Tot School Begins!

We are all set and ready to begin. All of our trays and materials for Weeks 1 & 2 are prepared and waiting to be explored ;-) I'm so excited to see how MunCee will react to Tot School. We are currently using the scheduled times for unstructured exploration/free play and story time and have also already introduced some Montessori activities so it won't be completely new to her.

Our primary goal is to make this a FUN environment for MunCee where she can play and learn at the same time. Although it will be somewhat structured, we will follow her cues and make adjustments as needed. In a true Montessorian sense, we will do our best "follow the child!"

I think the hardest part of it will be for ME to supress that instinctive need to help and to also remember to "quietly" observe and not provide unnecessary praise which can be so disruptive. If I can get those things under control, I think we will be just fine.

Sooooo, the next post will be all about our first day of Tot School. How exciting!!!

Tot School Curriculum!

We're almost ready to begin Tot School. Our first session is scheduled to officially begin on April 12th but we're still awaiting some of our supplies from Oriental Trading so we'll see what happens.

I've finalized our curriculum which is a based on David Gettman's "Basic Montessori", "Tot Tray" ideas from 1+1+1=1 and the free "Brightly Beaming Toddler" curriculum from Letter Of The Week. We're also using "Before Five In A Row" for our reading program. I know it seems like a lot but I've also created a week-by-week schedule for the entire year so it's pretty simple to follow. I don't expect that we'll do everything as planned (since this will be based on MunCee's interests), but it will help keep ME organized; that and I'm also TOTALLY addicted to spreadsheets so this was actually a very fun project for me ;-)!

So, here's our basic curriculum with some of the things we hope to cover during months 13 thru 24. We will have two 1-hour sessions per day as follows:

Circle Time (~15 Minutes):

      Session 1 - Weather, Calendar, Learning Songs, Nursery Rhymes

      Session 2 - Action Songs, Finger Plays, Sign Language

Learning Activities (~30 Minutes): 

      Monday - Math

           (Numbers, Shapes, Sorting, Matching)

      Tuesday - Sensorial

           (Colors, Stacking, Mirror Mirror, Senses)

      Wednesday - Language

           (Letters, Writing, Reading (BFIAR), Opposites)

      Thursday - Practical Life

           (Self-Care, Tidying Up, Emptying/Filling, Pouring/Transferring)

      Friday - Cultural

           (Arts & Crafts, Music, Nature Study)

Exercise (~15 Minutes)

      Gross Motor - Walking, Climbing, Pushing, Jumping, Throwing

I'm currently preparing our learning activity trays for the first two weeks. My plan is to repeat the same activity in both sessions to reinforce the material; not sure if this will bore MunCee so we'll try it and make adjustments if she loses interest.

That's really it; for now anyway!

We're on a schedule... finally!

We've been following this schedule for a few weeks now and it's going really well. We're both much more relaxed knowing what to expect during the day and I can actually get some housework done when she's napping so "yay"! I suspect we may have to change this soon since I've heard that toddlers usually move to one nap instead of two but we'll just follow her lead and see what happens. 

Here's a typical day for Mommy & the Munchkin! (special thanks to FlyLady.com... awesome, awesome site!!!!)

7:00 AM:           Mommy does her "Early Morning Routine"

8:00 AM:           MunCee wakes up, gets dressed, has Breakfast

9:00 AM:           Nature Walk (with our dogs)

10:00 AM:         Morning Nap
11:30 AM:         Snack

12:00 PM:         Tot School - Session 1

1:00 PM:           Lunch & Free Play

2:30 PM:           Afternoon Nap

4:30 PM:           Snack
5:00 PM:           Tot School - Session 2

6:00 PM:           Dinner & Free Play
7:30PM:            Bath Time
8:00 PM:           MunCee's BedTime
9:00 PM:           Mommy does her "Pre-BedTime Routine" and relaxes with Daddy! ;-)

MunCee's 1 Year Old...

... and I survived to tell the tale... awesome!!!! LOL

It's been such an amazing year with her. I can't believe how much she's grown and all the new things she's doing and saying ;-) Her favorites words are "dog" (and she just learned to say "Ari"; guess "Bela" will come later), "hot", "hi", "bye", "E", "box", "book" and of course Mam-Mam/Mum/Maaam and Dada/Dad. Surprisingly she is using all of these in the right context.

She finally has teeth! The first two to break through were the ones on top (odd right?) and now there's a little one peaking out at the bottom. They're so adorable but quite sharp so no more chewing on Mommy's nose/chin ;-) 


No official steps taken yet but she "power-crawls" and cruises everywhere! And climbs stairs (up and down all day long if you let her) and on EVERYTHING! She climbs on the table in her playroom, on couches, dining tables, boxes, books, pots - the child is OBSESSED with climbing so we have to watch her every move!

Breast-feeding still going strong! I'm sooooooo excited that we made the 1-year mark. YaYYY Us! ;-) I am starting to think about weaning but I'm not sure how quickly it will happen since MunCee is really not that interested in food. She'll eat whatever we're eating but definitely not enough to replace her milk, especially since she WILL NOT take any form of milk from a cup or bottle! Not happening!!! So we'll just take it slowly and see what happens. 

Wow, there are so many other things to note but I'll just say that I'm am constantly entertained by my cute, chatty, happy, playful munchkin! She is a wonderful blessing and we are MOST grateful to have her!

MunCee's Favorite Things:

• Books - she loves, loves, LOVES books
• Water - Bath Time is her favorite time of day!
• Boxes of any kind
• French Fries (I know, I know!) and Cheese
• Chewing Faces and "Sophie Giraffe" 
• Eating Paper
• Being Outdoors