Tot School--Winter Theme

Over the holidays, I decided to come up with some Tot School themes for the rest of the year. After doing a week of winter-themed activities, I looked at several of this week's Tot School posts and found lots of activities I wish I had done! Oh well. I'm also starting ABCs with Gabriela, just because she seems interested in learning them. So this week, we did some A activities as well. Here's how our Tot School looked this past week:

1. Felt Weather Bear--Rather than doing the whole set and comparing weather, I simply focused on winter. I picked out the winter board and all the winter clothing and let her dress the bear. She begged for this activity several times throughout the week.




2. Trying on mittens. I gathered all the mittens and gloves in the house, and I was shocked at how many there were! We only have 5 people in this house! I let Gabriela play with them for awhile, and she mostly enjoyed this activity (except for a few frustrated cries she made when she couldn't get some of them on).



3. Mitten Match Tray: I found several pair of little mittens we had accumulated since Isaac was a tot. I put them on a tray and showed Gabriela how to match them in pairs. She caught on really quickly and easily did the same activity later in the week.







4. Toddler Puzzles--A charity shop find





5. Coloring Letter A


6. Winter Wraps--We worked on identifying different types of winter wear (coat, hat, glove/mittens, scarf, boots), and Gabriela had a basket of stuff to try on.






7. Letter A Tray--I collected all the A's I could find, and I'm sure I missed some. My school storage room is a disaster zone, so I'm not finding everything I want. I'm in desperate need of time and money specifically for organizing. Anyway, we also did some letter A cutting with play-doh. The flowery letter A is part of a set I made years ago when I worked in a kindergarten classroom--the letters are made out of old wall-paper samples ("old" meaning 1960s-1970s--they were from some wallpaper sample books I was given). Most of them have some texture, so they're neat to touch.





8. Stamping the letter A--this was a tricky one. I really didn't want her getting ink on herself, and she wanted to press the stamper into the ink herself.


9. Dot-painting a snowman (I helped her just a bit on the hat, scarf and face)




9. Warm and Cold Sensory Tray--I used a heating pad, warm water, and a radiator (they're very warm but not hot) and also cold water, a frozen popsicle, and an ice cube.





I meant to read Gabriela some winter stories, but we didn't get far. I read one, but she was very fidgety, so I'll try again this coming week. Later I'll post a few Amazon carousels of books we read for Christmas and also our winter books.

I found some interesting things at charity shops this past week. Several of them I bought for Tot School. I could really use some ideas for these items (I really am a creative person, but I just don't have time to be creative!), so if you'd like to see what I found, please click here.

For more great Tot School posts, see Carisa's blog at 1+1+1=1. Keep checking back, because posts will be added (at 1+1+1=1) throughout the week!