Tot School- All About Feelings

Jonathan is 30 Months

We've taken a lighter approach to doing activities the last few weeks. We've been enjoying our summer, spending time with friends and family, and just exploring our town. I've been rethinking what types of activities I want to do with Jonathan (and begin doing with Grace), as Jonathan has now mastered his upper and lowercase letters. I'm not sure at 2 1/2 he's ready to do anything extremely focused just yet. Any advice?  Right now I'm leaning towards focusing on different themes and reviewing a letter to go along with them. 

So this week we started looking at feelings. Jonathan really only recognizes "happy" and "sad" and I thought exploring different feelings could be helpful. 

Bible 

We also covered Abraham this week in our Bible time so we tied in "feelings" with the fact that Sarah laughed. (We are using curriculum from Hubbard's Cupboard for our Bible time, supplemented with resources I own.) 

Stories, Nursery Rhymes & Read Alouds 

Our Bookshelf For This Week

We read various books about feelings. Amy calls it "bibliotherapy". These books were great tool to help us discuss emotions that we came across during our week. You can read our reviews in a previous post here.

Feelings by Aliki

The Way I Feel by Janan Cain

On Monday When It Rained by Cherryl Kachenmeister

One I forgot to include was Mr. Happy by Roger Hargreaves. This is from a popular series I remember from kindergarten. In this simple story Mr. Happy meets Mr. Miserable and tries to make him be happy. Jonathan really liked this story as well as pointing out the different characters. 

Language Arts 

We've started using a series of phonics workbooks called Get Ready for the Code. (GRFC) We did a couple worksheets from it this week, using do-a-dot markers. 

We worked on some beginning sound puzzles with a feelings theme from 2Teaching Mommies:

We did some pre-writing exercises such as tracing lines on faces (also from 2Teaching Mommies) and also from  GRFC. 

We also did some look-see-spell words using scrabble tiles:

We got through the first two and then Jonathan was distracted. :)

We also used our sandpaper letters to trace the letter "F" and "f".  And I've started writing Jonathan a "Morning Message" each morning as part of our calendar time. He has fun trying to find his name in each message. We circle his name each time it appears, although you can't see it from this picture: 

Midweek, we started putting up a "I feel" face each morning using printables from 1+1+1=1. Jonathan's favorite is "I feel Goofy!" 

Math 

We counted stars and talked about God's promise to Abraham (printable from Hubbard's Cupboard):

And we colored and counted feelings (from 2Teaching Mommies). Jonathan did a great job with this one:

Art 

We practiced glueing and sorting different emotions (happy, sad, angry, scared). Jonathan really only made it through one page before he got bored. I intended to revisit this with him, but we ended up not getting back to it:

We also tried some scissor skills: snipping straws. This did not go too well and only ended up frustrating him:

Games: 

We attempted Twister this week:

So that's what we've been up to this week! For more Tot School ideas, visit 1+1+1=1. 

Books about Feelings

This week we've been talking about feelings. I've noticed that Jonathan really only identifies two emotions right now: happy and sad. So, we've been reading books about different emotions and doing some activities along with our books. I'll share the activities in another post, but here are some books we've been reading together:

Feelings by Aliki

This book took a couple readings to get used to. It's, in essence, a catalog of feelings. The illustrations are almost like short comic strips showing different feelings that children may experience. There's a little boy who feels angry after a classmate knocks down a block tower. There's also a girl who tries to get attention by doing everything her little brother does. The vignettes don't form a cohesive story, so it makes it difficult to read aloud. What made the book work best for us was watching the Reading Rainbow episode which featured this book. By treating each "strip" as its own story, we were able to discuss each emotion and the circumstances which brought it about.

The Way I Feel by Janan Cain

This is a book I picked up from a recommendation by Hubbard's Cupboard. It's a book that tries to help children recognize the feelings they come across. Each double-page layout presents a short rhyme about a feeling along with a brightly colored illustration showing a child experiencing that particular emotion. The nice thing about this book is that it includes some more unusual emotions such as thankfulness and boredom. Jonathan seemed to enjoy the bright illustrations and the short text held his attention well.

On Monday When it Rained by Cherryl Kachenmeister

This was a very interesting way to teach emotions. In this book, a young boy describes the different emotions he felt each day of the week. Photographs accompany each page. On Monday the little boy was disappointed because it rained. On Saturday he was excited to go the park. I liked that the book featured actual photographs so Jonathan could see what someone looked like as they felt the emotion. It also reinforced the days of the week, which we've also been learning recently. It's a great concept book. The only limitation is that the book is limited to seven feelings. It's well worth checking out.  

I'm linking this post up to:

Read-Aloud Thursday  over at Hope is the Word and Feed Me Books Friday over at Little Sprout Books. Happy Reading!