Toddler Tuesday: Tot School

I like to make my posts with fancy titles that both start with the same letter.. it's fun! but moving on...

Toddler Tuesday!
I found this website recently that talked about tot school. Pretty much it is starting to take specific time with your toddler and working on skills/projects/knowledge they will need for school. We are planning on homeschooling our little one, so I figured this would just be a good way to slowly move into that practice. The website is here, but if you type tot school into google you will seriously get a wealth of information.
Disclaimer.
this website is overwhelming. seriously.  like, "I'm a failure as a mom might as well let a pack of wolves raise my child" type of feeling. It is definitly something to be taken slow, and something to just glean a few good projects and kinda do your own thing with. At least that's how I am making myself feel better about it.

Basically we do a few things:

*Art Project/hands on activity
*Memory Verse
*Letter
*song
*read books





So for these two weeks we are focusing on A, and apples, since it is apple season here in Minnesota. Our verse, our crafts, our letter, all have to do with apples. For projects we have painted with apples, made this torn paper apple you see above (learning how to glue), and have a few baking projects ahead of us with the apples we got at the orchard (field trip!)

Basically I am flying by the seat of my pants here, because I just started without taking to much time to plan things out.  So we usually start with the project, and then go over our verse a few times, sing our verse song ( see the link at the bottom) and either learn counting or about the letter.  Then we read books based on our subject, the list of which I got from the tot school website and checked them all out from the library. Sensory bins are something I have not done yet, I have just been using craft materials we already have around the house for our projects. 

She really likes learning to use the glue stick and paste, use the safe scissors,  the book reading, and the songs. But the field trip was for sure her favorite so far.



It is also super cool to hear her recite her verse back to me. She has'nt got it word for word yet, but everyday I ask her about it. I try to make up little hand motions to go with it as well, but It is so amazing to find my two year old already hiding God's word in her heart. This CD is pretty cool, called songs for saplings but I will be honest I have not bought it yet, I just play the sample on amazon over and over ( :

  The picture above is something I came up with myself that she enjoys. I write out sentences, and have her find the letters a, both big and small, and when she finds them I shade them for her. this helps her identify the letter amongst other letters and identify the different types of the letter.



We are doing a fall theme, spending two weeks on each subject every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday up till thanksgiving.  The tot school website kind of set out a special section for fall, so that was easiest this year. I picked those three days of the week because that's when I have a nice little gap in between my own school of about two hours.

So my advice so far:
1. use your library! mine has it where I can search and reserve books online and just come pick them all up at once. super handy!
2. Songs for memorizing! she loves loves loves the music, and the memory verse is the most important part to me.
3. Remember their age I have to tell myself she is only two, so it's ok if things are not perfect. it's how one learns.
4.  start figuring out how your child learns. Ariella seems to be very visual.
5. Don't get overwhelmed- the main thing I can tell is that she enjoys the one on one, doing something out of the ordinary time. 
*Next to the verses, I would say this time is most important thing for her
and it helps me! I noticed on these days she is more likely to play alone if I focus just a hour on being with her and doing things she enjoys.
6. review. we don't just talk about school during school. I ask her about her verse and letters and such all the time, so it's really incorporated into her life.

Apple orchard fun!!!