"Learn Something New...": Tot School {Letter A}...Part Two

Wednesday - Color Apples

Color Basket

his favorite part is always anything puzzle-y

These are window clings that I get from the $ store. Instead of the window we placed them on and off this sheet of laminated red paper. I have one of these colored papers with the color word written on them for all of the "usual" colors.

Then he tried his hand at stringing red beads. He wasn't able to do it at all on his own (understandable) but he did enjoy trying for a while.

red playdough and theme appropriate cutters

Sweet Pea absolutely LOVES playdough!!!

His finished products! He did these all by himself!

He's learning how to take the playdough from around the cutter to get the cleanest cut.

I absolutely love the way his little tongue sticks out when he's concentrating!

He did perfect with the shadow matching and really enjoyed it!

He did it about three times...

Then we moved on to his sensory bin. I hid his numbers inside which he really like but quickly wanted to get back to using the tongs and moving the apples.

He worked with the Melissa and Doug Beginner Pattern Blocks

He worked with these briefly when he was much younger but this was just the right age (2) and time this time around. He really enjoyed them!

Now comes the absolute highlight of this week! We worked on the vocabulary theme of fruit. I printed off the Montessori cards but after doing this with Sweet Pea, he likes to lay them on top so I won't do that again. I will make sure to print off just the single sheets with a copy of cut up cards.

I always have him try to repeat the fruit name after me for language development.

He loved the kiwi! It's his first time seeing one.

Then the real fun began. I got out the real fruit. I had quite a few to match up thanks to some grocery shopping prep.

I loved handing him the watermelon and talking about how heavy it was!

We only had about three strawberries left by this day (Thursday) but it worked out just fine.

I love that when I handed him the little bunch of grapes he placed it on the card and then...

...quickly began gobbling them up! (My favorite part is yet to come...)

He loved this great big watermelon (it's a baby one)!

Favorite picture of the week by far - he ate every grape except one and then, on his own accord, placed it on the card. ADORABLE!

LOVE HIM TOO MUCH!

Then I took each fruit and cut it up in front of him! It was so cool to talk about what color the inside of each fruit was and to see his surprise at that (no pictures of course - for safety reasons).

Sweet Pea really loved the ABC Find It! Letter Bb

He really likes finding (and hiding) things in his sensory bin.

I had these apples in a my file. Not sure where I got them from.

At first he didn't want to do it but...

He did these all by himself. To help him I put them all in a pile on one side and then asked, "Which one is the biggest?" He would find it and then we would slide it in line.

And then of course the best part is getting to mess it all up!

Back to playdough...

Don't know where I got this printout from but he enjoyed drawing on it!

Pattern blocks again!

Coloring apples again!

Then we matched up our colored apples with linking cubes...

The matching was short lived. He soon became more into building a "tall towu" than in matching...which is great!

I also found these fruit magnets I got from the $ store a year or more ago. He really liked them and did a great job matching them. Wish I had a long, skinny magnet board to fit them on instead of two but it worked out.

To finish of our week one evening (that's why the pictures look as they do) I gathered all our toy fruit and we talked about each one, and counted them, and then...