Tot School- on the farm (30 Months)

Jonathan is 30 Months

This week we've been learning about farms and farm animals. Grace has been enjoying looking at pictures of animals, so this was a theme both children could enjoy. We had a lot of fun! 

Bible 

This week we covered Isaac and Jacob during our Bible story time. We used some resources from Hubbard's Cupboard as well as some resources I personally own. Look for an upcoming post to cover what we did for Jacob. 

Stories, Nursery Rhymes & Read Alouds 

We read lots of books about farms and farm animals this week. I selected some that would appeal to Gracie as well as some longer ones that would be for Jonathan. Some favorites (click on the title to see our reviews, as well as additional books we enjoyed). 

• The Complete Book of Farmyard Tales by Heather Amery
• Baby Danced the Polka by Karen Beaumont
• Barnyard Dance by Sandra Boynton
• Does a Cow Say Boo? by Judy Hindley
• Poke-A-Dot- Old MacDonald's Farm (Jonathan's favorite!)

Language Arts 

We continued trying to do some worksheets about beginning sounds.We tried to do some our Explode the Code primers and also tried some from School Sparks.  (Have you seen the School Sparks blog yet? It's a great resource for phonics worksheets.) 

While Jonathan can easily tell you that F says "fffffff", he at least hasn't been successful at pointing out pictures of words that start with the "fffff" sound. He also hasn't been patient enough to sit through a worksheet. He just wants to color everything. So, that's okay. We'll save it for another time. 

We did some Montessori nomenclature cards that Carisa over at 1+1+1=1 designed. The purpose was for Jonathan to match up the farm animals with the words for the animals. We also used her Memory & Match Up cards. Both of these sets were used throughout the week. 

The biggest use was matching our farm toob animals with the pictures. Jonathan had fun doing this over and over again. 

We also continued to work on name recognition. He's gotten pretty proficient at finding his name on the morning message board. 

Math 

Jonathan loved the book Poke-A-Dot Old MacDonald's farm. It is a great counting book, counting down from ten cows to one rooster. The clever and kid-appealing part of the book is their "Pop-a-tronic" technology-- each page has clear, clickable buttons for children to push, one for each number. It helps to reinforce counting and teach one-to-one number correspondence. Jonathan loved popping the buttons and wanted to read this book over, and over, and over again. Sometimes he was so excited about the buttons that he'd forget to count. This was a huge hit!

Sensory Play


We had a sensory bin this week. I used unpopped popcorn and gave Jonathan some cups and spoons to practice spooning, pouring and transferring. We also stuck his farm toob animals in the corn and he just spent lots of time with this this week.

Practicing spooning

Picking up spills

Transferring 

Playing with animals

Pretend Play

We played with his farm animals a lot as well as his Little People barn. He had fun building fences for his animals:

Art 

We made some farm animals this week. Jonathan finger painted a "dirty pig" and we also made a sheep:

I got the ideas from Usborne Farm Fun, part of their Preschool Activities series.

Music & Movies


We sang Old MacDonald a lot this week. We also watched Signing Time: Leah's Farm and reviewed our signs for different animals.

Games 


We looked through our 1001 Things to Spot on the Farm book and tried to find the different animals. We also did several of our farm puzzles and played with our See & Say.

Field Trip 


Finally, we attempted to go on a field trip to a local farm that had a petting zoo. Unfortunately, the petting zoo wasn't open. But we did come home with some good fresh produce! The state fair is in a couple weeks, so we'll get our petting zoo fix there.

Thanks for visiting! To see what other families have done, be sure to visit Carisa's blog at 1+1+1=1. Have a great week!

f is for farm: books for toddlers/preschoolers

In addition to the farm board books that we read this week, Jonathan and I also read some longer stories aimed at preschoolers. We found several keepers that we really enjoyed:

The Complete Book of Farmyard Tales by Heather Amery

This is a collection of 20 different stories about life on Apple Tree farm from Usborne Books. Each tale is about the animals or adventures of the Boot family- Mrs. Boot, the farmer, and her two children Poppy and Sam. The stories are short and entertaining. Stephen Cartwright's charming illustrations hide a duck on each page and Jonathan had lots of fun trying to find the duck.  Jonathan has really enjoyed these-- he remembered the stories long after we read them and even acted some of them out with his farm animals, such as having his little pig get stuck in a fence. Very cute and lots of value-- the stories have simple text at the top and more complex sentences at the bottom of each page. These will make great early readers as well.

