Back story to our Tot School decision:
I had been wanting to start Tot School for a while with Nolan after a few attempts some months back at some organized activities that we found on Pinterest. We never followed through, but I really enjoyed the structure it added to our day. I was starting to find myself lost for things to do with Nolan in the morning, and was tired of him wrecking the house with toys during free play and disobeying more and more because he was bored and under stimulated. I was also tired of being addicted to my phone and so "plugged in" rather than spending my focus on my son, scrolling through Instagram and Facebook while he mindlessly played through toys he was uninspired by and sadly, not getting much of my own attention. This led me to do some hard-core Pinterest searching and coming across a few different curriculums that I could see ourselves fitting into our schedule. I decided to create a plan for the remainder of the year by following a mix of these references, scheduling 3 days a week for at least 60-90 minutes a day of dedicated "Tot School", which really just means organized activities that stimulate learning, but are actually just fun and play to him! Pinterest is loaded with ideas, and I ended up planning out a whole month of lesson plans fairly easily, and actually enjoyed putting it all together!
Each Sunday, I organize what I need for the week's theme, which really means gathering supplies, printing out worksheets and printables, and laminating them if necessary (after 4 weeks of doing this, it's really only taken about an hour on average to do so each Sunday). The night before each day's specific activities, I prep what we will be doing so I'm not wasting time doing so during the day with him (which really only takes about 30 minutes, typically). It really doesn't take much time to plan this out, and is worth an hour of sacrifice to do so to gain some structure and less tantrums during the given week! The most work is done planning the month's lesson plans, but once I get in that pinning mood, it's pretty fun and I enjoy working on gathering activities and crafts towards each weeks' theme.
The best part is that he has something to look forward to on the days we do Tot School, and is motivated and excited by the initiation of our new activities. He still has plenty of time for free play during the day, as well as time for us to run errands and still attend outside classes and playdates since we only have a 3 day/week schedule for lessons. And, because we're human, some days are more interactive and go better than others- there have been some occasions that he wants nothing to do with certain activities, and that's fine! There are times that he has tried activities, gotten frustrated and tantrumed, and there are times where he truly enjoyed them so much, he asks for them all day and the remainder of the week. It's more about play than forcing him to do them, so we go on his pace, and sometimes will try again later in the week or just skip it all together if I think it might be too much. Some days we get to all of the activities on our lesson plan, and some days we only get one or two things done off of our list. It's very flexible and I try to remind myself it's about his fun and play, and not forcing it.
I decided to briefly document our weekly activities through our family blog so I can follow his progress with activities and preserve his arts and crafts, as well as appreciate the hard work I put into all the planning, too! :) I'll try to link up certain activities in case anyone is interested in doing them, but if anything, my Pinterest page is full of organized activities by each week & theme, some of which we end up planning into our lessons and others that I was inspired to pin but didn't incorporate. (My Pinterest page can be found here).
So, without many more details... here's our first week at Tot School, diving head first into it with flying colors (see what I did there... our theme for this week was colors)!
We started our first morning enjoying some Rainbow Toast that was more a fail on my part, but Nolan still thought it was amazing and had to point out all the colors to me!
Each morning, we start Tot School with our Morning Board. It's really just a good introduction at getting him to settle down and the way he knows Tot School is starting. He gets extremely excited to sing a few songs and sit down and do this now that it is a routine, and after just 4 weeks of practice, knows both songs that we sing about the Days of the Week and Months of the Year. We go over what day it is, what month, and find the actual date (number) on the flip cards and the calendar, and he gets to sticker the date himself (his favorite part). We talk about what season it is and we also take our weather cards and evaluate the weather each day by stepping outside and talking about that.
Once we finish our Morning Board, we read the dedicated book of the day. Nolan is very impatient still about getting through the book quickly to get to the other activities, but has gotten better about it in the last week. If he really enjoys the book, he will sit and pay attention longer, but it's still a work in progress. This week, we read Freight Train, and he really loved it! Afterward, we used our sensory bin to find ABC letters, and sorted them accordingly to the designated colored cup. He spent over 20 minutes doing this and absolutely loved the sensory bin.
Day 2 of Colors Week included Brown Bear, Brown Bear as our themed book, and pom pom sorting in a simple ice tray. Nolan had to organize the poms into each colored paper slot, and enjoyed doing it so much, that we spent about 20 minutes repeating the activity over and over and over again. To make it more difficult, I had him match the poms in the cube slot across from each color, which he needed help with at first (he preferred to put two correctly colored poms in one slot rather than one in each).
We played the "High 5" game, which was by far the biggest hit of Tot School yet. I found this activity on Pinterest, here. He asks for this game every day, and even weeks later, still mentions playing the game, so we'll keep it on hand (ha!) for further lessons because he was obsesssssed with this! I would simply call out a color for him to find and "High 5". To make it more difficult, sometimes I would call out two colors (red first, then black).
Also a huge hit, our car color organization game was one we played for over 30 minutes and multiple, multiple times! Nolan has a ton of hot wheels and smaller cars and trucks, so he had to go through his bin of cars and place each on the designated color all while naming each color as he organized them.
For our art/craft project of the day, we referred to our themed book of Brown Bear, Brown Bear, and Nolan painted a brown bear with a plastic fork, which I found on Pinterest, here. I started the pattern and showed him how to splatter the paint with the fork, and he finished it up quickly. He was less interested in this one but was happy to see his final outcome of a cute bear!
We finished up our afternoon with a snack of graham crackers, peanut butter and raisin brown bears, too! He thought these were hilarious as he totally tore them apart devoured them!
Day 3 of Tot School this week was more of a "fail" day... but we sure did try! Nolan enjoyed the Color Dance book, but wasn't into Mouse Paint at all and rushed through it quickly. We then tried our first Play Doh mat (Rainbow Printable here), which I thought Nolan would really enjoy since he loves playing with Play Doh. I couldn't have been more wrong and he totally tantrumed through the whole activity, so I quickly finished up our rainbow to show him what we could make with it, and called it a day with that.
I had earlier picked up Nolan's first board game in the Target dollar section, and saved it specifically for these color activities days to introduce it. I wasn't sure how he would do with following directions, taking turns and learning "how" to play a game... but he totally surprised me and really enjoyed it! Of course, it was a constant step-by-step of telling him what to do (i.e.: spin the wheel, okay, now what color is that? Do you have any of those color underpants? Put them in the washer! You spun bubbles- that means you get to win all the underpants and place them on your board! Now count your underpants! How many do you have? You have 9! You win!) We played twice and it took up a good amount of time, and it's a great way to introduce a board game at a very early age.
Our arts/crafts project of the day consisted of our first Do-A-Dot worksheet (Rainbow Do-A-Dot here).... in which I totally failed and laminated this thinking it would be great to reuse for a later activity... until I realized the Do-A-Dot paints don't adhere to the laminating paper well and just disappear with each dot. Nolan tried his best with what he was given, but next time, we will definitely just print these out without laminating!
Overall, our first week of Tot School went fairly well and it was a great introduction into some structured activities, some of which Nolan thrived on and others not so much. Each week, I look forward to seeing what Nolan's interests are based on these activities, and will be fun to see his progress with each as we continue through the year. Stay tuned for more!
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