Rosey Glasses: Tot School Firsts

I suppose it the teacher in me that had me searching for fun lessons for toddlers... it is September you know. Well in my searching I stumbled upon 1+1+1=1. I love her ideas and her tot school posts. I've been teaching Munchkin a letter a week since around last October. We've been very loose, especially since the summer began. Well I'm ready to jump back in.

Carisa from 1+1+1=1 has lots of great ideas and tools to use for your tots. When I started doing letter a week from Brightly Beaming Resources, I simply did lots of coloring letters with Munchkin, yeah we did an occasional finger paint, or other activity but I definitely slacked in the "make learning fun" department. Lol, I have a bit of perfectionist in me that was afraid of the mess he'd make of more

I hadn't even considered teaching him other skills like gluing, using scissors, even pouring things. Well I have officially been planning lots of my own little activities as well as borrowing some ideas that I've gotten from blog land.

Little Bear will get to join in the fun as well. I plan on doing lots of sensory activities with him. Here are a few shots of some of the activities we've started. LOL, a lot of the cute things I thought of or found for Munchkin to do he was totally not into. I should have been prepared for this. It's all good though... I've been following his lead. He seems to love matching games, coloring, and painting, also listening to stories and helping me cook. Hopefully I can expand these likes into more diverse areas... but it"s a start.

Munchkin loves using my iPad... He's started to call it his iPad... he gets corrected with the quickness!!! There are lots of great free and low cost (under 2$) apps for babies and kids. I'll definitely be getting more.

This was his first ever attempt at using scissors. He was so excited, he kept reminding me they were his scissors whenever I tried to help him. So I just watched...

...and watched

Until he finally just decided to just rip the paper... hey, whatever works.

We also tried placing stickers in a little sticker book I made. I am actually a hoarder of stickers. I have tons from school that I've been holding onto. Anyway we started with little stars and they were too small. They just stuck to his fingers and annoyed him. So we moved on to my collection of Cars stickers. He loved these. When he was finished we counted the stickers on the page. He's great at counting aloud, however we still need lots of practice counting objects.

He also painted which he loved just like I thought... my own little Picasso.

My favorite... and his too, was this matching game I made. On our last trip to Home Depot I took some Disney paint samples... they're really cute and shaped like Mickey. I got two of each color, one set I glued to some scrapbook paper I had and the other he uses to match.

I'll keep you posted on how things are going. Does anyone else have any cute activities they do with their tots?

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