Tot School Beginnings

3.06.2011

My friend Liz from her blog, From Chalkboards to Strollers, started posting about Tot School.  Her activities are amazing, and since I've been feeling like I'm in a rut lately of not spending enough time with my little guy, I've decided to join the fun.

Tot School is not a school but a concept.  The goal is to set aside special time each day with my tot (Little Lewie), so that I'm exposing him to "early learning skills through FUN play."  The main rule is "Tot School is not forced, is always fun, and always focused on my tot," which means I don't worry if my project doesn't go as planned.

Tot School

The Tot School link is posted on Saturday, but moms can link up anytime during the week to show the different activities they've done with their toddlers.  So far, the ideas I've seen are so creative--they've inspired me to get out of my work and errand rut and start actively participating in learning activities with my little guy again...

Here goes one of the activities we did this week...

I decided to let my little guy have fun playing with uncooked rice and noodles. While I need to invest in some trays so that there isn't a messy clean up...we still had fun.  First, Lewie had fun scooping rice into various containers and letting it 'sprinkle' all over. 

When I gave him the noodles, it suddlenly occured to me that we could make a 'noodle necklace.'  I found some coarse string/twine, and I tied one end to our kitchen chair (this kept the noodles from falling off one end.)  While Little Lewie still couldn't 'thread' the string into the noodles, he certainly had fun moving the noodles up and down the string.  As each noodle was threaded, we'd have the noodle glide down the string.  (It reminded me of a zip line.)  Lewie had fun with this, and all in all, it was a great sensory experience.

Having fun with rice and fun containers.

"Hmmm...this feels different!"

Twine for our 'noodle necklace.'

'Let's watch the noodles go down the zip line!'

'This is pretty fun!'
Okay, so my goal is to start coming up with different themes each week, so we can combine play with actual learning lessons, but I'll get there. In the meantime, we did enjoy this activity, and I plan on doing more and linking up each week, so I can both share ideas and get inspired from other moms.

I hope everyone is enjoying their weekend!

13 comments:

  1. That looks like a lot of fun and a great concept. Thanks for sharing the idea, link and photos. Hope your husband is okay!

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  2. Welcome to the fun world Tot School! You are going to LOVE it, not to mention your little man!

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  3. Yay, I'm so glad you joined, Annette! Love the rice activity you did, we haven't gotten rice out yet but now I definitely want to, looks like so much fun! Great idea to use the noodles as a tool for making a necklace. Love the picture of Little Lewie watching the noodles slide down the thread. I just got a bunch of noodles just for tot school so Avery and I will have to give that a try. Ca't wait to see what else you come up with!

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  4. Fun Stuff! And welcome to Tot School! I've never thought about tying the string to something like that. How smart! I'm always looking for new twists on familiar activities, so we'll have to give that a try sometime. Thanks for sharing!

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  5. That's great! If anything, it provides great ideas for easy activities to do with your little one!

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  6. What an awesome idea! Georgia would probably flip for stringing pasta. Thanks for spreading the good ideas around!

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  7. what an amazing idea :) I know at my son's preschool at centers, they'll use rice and pasta at the sensory table! Very good idea!

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  8. These are great ideas! I'm going to start linking up an activity each week from our "School Time!" Thanks for sharing!

    Carla

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  9. Fabulous idea!!! Definitely going to give it a try!

    Kerri

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  10. Oh how fun. Lil Lewie looks so cute in his jammies playing with the necklace! I'm sure Nate would love playing with the dried pasta and rice. I am also sure it would go EVERYWHERE in our house. Hmmm...am I brave enough?

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  11. This is wonderful! I love that idea! I try so hard to do fun learning things each day and setting aside time to do so is important. Sometimes the day can go so quickly. I am going to check out the blog. I hope you are well my friend! Have a great night!

    Mama Hen

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  12. Great ideas! We did the volcano with baking soda and vinegar with Scotty yesterday...he loved it! I am definitely going to pull out some pasta and let him go crazy with it too!

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  13. I've never heard of that but it looks fantastic! I'm always looking for things to do when she gets a little older. I love the noodle necklace. Just good ideas all around.

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