We had a good week this time! I got my Tot School shelves organized, and Gabriela was more willing to do activities instead of watching Thomas the Tank Engine…yes, she has switched from Dora to Thomas. I’m glad I saved all of Isaac’s Thomas DVDs and videos! (He’s “too old” for Thomas now…sob, sob.) Moriah never got into Thomas, but Gabriela loves it!
1. LAURI Butterfly puzzle—Since we started Letter B this week, I thought this puzzle would be appropriate. (Yes, we’re very late on our alphabet studies, but I’m okay with that.) After doing the puzzle a few times, it was Gabriela’s idea to match the butterflies to the outlines on the cardboard insert.
2. Transferring—Isaac loves coming up with Tot activities for Gabriela. He intended this to be a pouring activity, but I felt the glass pebbles would be too heavy and also too loud when poured. So he got Gabriela an ice cream scoop to use.
3. Fixing hair—Isaac arranged this one as well.
Gabriela got a play hair set for Christmas. The set includes a blow dryer that really works…well, sort of. It makes a noise and blows air like a hand-held fan. It also includes a comb, brush, hair clips, and a mirror. Isaac even fixed her hair! Anyway, she enjoyed “drying” and brushing her hair while looking in the mirror.
4. Nuts and Bolts—These are plastic, but I think they’re good to start out with. Gabriela struggled to get the nuts started, but she did really well after I started them for her. She also did really well matching colors. After the first day she lost interest in this activity, so I’ll introduce it again later. Eventually I’ll let her use the whole building set, and someday I’ll buy real nuts and bolts for her to use. I’m trying to incorporate more Montessori activities into Gabriela’s Tot School, and this is one.
5. Gumball machine—We’ve done this before. I put the marbles in the machine, and Gabriela has to turn the knob to get them all out. It’s a nice fine-motor skill—twisting the knob. Then she puts them in the silver sauce boat. The second time I went to pour the marbles back into the globe, Gabriela wanted to do the pouring herself.
6. Tea Party--This was another of Isaac’s ideas. He set it up himself. It’s not really a skill she’s practicing—just using her imagination, which also important. : ) She’s serving Lady from the Thomas the Tank Engine movies, a Littlest Pet Shop cat, and Moriah’s polar bear.
She also served tea to us!
7. Even though Isaac no longer plays with his Thomas collection, we still have all his trains and the cards that came with them. Since Gabriela has shown an interest in Thomas, I had her do a matching activity with a few of the trains and cards. I think I need to make it more challenging and have her do the whole set of them on the floor because this was pretty easy for her. After playing with them for awhile, she put them into a circle, with all their magnetic fronts and backs touching and Lady in the middle, which I thought was interesting.
8. Bottlecap letters—This is something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time. I’ve seen the idea on several blogs, so I wouldn’t know who to credit. (If anyone knows where it originated, let me know, and I’ll happily credit it). The reason I haven’t done this activity before is because I have problems finding bottles with light-colored, plain lids. Most lids I’ve seen are either dark or have writing on them. When we were in the US last, I talked my husband into buying a huge pack of water bottles just because they had the perfect lids. Unfortunately, we didn’t manage to finish the water before returning to England. I only managed to save 9 of them, enough for Gabriela’s name plus one. I’d like to have enough for all the letters, capital and lower case, and also extra letters. I printed off a page with Gabriela’s name and also Moriah’s (even though I don’t have the letters for Moriah’s), and I need to laminate it and cut them apart. If anyone from England reads this and happens to know where I can get similar lids, please do let me know. Gabriela loved this activity!
9. Littlest Pet Shop play
10. Letter of the Week pages (from Confessions of a Homeschooler):
Dot Stamping Letter B—she loves doing these, and she’s getting quite good at it.
Tracing Letter B—I use page extenders (one of my favorite tools in homeschooling) for this, to save laminating (I have more stuff to laminate than I can afford). Gabriela repeated this activity several times in a row, using different color dry-erase pens each time.
Butterfly Color Page
More Tracing Practice
11. Rush Hour—This was supposed to be Isaac’s thinking skills activity, but Gabriela begged to use it when Isaac was done. She mostly just placed the cars on the grid, but she was perplexed about why there wasn’t room for the last one (we had an extra red car that come with another set of Rush Hour cards).
12. Play-dough—I’ve been very late in doing a January sensory tub (which hopefully you’ll see next week…even though January is essentially over) and play-dough. The play-dough was late because I was out of salt, and both times I sent my husband to the store to buy some, they were out of the cheap brand he likes to buy. Since I was so late in making the play-dough, I made 2 half batches—white for January and pink for February. Before Christmas, I found these nice food containers with lids (in the baby section of the store). They fit a ball of play-dough perfectly (half a batch of dough using THIS recipe). 
Anyway, this week we used the white dough (scented vanilla with silver glitter) to make snowmen…actually, in this case it was a snow-woman. I had the kids find toy hats and other items Gabriela could use to decorate her snow-person. I put a button on the toothpick arm, and she decided to continue that, so here’s how it turned out: 
I found the play-dough snowman idea at Jada Roo Can Do.
My sweet li’l cowgirl! 
For more Tot School posts, visit 1+1+1=1!
