Tot School- b is for bear, banana & bus

Jonathan is 25 Months

We had a busy, social week! We had a couple playdates, which we always enjoy. On the days we weren't out and about, we also began to focus on the lowercase letter b. This week we looked at bears, bananas, and buses.


Bible 


We focused on John 6:48 I am the bread of life from the Songs for Saplings CD. You can print out resources from the Totally Tots website. I am always so amazed and encouraged to hear Jonathan singing along! He had a lot of fun banging the cymbals along with this song.

Books 


This week, we read several books. Here were our favorites (click on the title to see the post):

- Brown Bear Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin Jr.
- Banana! by Ed Vere
- The Wheels on the Bus by Ed Zelinsky
- The Seals on the Bus by Lenny Hort

Math 


We worked more on counting. We counted some bananas I printed and laminated and we also used our counting bears:

Games & Fine Motor Skills


We did a Heads & Tails puzzle along with Brown Bear, Brown Bear that I printed from 1+1+1=1's Brown Bear tot pack.

We also worked on our Melissa & Doug Basic Skills Board- a puzzle that Jonathan enjoyed, but he's still not  very proficient at all the clothing items.

And we did our Melissa & Doug Upper & Lowercase Alphabet Puzzle. Jonathan's pretty good now at recognizing the lowercase letters a and b!

Music/Pretend Play 


We did more bear hunts this week-- along with lots and lots of renditions of the Wheels on the Bus!

We reenacted Brown Bear Brown Bear using the templates on DLTK kids. We listened to the audio book read by Gwyneth Paltrow.

And we reenacted the Seals on the Bus using the fun template from Making Learning Fun. Jonathan had fun matching the laminated animal card to the animals in the book.

Art 


We did yet more Do-A-Dot pages for B is for Brown Bear, and B is for Bus. Jonathan loves these!

We worked on using a glue stick as we glued paper fruit (bananas) into a fruit basket:

This was the first time Jonathan used a glue stick. He did well when I helped him turn the pieces over- he patted them on the paper very gently. Afterwards he just liked spreading the purple glue- it didn't matter which side of the paper- he just liked spreading the glue. I guess he just enjoyed the process!

Social
As I mentioned, we had a couple of playdates this week. It's great practice on sharing. Jonathan has began a "mine" stage-- every toy is his. He may not be playing with it, but if a friend shows interest, suddenly the toy is mine.  He obviously still has a lot to learn about sharing-- it won't be long before Gracie is trying to play with his toys.

So-- question for other moms:

how do you help your tots learn to share? How do you address the heart issue behind not sharing while still understanding that your child is young and it's a hard concept to grasp?


This post is linked up to Tot School at 1+1+1=1  and What My Child is Reading at Mouse Learns, Mouse Grows.

b is for banana

Sign Language 


Banana was among of the first signs we learned.

Books 


I only found one toddler friendly book about bananas- if you know of any others please let me know!

Banana! by Ed Vere

This book is a simple story about two monkeys and one banana.  The storyline is mostly told by the simple pictures and the expressions on the monkeys' faces. One monkey finds a banana and then his friend comes along and wants the banana. Will the monkeys share the banana? The only text in the story are the words "banana" and "please". It's up to the reader to put the proper inflection on the words, similar to Jez Alborough's Hug.

Jonathan loved this story. I think any toddler can relate to the plot-- one monkey wants the banana, one doesn't want to share. There's even a tantrum/melt down until the monkey in red learns to say please. This is a book Jonathan kept coming back to and asking me to read it again.

I like that the book has a good lesson-- the monkeys learn to ask please and the monkey that threw the tantrum learned that the tantrum did not produce the results he desired. Tantrums occur off and on around here-- so it was good to reinforce that the monkey had to "use his words" and ask for what he wanted. :) This is a great toddler-friendly book.

Pretend Play


We acted out the story using our playfood banana. I had Jonathan be the monkey in the red shirt and ask please in order to get the banana. Very simple activity, but it reinforced the book nicely.

Snack 


We ate bananas (surprise, surprise!) for snacktime and then the next day we made banana pancakes for breakfast. Made me think of the Jack Johnson song. We also had a banana snack cake that was yummy!

Craft 


We printed out the fruit basket craft from First School. I cut out the pieces and then let Jonathan try to glue them onto the fruit basket.

Math 


I printed and laminated extra pieces from the fruit basket craft to practice counting bananas. You could also go to the grocery store and count how many bananas are in each bunch!

Games 


We don't own this, but this Avalanche Fruit Stand game by Learning Resources looks great for fine motor skills. You could also use the pieces as counters and math manipulatives. It also would be versatile for other fruit related themes!

Library Links 
Banana!

Web Resources 


B is for Banana @ First School