Thursday, November 17, 2011

Tot School – Letter X and Owl

Alex is almost 4 (46 months), and Max is 26 months.
This week, we worked on RRSP Letter X and we did an owl theme.  The kids were pretty excited!  Max is fascinated with owls, and he spots owls in many random books as we’re reading.  He even finds owls in tractor books! :)
This week we used Raising Rock Star printables from 1+1+1=1 and free Owl printables from my blog.  (I’ve also created a few new printables to meet Alex’s current interests; you can find those here.)
We read several books from the library ~
Wow Said The Owl (great for 2 year olds, teaches colors, Max loved it!)
Berkeley’s Barn Owl Dance (didn’t really care for this one)
White Owl, Barn Owl (great fact/fiction mix, and Alex loved it!)
The nice thing about Alex’s name is that we’ve now covered each letter in his name in the first 6 lessons of RRSP.  I made him a laminated name practice page to use with dry erase.
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He is scissors-crazy (in a good way) lately!  He’s finally interested in cutting on the lines, and he’s doing a pretty good job.  It’s still not a smooth cut, but he’s getting there!
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I made an owl roll & graph, but Alex was annoyed that he was supposed to be recording his results.  He just wanted to roll and roll and roll…so much for that activity!  It’s cute, though, and I’m sure it will benefit somebody’s kiddos! ;)
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Max tried, too.  Then he smushed the cube, rendering it useless.  Sigh.
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Both boys LOVED this “circle the smallest” page. 
Even Max scribbled on the smallest one in each row! 
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Alex “made stairs”…or sequenced owls by size…
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He LOVES using the letter tiles to build words.
After he builds them, I show him how to use the letters to sound out the words.
Alex loves letter sounds right now.
He’s not quite ready to sound out words, but he’s willing to listen to me sound it out.
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Max had to try, too…although he’s obviously not ready for this yet!
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Number Order Puzzle…it took a little ‘pushing’ on my part to convince Alex to do this activity, but he did a great job once he decided to try!
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Dot Painting – a current favorite…
and the reason that the boys are getting the real dot markers for Christmas :)
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Owl Shape Puzzle…Max did this every day!  Alex tolerated it.
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Pre-writing for Alex, scribbling practice for Max
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Five Little Owls poem with manipulatives…Alex LOVED making the owls fly away!
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Finding and stamping this week’s sight word (little) in the RRSP Mini Book
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Stamping for the sake of stamping, because Mommy wouldn’t give him the mini book ;)
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Practicing his Xs on the Bible verse page
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This little boy loves his colors…but has no clue about color names.
We keep trying!  This week, he matched candy heart erasers to the colored dots, matched the velcro colors, and matched the color words to the correct spot.:)
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Tower Building…although crashing it is the best part for Max!
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We’re finished with all of our tot school papers for the week, so Friday is for fun!  Grandma & Papa collected some pine cones for us, so we’re making pine cone owls tomorrow morning!  Wish me luck…glue guns, googly eyes, 3 tots and a baby, and sticky-sappy pine cones should be interesting!  If they actually turn out, I’ll post about them next week :)
I wish life wasn’t crazy with three little ones.  My boys loved the owl theme, and I would LOVE to have gone into more depth with the science-y side of things.  Maybe next year we’ll do this again, but put more emphasis on the factual information.  I hope so!
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!
Tot School

3 comments:

Beth (www.livinglifeintentionally.blogspot.com) said...

What a fun week. I love the owls flying away - that is something my son would do too =-) I wanted to invite you to link up at TGIF Linky Party - http://livinglifeintentionally.blogspot.com/search/label/Linkey%20Parties - Beth =-)

Anonymous said...

What fun! Looks like they had a blast! I love that Max wanted to try everything too!

Jessica said...

Loved seeing how you used your lessons. I have the hardest time with my 1 year old running around working with my 4.5 year old. So big props to you for doing it with 3!