Monday, January 27, 2014

Tot Trays: Arctic Animals Week 1

When I first decided to try out tot trays for the new year I planned a few themes together.  So, of course I found myself with too many activities to fit in a week.  I decided to stretch "Arctic Animals" over two weeks as I did with "Snow/Winter".  

This week the activities were all about cold weather again and different types of animals that live in the arctic.  We also talked a little bit about hibernation.  

Magnetic Alphabet
We used the "H" magnetic page and the "H" booklet.  The whole alphabet can be found here.  I always use them with a cookie sheet and they work really well.  B is very good at putting all of the correct pom poms in place.  


Story Sequencing
B used to really like "Brown Bear, Brown Bear", so I pulled out the "Polar Bear, Polar Bear" version.  I used a paint stick to recreate the story, so B could listen to the story and put the characters in the correct sequence.  This was one of the more popular activities for the week.  He wanted to read the story over and over again.  I found the idea here.





Hibernation Craft
We read the story "Over and Under the Snow" all about different animals and where they live during the winter months.  Then we did a little bear hibernation craft.  B is getting really good at working with the glue.






Picture Matching Game
We learned the names of the arctic animals with picture cards.  I thought the activity was a little too advanced for B to actually match the names, so we just worked with the pictures this time. 



Size Sorting
And finally this week we worked on size sequencing using penguin pictures: small, medium and large. I found this and many other arctic related activities in the toddler pack "Polar Lands".



Again the whole reason I wanted to use the "tot tray" method was so that B could choose activities on his own and the clean-up is easy.  Here is a picture of B putting one of the activities away.



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