Introduction to Tot School

I was thinking about the recent post I made.. When I said I was creating a preschool curriculum for Norah, that was soo misleading and way too formal sounding. It's more like I'm gathering a zillion ideas of activities to do with her that expose her to letters, letter sounds, numbers, counting, etc, etc. I came across a really cool blog about a year ago where I discovered the concept of "tot school." Basically learning while immersed in play. You can read more about it in this post. It's something I have been doing casually with Norah but now that she is showing more interest, I'm hoping to start incorporating a little more into her daily routine. The bottom line is I do NOT force her to sit and do worksheet after worksheet. I don't make her do anything, actually. If it's not fun, we stop, because really.. she's 2. Learning is supposed to be fun and it's something I want to instill in my children at a young age. I've learned through trial and error that Norah's "learning style" at this point (aka: what she loves to do) are GAMES and CRAFTS. Loves loves loves them. That being said, here are a few things we did last week during our "school" time...

Jumbo shape buttons and sorting mats. Norah is great at sorting by color, but sorting shapes are a little more difficult for her so we worked on that.

She helped me dye rice for some other activities I had planned. Pink at her request, and we learned that blue and red makes purple! She couldn't wait to get her hands on this stuff.

Simple, fun and great fine motor skill practice. Pouring colored rice. This cute little set is one of the things I snatched from my Grandma's while she was purging to move. There are a few other "projects" I brought home that you'll see soon too.

The next day, Norah dumped out the rice into the tray, made a few lines with her finger and said "Look Mom, a road!" She insisted we make water (the playdough) and then added a few friends...

I love to watch her imagination develop.

On another day, I hid some "treasures" (small flower beads) in a few playdough "meatballs." This is another great fine motor activity since she had to manipulate the playdough. She LOVED this.

To make it a little more challenging, I put all the flower beads into one large "meatball" and she had to find them all. She named the colors as she found them as well. She loved hiding them for me to find too.

She made this face everytime she found a "treasure." Loved it!

On this day I hid small, laminated pictures of baby animals in a tub of the rice we dyed. We talked about what the babies are called.. piglet, foal, etc. and we sang "Old MacDonald" when she found each one too.

She had a lot of fun, and the fact that they were small and thin made it a bit of a challenge.

Oh the simple joys of a bucket of rice!

The next day we went on a little "field trip" and saw baby animals in the flesh! Remember this post? Frying Pan Park is one of the first things we did when we moved to Virginia (a year ago!) We still love it....
Cute little piglets and large mother. Unfortunately, I know how she feels. Haha, jk... There were also cute new lambs, chicks, goats, etc but I didn't get any pictures of them.

"Look broder, sheep!"

They had just put up a Merry-go-Round and were letting people test it for free that day. We got lucky!

I think Norah really enjoys the time we spend doing things like this. I have noticed such a huge difference in her overall attitude and behavior when I really make more of an effort to have some planned and "constructive playtime" with her. It benefits all of us! This week I started incorporating more of a letter theme, so stay tuned for pictures next week. I'm thinking of creating a new blog dedicated to all things "tot school" and keeping this for personal family use. Yay or Nay?