Poke-A-Dot! Old MacDonald's Farm

Oh how Jonathan just loves this book. I requested it from our library after seeing it recommended in the Timberdoodle catalog. This is a book that is about the traditional folk song Old MacDonald's Farm. It's a counting book, counting down from ten cows to one rooster. The clever and kid-appealing part of the book is their "Pop-a-tronic" technology-- each page has clear, clickable buttons for children to push, one for each number. It helps to reinforce counting and teach one-to-one number correspondence. Jonathan loved popping the buttons and wanted to read this book over, and over, and over again. Sometimes he was so excited about the buttons that he'd forget to count. This was a huge hit!

Mrs. Wishy-Washy's Farm by Joy Cowley

Mrs. Wishy-Washy is a farm woman who just loves to have everything clean-- including her animals! She scrubs the animals down regularly and one day cow, pig, and duck decide they've had enough. They run away to the big city and have adventures until they decide maybe the farm is the best place to live after all. The rhyming verse is very catchy and easy to read-aloud. The illustrations are equally engaging. Jonathan had fun listening to this read-aloud and saying "wishy-washy". As a fun read along activity, we brought his Little People farm animals into the tub one night and "wishy-washeyed" them until they were squeaky clean!

The Year at Maple Hill Farm by Alice and Martin Provensen

This was a bit of a longer read-aloud that we read over breakfast one morning. It's about farm animals and what happens of the course of a year on a farm. As the months and seasons change, the animals respond accordingly. In the winter, the animals stay close to the farm. In the Spring, the baby animals are born. In the summer, the bugs come out and the weather gets hot and the fall brings pumpkins and frost. It's a beautiful book that helped us talk about the changing seasons and life on a farm. Some aspects of the farm Jonathan could relate to, as my husband's parents live on a horse farm. I think this will be a book we come back to as we learn about seasons and the passing of time.

Stay tuned tomorrow to see our farm activities. :)

f is for farm-- books for babies and toddlers

This week we've been doing a unit on farms. I'm trying to make an effort to read with Grace, so I picked out several books that would be appropriate for her age level. I've been making the different animal sounds for her when she pats the pages. Although these books are geared for the littlest ones, toddlers and preschoolers will enjoy them as well:



Baby at the Farm by Karen Katz

Karen Katz has written several baby friendly books that we enjoy. This one is a "touch and feel" book that Grace enjoyed exploring. The simple text is about a baby exploring a farm. Grace patted the different animals, exploring their different textures- the mane of horses, the wool of sheep, etc. This is a nice first farm book.



Baby Danced the Polka by Karen Beaumont

We have owned this lift-the-flap book for a while and both Jonathan and Grace have enjoyed it very much. It's a lively story about a baby on a farm who just does not want to go to bed. The story is told in an engaging rhyme that will get your toes tapping: "While papa hauled the water/and momma cooked the chow/baby danced the cha cha/with the chocolate-colored cow". It's a fun, interactive book that both you and your children will love!


Does a Cow Say Boo? by Judy Hindley

This is another old favorite of ours. This board book is about some energetic toddlers exploring a barnyard. The toddlers are trying to figure out which animal says "boo!". As they explore barns, fields and pastures, the children encounter different animals and the sounds they make. Jonathan enjoyed this book as a baby, and Grace seems to be interested as well. It's great for interaction- the children learn animal sounds and enjoy a bit of peek-a-boo at the end. Highly recommend!

Barnyard Dance! by Sandra Boynton

What's not to love about a Sandra Boynton book? This lively board book encourages your toddler to get up and square dance with the barnyard animals! Dancing cows, twirling pigs fill the pages of this silly book. It's been a great one for teaching Jonathan how to move and dance like the animals. Boynton's text is very vibrant and fun-- you can't go wrong with this one!




Animal Babies on the Farm by Vicky Weber

This cute board book is a guessing game. The first page gives an animal sound and a clue and then asks "Who is my mommy?"The next page reveals the mommy and gives the name of the baby: "My mommy is a pig. I am her piglet" Grace liked looking at the pictures of the animals while Jonathan enjoyed the guessing game. It's another fun board book.

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!

Tot School- f is for flowers, fish & frogs!

Jonathan is 29 Months

We continued looking at the letter "f" by reading about flowers, fish and frogs. 

