Schedule & Curriculum Update

I've decided to make a few tweaks to our current schedule and curriculum. The changes for our Schedule are pretty minor - just moving things around a bit. I've been researching and like Waldorf's philosophy of having a daily rhythm so our new schedule reflects that. The biggest change is while before we were more focused on time, now it’s about having a consistent flow to our days. For instance, before, if we got up late, we would skip/move around things in the schedule to play catch-up. Now we try to keep the daily pattern/flow intact regardless of time. This way we both know what to expect during the day. It’s only been a couple of weeks but it’s going really well…


Daily Rhythm:

• Mommy’s Early Morning Routine
• MunCee Wakes Up
• Breakfast
• Tot School Session 1
• Morning Nap
• Lunch
• Tot School Session 2
• Afternoon Nap
• Free-Play/Field Trip
• Outdoor Gym/Nature Walk
• Dinner
• Bath Time
• MunCee’s Bedtime
• Mommy’s Pre-Bedtime Routine

Weekly Rhythm:

• Monday:            Planning Day
• Tuesday:           Grocery Day
• Wednesday:     Laundry Day
• Thursday:          Cleaning Day
• Friday:                Fun & Frolic Day
• Saturday:           Anything Goes Day
• Sunday:             Family Day

The other changes are related to our Curriculum. As in my previous post, we use a combination of several books and blogs to come up with something that works for us. The major change is that instead of a subject per day, we will do all subjects each day and the same activities all week. There may be minor variations to the daily activities but the key idea is repetition. We’ll also reintroduce Circle Time and use our morning session mainly for Educational Media and free exploration of our Tot Trays. So, here’s the new format…

Tot School Session 1

Circle Time:

• Welcome, Calendar, Weather & Action Songs
• Yoga
• Godly Character Trait

Educational Media:

• From our selection of DVDs – Letter Factory, Preschool Power, Preschool Prep, Sparkabilities, Signing Time, Trebellina, Themes to Remember, Your Baby Can Read

Tot Trays:

• New trays set out each week for free exploration

Tot School Session 2

Activites:

• Practical Life
• Sensorial
• Language
• Math
• Culture

Library Time:

• Before Five In A Row (BFAIR)

I’m excited to see how this new approach works out! New posts will be labeled Tot School (instead of Teeny Tot School) to represent the updated curriculum.

Teeny Tot School: Week 7 (Age: 15 Months)

My grand-mother/MunCee’s great-grandmother spent this week with us and we had a great time! Surprisingly, we actually did most of our planned activities.

Practical Life: I wasn’t sure if she was ready for this but introduced a Transferring activity anyway – just to see. She’s definitely not ready for the tongs but used the spoon to transfer one or two (lol) and liked playing with the pom poms a lot.

Sensorial: A little twist on the stacking cups; we added objects from our color bags and tried a bit of matching!

Reading: Still reading/discussing Brown Bear, Brown Bear! I told you we love this book! ;-) On our way to Brooklyn last weekend, my aunt taught MunCee A-B-C (not the entire alphabet, just A, B and C…heehee) so we also played with our foam letters.

Math: Also started working on numbers this week. We used our Peg Board to count to 5. Her favorites are apparently 2 and 5… she’s been saying them ALL WEEK!

Culture & Exercise: Nature Walk around the yard was fun. We have lots of birds, bugs, squirrels and even rabbits so it’s an interesting event. And MunCee got to work those muscles climbing the hill!

Happy July 4^th!

Teeny Tot School: Week 6 (Age: 15 Months)

We skimped on some of our activities this week to work on decorations for my cousin’s Baby Shower… but we made up for it with lots of “field trips” to Target, Dollar Tree and Wal-Mart!!! And to the Shower of course, which was sooo much fun!

Practical Life: Object Identification is becoming one of my favorite activities… I think MunCee likes it a lot too. I set out a few items on a tray and asked her to point to/hand me each item I named. I guess this could also be considered a language activity.

Sensorial: Play Doh is my new “go to” activity. A little bit messy but there’s so much you can do with it that it’s totally worth the mess. We talked about colors and just had a fun afternoon rolling, cutting and squishing!!!

Reading: This week we read Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see? by Bill Martin Jr. We love, love, love this book!

Math: To continue with our shapes theme, we identified shapes using our shape puzzle.

Culture & Exercise: Walking in Shopping Malls and Grocery Stores was our exercise this week. And we sure did a lot of it but I never remember my camera so no pics. :-(

Buh-bye!

Teeny Tot School: Week 5 (Age: 15 Months)

We had another wonderful week of Tot School….

Practical Life: MunCee has become quite the little mover and enjoys "helping out" at home. Her favorite chore is taking stuff to the trash, though we have to watch her carefully as she gets overly exuberant about it and starts dumping stuff that really should NOT be trashed. We've also set up a cupboard for her so she can get her own dishes and snacks, which she LOVES; she also has her own shelf in the fridge and loves to help herself to her juice boxes. And sometimes one just isn't enough... 

Sensorial: Stacking cups were a hit this week. We reviewed the colors as we stacked them up and then she had a blast knocking them over. I actually enjoyed this activity a lot; my inner child loves building towers ;-)

Reading: MunCee took the lead on reading this week. We let her pick what she wanted to read during our Tot School session. She absolutely LOVES books so it’s always fun watching her “read”.

Math: I found this shape sorter box at Target. (It’s from a “green” company but I can’t remember the name). We introduced it by starting with just two of the shapes. I was really impressed with her focus on this.

Culture & Exercise: Throwing and kicking a ball on the deck was the highlight of the week! We may have a Soccer player on our hands ;-)

That’s all folks! Until next week!

Teeny Tot School: Week 4 (Age: 14 Months)

We took a unexpected but "much needed" break from Tot School but things are better now so we're back! During our time off we still did a lot but none of the activities were really planned and I didn't document or take any pictures... but we're slowing getting back into our rhythm and are "SUPER" excited to be back!!!

Practical Life: This week we spent a lot of time playing with Stacking Rings. MunCee is getting much better at getting them on the ring. She got bored with this quickly so we had to moved on but reintroduced it several times during the week.

Sensorial: TThis The Color-of-the-Week ("COTW") was "yellow" so we explored our COTW bag. Another "not so exciting" activity... I need to get more creative with this one. 

Reading: We continued reading and exploring "The Runaway Bunny". MunCee's still not at the age where she wants to sit down to hear a story so we'll definitely re-read this when she's a bit older. She did learn the word "bunny" and can now identify "bunnies/rabbits" in other books, toys etc. Hope she doesn't ask for one when we visit the Pet Store ;-O

Math: Again no specific Math work this week. I'm slacking, I know! :-(

Culture & Exercise: We did Finger Painting for the first time and it was a "HIT". I wanted to just use "yellow" to go along with the COTW but she was having too much fun for that so we just kept adding colors. We did this activity for about 35 minutes.... so fun!!!!

Looking forward to next week!!!!