Tot School - February 9 - 13, 2009

Letter: V

Shape: Heart

Color: Pink

Pre-Science: We used a stethescope to listen to our hearts before and after exercising to show/discuss why our hearts beat faster when we're exercising. We talked about why it's important to exercise in order to keep our hearts healthy.

Large Motor: A Hearty Workout
This was a game that I found online at http://www.prekfun.com/%22%3Ehttp://www.prekfun.com/ (I think!) But when I went back, I found that they only keep listed the current themes and they disable the links for the older themes. So, unfortunately, I am unable to link back to the actual page where this activity can be found...so I've listed the words below.

(Tune: Do You Know the Muffin Man?")

Oh Valentine! Come dance with me!
Dance with me!
Dance with me!
Oh Valentine! Come dance with me!
We'll dance until we stop!! (Freeze)

Each time, substitute other actions like hop, skip, jump, twirl, etc. Afterwards, we placed our hands over our hearts to feel how it beats faster.

Arts/Crafts: We made lots of Valentines and Valentine decorations.

That's Addie peaking in from the outside...she's so silly!!

Pre-Math / Dramatic Play: Sorting - Playing Post Office - After we made our Valentines, Lindsay played like she was the mail carrier and "delivered" each valentine to it's appropriate "mailbox". She sorted each one into each family member's mailbox, then we counted how many each family member had.

Language: Draw/Dictate Pictures - I asked Lindsay to draw a picture about how we show people that we love them. She dictated the pictures as she drew them. One little funny here...her idea of how to show Trey that she loves him: "I let him clean my room for me."

More Pre/Math: We played Conversation Heart Tic-Tac-Toe...only without the conversation hearts because she kept eating them all.


Even More Pre-Math: we cut out lots and lots of heart shapes out of cardstock and placed them on a white bedsheet. Then on the count of three, we flipped the bedsheet up in the air and watched all the hearts float up and finally land on the floor. The one to collect the most hearts won. We discussed how we knew who had more hearts.

This was a really fun game that she continued to play all day long...when Trey and I got tired of playing, she enlisted the dog!

Fine Motor: We play with Play-Doh quite a bit. This week, she decided that she wanted to make Valentine "cookies" with her play-doh. This of course led us to making the real cookies (like we needed them with all the chocolate in the house, but what could I do??) This is her play-doh version of her "Daddy Sweetheart!"

As you can see, we had a very exciting (and busy) week in Tot School! For more Tot Reports from other mom's of toddlers, visit Carissa's Tot School blog at 1+1+1=1!