Teeny Tot School: Week 1 (Age: 13 Months)

Our first week of Tot School was absolutely fantastic. MunCee started the week teething so I wasn't sure how many of the activities we would get done but she surprised me by being totally interested in everything. I think it was actually a nice distraction from those pesky little teeth pushing through her sore and swollen gums. Anyhew, here goes...

Circle Time: Not sure she's quite ready for this just yet. She loved the singing but was immediately distracted by the activities trays so, going forward, we'll probably just sing the songs before we enter our "classroom" and/or throughout the day.

Practical Life: MunCee loves boxes so we did the Opening/Closing activity. I'd previously collected a variety of boxes, jars, purses, tins etc., specifically for this activity. I selected a few, stacked some within each other and added pom poms, old credit cards and other hidden items for her to discover. She really had fun with this activity and went back to it several times so we left it out all week and just kept rotating the containers to keep it interesting.

We also practiced putting pasta in a bottle. I was surprised at how quickly she was able to do this on her own. She's been feeding herself finger foods for some time now and is always putting her crackers into our glasses/water bottles so I guess she's had a lot of practice ;-)

Sensorial: To practice our colors, we used our colored wooden eggs (great idea from The Wonder Years) and our color mat (made by cutting out colored foam circles and taping them to large white foam sheet). She was more interested in running off with the eggs than the actual matching but we had fun anyway!

Crumbling tissue paper was another fun way to introduce colors and to also experience textures. MunCee didn't quite get the concept of crumbling but she was so focused during this activity and seemed to be really trying. She also had a great time at the end  throwing the paper balls everywhere ;-)

Reading Math and Culture: We started BFIAR by reading "The Runaway Bunny" by Margaret Wise Brown. This time of year we have lots of rabbits in our neighborhood so this seemed like a good book to start with since we could look for "the bunny", birds and insects on our nature walks. 

To practice our numbers, we read "123 Sea!" by Julie Fletcher. 

And, to go along with our Spring/Nature theme, we spend time outdoors exploring our backyard and looking for interesting items for our Nature Box. MunCee LOVES the outdoors so this was also a lot of fun. Exercise: Climbing stairs is currently MunCee's favorite activity so we did a lot of that and also went to the a toddler class at The Little Gym.All-in-all, it turned out to be a wonderful first week of Tot School. We are soooo looking forward to next week!!!!