Daily Calendar

One activity that I decided to start with B at the beginning of the year was a daily calendar.  It is a great way to introduce Months, Days of the Week, Holidays, Weather, Numbers & Counting.  He is really learning to recognize the numbers quickly.  

Here is what the calendar looked like initially.  B asks every day, "can we do calendar?".  He loves to go look out back and see what the weather is for the day.  But, eventually the pieces started to get bent & sticky, because I didn't think to laminate them until it was too late.  

So eventually I had new pieces laminated and put everything up on a bulletin board.  I also decided to include the seasons & changed how to track the days of the week.  

Tot Trays: St. Patrick's Day

Because St. Patrick's Day fell on a Monday, I decided to have the tot trays ready for the week before.    We used a few of the trays over the course of two weeks.  The matching card game is actually still out and B wants to play it occasionally.  

Shamrock Lacing Card

I took the basic shape of a shamrock & printed it on green card stock.  Then I laminated it to make it nice and sturdy, and then punched a bunch of holes around the outside.  I used a piece of green yarn for the lacing.  

B had a hard time with this at first, so we worked together on it.  He would pass the yarn through a hole to me and then I would pass it back through.  

Later in the week he did much better with it independently.  

Puzzles

Again, I found a tot pack, which included a 9 piece puzzle for B to try.  Here is the St. Patrick's Day themed tot pack.  There are plenty of other great ideas to use.  He needed more help the first time he completed it and a little bit of guidance each time after that.  

Coloring Sheets & Writing Practice

Again in the St. Patrick's Day tot pack there are plenty of tracing pages to help with learning to write.  I also printed a few pages just for coloring.  There was one page in particular that went along with the story There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Clover, which we borrowed from the library.  

Sensory Bin

For this week I pulled out the rainbow rice from our busy bag and hid a few laminated gold coins inside.  I had B search for the gold coins.  He liked looking for them the first time, but when I tried to put them back in to play again he did not like it.  He would much rather just play with the rice.  Something similar to the idea found below:

Matching Game

We have played this matching/memory card game over and over.  The cards can be found here.  There are also some other great tot tray ideas found on the blog Moms Have Questions Too.

Tot Trays: Dr. Seuss

Early March means celebrating Dr. Seuss' birthday.  B and I made a trip to the library, but of course most of the books were already checked out.  We managed to get Cat in the Hat, which is one of B's new favorites.  I also mentioned this to a friend and she had extra copies of 4-5 Dr. Seuss books so she let us keep them.  So of course Green Eggs and Ham has become a frequent read in this house as well!  

I found so many different activities through Pinterest.

Cutting Practice
I purchased scissors specifically designed to help teach little ones how to cut/use them properly.  They are not safety scissors however, so B can only use them when I am with him and helping.  For this activity he cut white & red strips.  Then worked on gluing them in place to create the Cat in the Hat.

Puzzle Time

I used popsicle sticks to create a puzzle using the cover photo from Green Eggs and Ham.  B needed some help the first time, but after that he did really well matching the pieces together.

Letter Recognition

B is doing really well with recognizing capital letters, so I decided to create a little Green Eggs & Ham matching game based on this blog.  I printed 26 fried green eggs and 26 green ham pieces.  On the back of all of the eggs I wrote all capital letters and on the ham I did lower case.  Then I put the upper & lower case letters on paper plates.  B would choose an egg, state what it was and then go run to the correct paper plate and place it.  We only did the egg version of the game a few times and did not get around to trying lower case letters, so I am not sure how he would do with them.  

Tracing/Writing practice

Again I had a tracing activity for B to practice holding a pen/marker and writing the letter S for Seuss.  I also brought out the letter S magnetic board and the Ss book.  

Again he loved using the dry erase crayons

There were a few activities that we did not get to during the week.  One was a Cat in the Hat play dough mat.  I did not get around to coloring & laminating it, so that B could use play dough to match the colors.  I also found an opposites activity based on The Foot Book. 

Finally there was a pattern activity sheet.  The patterns were given and then individual card pieces were cut out.  The idea is for the child to recreate the correct pattern using the individual cards.  

Tot Trays: Dinosaurs

After returning from our trip south I decided to try Dinosaur week.  We had some dinosaur toys and other activities from our theme last year.  This time I planned just enough activities to fit in one week and I changed the activities in the middle of the week.  So B had access to some of them from Monday - Thursday and then the others from Thursday to Sunday.

Dinosaur Prints

We used some of the dinosaur toys and a little bit of play-dough to create "fossils".  

Grow Capsules

I had bought some dinosaur grow capsules at the Dollar Tree, but we didn't use them last time.  So I brought them out for one of the tot trays.  B and I worked together to put them in a bowl of warm water.  It took a little while for the capsules to dissolve, so we worked on a Letter Dd dot page while we were waiting.  

Then we found out why the capsules were from the dollar store - only 1-2 of them were actually dinosaurs!

Puzzle Time

B has shown that he is ready for more difficult puzzles, so I found a Dinosaur learning pack online and printed the 9 piece puzzle.  He did well with a little bit of help.  It was difficult because the pieces don't actually fit together, so they would move anytime he tried to place a new piece.  The puzzle was part of the tot pack!

Pre-writing

B worked on some Dd tracing practice and then colored the dinosaur.  I decided to give dry erase crayons a try, because they seem to be less messy than markers.  They are great, because all colors are available, and they came with a cloth to erase.  They are of course really light, so it is difficult getting B to press down a little harder, but he doesn't seem to mind.  

Learning to Cut

I also bought some scissors designed for teaching toddlers how to cut.  B was really excited to use them, but we also had to talk about being careful, because they are not "safety scissors".  He kept wanting to use both hands one to hold them and the other to push the blades down.  So, we have a little work to do, but he enjoyed cutting up the dinosaur shapes.  This activity also came from the Dinosaur learning pack.  

Counting

Based on a few cards I saw online I created a dinosaur counting version.  I printed pictures of different dinosaurs numbers 0-10.  Then I printed the numeral and the written number name cards.  B of course is not ready for the written name, so I spread the numerals out on the floor.  He would count the dinosaurs on a card and then go jump on the matching number.  

Colors

B worked on following directions and his colors with the following coloring sheets.  I would read the statements to him and he would follow the directions using the correct colors.  

Georgia Visit

I originally had a plan for early February for a Groundhog's Day tot tray.  But, between illness and preparing for our trip to Georgia it didn't happen.  Maybe eventually I will at least type up the plans and use them next year!  

While we were away in Georgia the activities and learning did not end.  Auntie Ashlea has an on base daycare in her home.  During the week that we were there she had an Olympic theme going.  So, B did participate in one of the painting activities.  

Olympic Ring Painting

Each child picked out a colored piece of paper.  Then using toilet paper rolls they dipped each one in the olympic ring colors and dabbed them on their paper.  It created the look of the olympic rings.  All of the kids did surprisingly well keeping the correct toilet paper rolls in the correct colors.  

She also had a ring toss game prepared, but that was for later in the week.  I think B would have enjoyed that activity.  

We also enjoyed plenty of play time outside during the second half of the week, when the weather was gorgeous.