January Tot School

I've always done learning activities with Naomi, but decided to make it a little more formal this fall.  We ordered the Sonlight Pre-K program and started doing it.  We love it and have had so much fun with all the books and activities!  This January I started searching online for some fun activities to supplement the Sonlight curriculum, and was overwhelmed with all I found!  The thing I have been most excited about was the idea of calling what I'm doing with Naomi "Tot School".  I found the idea here!  The blog is called 1+1+1=1 and written by a homeschool mom of three.  She has tons of ideas for Tot School, and posts each week what she does with her kids.  I have been so inspired that I want to try and do the same thing!  Here is my first attempt!

For the month of January our theme was winter and snow.  Based upon that we did all kinds of fun things!




What is a unit on snow without building a snowman?!?




We read the poem about Old King Cole and of course had to dress up like him too!  Naomi also has been very into building blocks.  She has never shown much interest in blocks before, so this has been a fun development.



Naomi had so much fun playing with some lentil beans in her kitchen! It was a great activity for her pouring and spooning skills. It made a huge mess, but when it was all done, she got to practice her sweeping skills as well!

Naomi and Daddy learned about igloos together! After learning what an igloo is, and looking at pictures of them, they made an igloo out of mini marshmallows and icing. Fun and tasty! ;)

This was our science experiment, and a transferring activity. We asked the question, what happens to water when it freezes? When we had our ice cubes, Naomi had fun scooping them from one bowl into another. We also did the reverse process (What happens to ice when it gets warm?) as well.

We made an ice sun catcher! We put our colored ice cubes in a pie plate, added some string and water, and left it outside overnight. The next morning we pulled it out and hung it on our tree! It was pretty for a few days before it melted.  Naomi had fun checking on it throughout the day to see if it was still there, shrinking, then eventually gone. I got this idea at MckMama's Blog.

Practicing our 1:1 counting and number recognition by counting carrots. The snowmen number cards came from here.

We had the opportunity to take Naomi to see the play Angelina Ballerina the Musical. We all LOVED it!!

 These are some highlights from our Tot School in January.  I want to start posting every week what we have done in Tot School, but since I just started this blog, I had to start somewhere!  It is a work in progress and I am still working out the kinks in our systems.  The important thing is that we're having a lot fun, and learning as we go! Check back for a couple things from Nathan's January, Teeny Tot School!