Bible 


We haven't worked on a Bible verse this week. We've been taking a little break from it. I have been playing the Seeds of Courage on our iPod and Jonathan likes dancing and moving around to the music.

We continued reading through a little devotional in the morning, Everything a Child Should Know about God by Kenneth Taylor. We do one page each day and talk about the pictures.

I'm planning on starting a through-the-Bible curriculum with him this week. Stay tuned to hear how it goes!



Books 


We read books this week about flowers, fish and frogs as well as reading a selection of books by Liza Baker.

• Planting a Rainbow by Lois Ehlert - a wonderful book for introducing different kinds of flowers to your children, as well as talking about seeds, seasons, and colors. Jonathan loved this book and had fun pointing out which flowers and colors he liked "the best". 
• The Pout Pout Fish by Deborah Diesen-  a silly story about a grumpy fish who eventually gets his frown turned upside down in a surprising way. Super cute story with a great message. 
• Jump, Frog, Jump! by Robert Kalan- a cumulative story about a frog who tries to capture a fly- but other animals try to capture the frog. The frog has to jump to escape his enemies. Eventually, the frog gets in a situation where he needs a little help to escape. Jonathan enjoyed cheering for the frog to escape. 

Those are the highlights- but we've read plenty more this week. See the original posts for our reviews.

Motor Skills 


The only theme related activity we did was trying to jump like frogs. (This only frustrated Jonathan though).

We also spent some time outside early in the week and Jonathan mastered climbing a ladder at the park.

We also went to our first official "Tot Swim" at our local pool. This was a toddler-only swim time. Jonathan loved going down the small waterslide and had so much fun there. I, however, was exhausted from trying to watch two little ones at the pool. No pictures- sorry!

Art

We painted with flowers:

And made flowers out of playdough:

And practiced our gluing skills by making a fish (we also made a fox:)

We also dot painted the letter "f".



Math/Puzzles/Games


We attempted to play "Go Fish" (it was really just a matching game):

We used our peg boards, one of which is shaped like a fish:

We played with Jonathan's fishing game puzzle:

We matched frogs:

So that's what we've been up to this week! Thanks for visiting!

I'm linking up to:

Link & Learn @ No Time for Flashcards

Tot School @ 1+1+1=1

f is for frog- books + activities

Image Source: Etsy

I thought Jonathan would be as interested in frogs as he was in fish, but frogs didn't go over as well.

Books 

Frogs! by Elizabeth Carney

This is part of a nonfiction easy-reader series by National Geographic. I chose this book about frogs to familiarize Jonathan with different aspects of frogs. The book covers different sizes and colors of frogs as well as what frogs eat, where frogs live, the sound frogs make and the life cycle of a frog. It's illustrated with photographs of different kinds of frogs. Jonathan was mildly interested in the photographs of frogs, but didn't sit through the book. It may be more interesting to him when he's older.



A Frog in the Bog by Karma Wilson

This is a cute counting story about a small hungry frog sitting on a log in a bog. He starts by eating one tick, two fleas, etc as he grows bigger and bigger. After five snails the frog is in for quite a surprise! The book counts up to (and down from) five in a humorous story that caught and kept Jonathan's attention. The rhyming text and soft watercolors complement one another well.


Jump, Frog, Jump! by Robert Kalan


This is a cumulative story about a frog who tries to capture a fly, but then other animals try to catch the frog. The only recourse the frog has is to jump to escape his enemies. Eventually, the frog gets into a situation where he needs a little help to escape. Jonathan enjoyed this story and was watching eagerly to see if the frog would escape. Byron Barton's bold illustrations add to the appeal. This is a cute story that toddlers will enjoy!


Activities 


We tried to jump like a frog-- but this only ended up frustrating Jonathan. He was having a cranky day and it was raining so we were inside most of the day.

We did a frog matching game that was a FREE download from Mntessori Print Shop. This he enjoyed a lot more-- he's very into matching things lately.

And that was really it for this "lesson". Maybe next time we do frogs again it'll be of more interest.

Web Resources 

Frog Lesson Plan @ 2 Teaching Mommies
Edible Frog Craft @ Kiboomu
F is for Frog @ Kiboomu

Frog Match-Up & Memory Game @ Montessori Print Shop

Frog Nomenclature Cards @ Montessori Print Shop