Tot School/Preschool Weekly Wrap Up-Letter B

Preparing for school for my little girls took a little bit of thought.  When I started homeschooling, I thought I would just continue representing the Montessori Materials over and over to the younger ones and it would keep them busy and happy...

Well, it turns out that my Mini Cooper isn't all that fond of the Montessori Materials.  Don't get me wrong, she likes them, she LOVES to play with them and use them and interact with them.  The problem?  She thinks of them as PLAY and not SCHOOL.  This wouldn't be a problem if she was ambivalent about school.  The problem is she LOVES school and would like school to last ALL DAY.  The problem is that she thinks that school should be a ton of worksheets and workbooks, cut and paste, and write on the dotted line.  She LOVES 'traditional' school.  Of course, this is what I had purposely avoided in the past, so it's been an interesting change for me.

But, following the lead of my child, I went ahead and ordered her some workbooks, and am working them into our school time.  The ones I got are from Rod and Staff.  The biggest reasons were because they came highly recommended, and were very affordable.  We started with book A and I also went ahead and ordered book C (we have a Bible curriculum so we skipped book B).  She is LOVING them.

She loves them so much that she is always asking to do work in them, and I even caught her stealing them off the school shelf after school one day.  So, for now, they are part of our school.  

Now for Explorer, she is just below a lot of our materials. She loves the knobbed cylinders and can already complete them all, and she is often working on the geometry and botany cabinets (she loves puzzles), but she is certainly not ready to move on to much else.  

We have tons and tons of educational 'toys' that are great for her age...more then the average person should own, which are great for this stage in her learning.  My problem has become the time consuming factor of planning when to use what.  So, I decided why take the time when someone else has done it for me?  I decided to follow the Tot School plan from 1+1+1=1.  I am printing off the printables for each letter that I think Explorer (and sometimes Mini Cooper) will enjoy.  Since we own many of the same educational toys, I am simply doing the exact same ones if we can :).  That leaves me only having to fill in the gaps for when we don't own the same toys.  Which, leaves my planning time to creating a few Montessori trays and trying to work with the big kids :).

After all that...on to what we did this week :).

We started with letter B.  We've done letter A and Apples so much I'm tired of them.  

We started out with our B object box and sandpaper letter.  The girls always love these.

Explorer worked in her 'Tot Book' a lot this week.  She is very into coloring with markers right now.  Pretty much all the printables you see on this page are part of the Tot Pack from 1+1+1=1.  You can find them here.

We tried a lot of the printables in the pack.  The coloring page, the puzzle, and then we also colored beach balls different colors.  She loved all of them!

The sequencing cards were a really nice part of the pack and she did well!  The three part cards on the right are old ones I had made for my bigger kids.  She matched our tiny objects to their matching photos.

Then Mini Cooper used them as three part cards and did very well.  She did a great job at looking at the words to match them.  She only messed up on basketball/baseball, which may have been a bit unrealistic to think she would get them.

  

We joined in on the state studies with Mustang and Charger.  These Delaware color pages are from Crayola.com.

As part of the Monet artist pack that I made for Mustang and Charger, I also included this puzzle from Confessions of a Homeschooler.  Mini Cooper loved it and asked to do it more then one day.

Trays and toys this week included scooping work.

Ladybug alphabet puzzles.

Bead family lacing.

LOTS of play dough time.  The roller and stamps are from Melissa and Doug. Thank you Great-grandma and Grandpa for the gift!

Discovery Toys Playful Patterns.

And, Melissa and Doug Monster Bowling.

We also read My 'b' Book by Jane Belk Moncure.

And, watched Meet the Letters from Preschool Prep Company.  My kids love these!  Thank you Grandma and Grandpa!!

As you can see, it was a pretty full week!  This week will not be so full as we are going to spend Monday at the doctor's office.  We finally get to see if baby #5 is a boy or a girl :).  That should be a good field trip!

How was your week?  I hope you had a good one!

God Bless,

Lisa

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