Tot School - Letter K & Bug Theme

Munchin is 37m

Little Bear is 18m

We didn't do much with tot school last week so we extended out letter K week and we are still doing a bug theme.  We did have some fun with The Very Hungry Caterpillar.  After reading the story 50 million times (well it seemed like that many). We made caterpillar fruit salad, which does sound gross, but it was pretty good.  We started with strawberries, pears, and mandarin oranges, I didn't have plums in the house so those were left out.  We used a straw to poke "caterpillar" holes and mixed it together.  Munchkin loved it!

We used an egg tray, number cube, and some dollar store plastic bugs to practice our counting.  Munchkin was not interested in this at all.  He (obviously) preferred to just play with the bugs.  It's funny, I feel like I'm learning to teach all over again.  In my class I'd always give my kiddos explore time when we used manipulatives. This way when it was time to use them in the way I intended they'd already gotten to "play" with the manipulatives.  I have forgtten this with Munchkin.  I have twice now takin out something new and immediately tried to get him to follow my lead and use them in a particular way.  I won't make this mistake again.

Munchkin continues to love the bug sensory bin... and he is still very partial to rainbow rice.  A few spoons and old measuring cups will keep him quiet for at least a 1/2 hour.

One of Little Bear's favorite things to do is push small things into small holes.  Here he using colored transportation counters.  I wish I had some bug counters.

We also tried color sorting for the first time.  He watched me closely as I put the pieces in the matching colored section.  Then he dumped them out and added them where ever he liked.

Munchkin used a gel bag this week to trace the letter K.  Each day he humored me and traced a K once (I'll take it!!) then would squish it, squeeze it, and hold it up to face and look through the blue gel.  

We used playdough on a K printable from 1+1+1=1.  Munchkin enjoyed poking his fingers in it.

We also used blocks to build a castle for a king.  He loved this.

We worked on a few printables from different websites.  Don't mind the hearts... these are forgotten Valentine Decorations.  The letter cards in the pocket chart are from 1+1+1=1. There are great printables on this site.  I printed the Color Bug emergent reader from Prekinders.  Munchkin feels so proud when he "reads" this book.  I also printed the beginning sound matching page from here.  The letter K mini-book is from here.

Check out more Tot School Posts here.