25 months.

This week, we worked on the letter Ff, and we also did a fire theme using these printables.  We did two mornings (45 minutes each) of tot school, and we fit in a few random activities during the week as well.

Alex has recently discovered the he LOVES using dot markers.  He had a great time finding and stamping the Fs on this sheet!

Alex half-hearted worked on this color the fire hydrant page, and Max (who you can’t see…) worked on the color the ice cream cone page left over from last week.

Max LOVES to use any sort of matching cards.  He happily matched shapes for a long, long time!

Alex and I played the Fight the Fire game.  (Yes, he dressed in his fireman coat to do tot school!)  We quickly discovered that it’s way to easy to win, so we made new rules.  Use a penny instead of dice, go forward one if you get heads and stay put if you get tails.  That way, you don’t win in 3 rolls :)

Alex loves to do pre-writing pages, although he hates for me to tell him how to hold the marker.

Calendar time…

Count & Clip cards

More matching with Max.  I left one sheet of the nomenclature cards whole, and then Max matched the pictures.  Maybe some day we’ll use these for their intended purpose, but this works for now! :)

 

Max drove a wooden car with dice on top. 
I’m sure there’s something educational about this, ha!

Alex practiced making uppercase Fs.  He doesn’t mind doing this, but he won’t make all 9 of the letter.  He only does 3, and then he’s finished.  Fine by me, as long as he practices a few times! :)

 

Alex & Grace worked together VERY nicely to complete this Lauri fire truck puzzle that my sister gave us a few months ago.

We made chocolate chip banana muffins.  Yum!

This is the first time that Alex has tried a word building activity.  He’s been kind of resistant to this activity up until now.  He was still hesitant, but caught on quickly and really enjoyed find the letters, making the words, and sounding them out with Mommy.

   

Max “matched” letters on this beginning sounds page.  He so badly wants to do what his big brother does, but (obviously) doesn’t understand yet.  He asked me often, “This go here, Mommy?”  So cute!  He only got one correct on the whole page, but he had fun trying!

Yep, back to the fireman’s costume…Alex cut (with some help, but he tried…) the sorting cards.  Then without one bit of help, he sorted and glued them into the proper categories.

 I moved the shadows and shape matching cards to the pocket chart, and Max had a great time hiding the pictures behind the shadows and shapes.  He’s VERY good at matching these!

I finally realized that how I word this activity makes all the difference in how Alex completes it! Alex does much better if I say, “Which one doesn’t match?” rather than “Which one is different?”

He’s so cute about saying “uppercase F, lowercase F” as he’s working on his letters. 
Nevermind that red is supposed to be the color of the week; Alex was determined to use GREEN for a lot of things!

Here are some samples of his work this week.  The color the hydrant page was half-heartedly completed, but Alex was very proud of the sorting and stamping pages.

I snapped this to show how we’re using the letter/number/sight word for the each week.  The one for this week is clipped on the front of the pocket.  Behind it are the cards from each previous week.  We go through the cards together each week, reviewing the letters and numbers.  He still doesn’t have a grasp on the sight words, but we’ll get there whenever he is ready for that! :)

 

I’d really hoped to make dalmation pudding for dessert after dinner on Friday night, but it didn’t happen.  Oh well – maybe we’ll do it for lunch sometime this coming week…even if it no longer matches our theme! :)

I’ve thought for a while that Max would really enjoy working with tongs, and boy was I ever right about that.  He knew JUST what to do, and he happily filled every hole in this ice cube tray and then started over again!

Alex used our big pom poms to fill the muffin tin while he waited for his turn with the tongs.

After that, Daddy changed the rules and….uh…gave the boys a science lesson about catapults and simple machines.  Yeah.  That’s what this was! ;)

Then Max started throwing pompoms all around the room.  Yep.  Great educational value! ;)  They had a LOT of fun, though, messing around with Daddy…and that’s worth it!

You can learn more about RRSP, Preschool Corner, or Tot School by clicking on the links below.  You’ll also see what other moms are doing with their tots and preschoolers!