Tot School: Snow Edition


Sweet P is 20.5 months old

Last week we focused on the Letter A, but I didn't post Tot School because time got away from me and I didn't take many pictures anyway.

This week we focused on a snow theme. It was so fun! She thinks all snowmen are Frosty and loves to sing Frosty the snowman. Her lyrics are "Frosty, Frosty!" to the tune of "Frosty, the Snowman!" Plus, we actually got to play in the snow which made it even better!

I found most of my materials at Itsy Bitsy Printables. We ordered the Frosty Days unit and picked a few age appropriate activities for her. I've listed our activities by days of the week so keep it a bit more organized.

Monday:
Morning playdate with friends
Snow day! We played in the snow for about a half an hour on Monday afternoon and she had a great time. You can read more about our snow day here.

Water play: Sweet P and daddy spent 20 minutes playing in the bathroom after we finished playing in the snow. She LOVES to play in the sink!
Snowflakes: Monday evening we made snowflakes for our window. She sat with me and watched as I folded pieces of scrap paper and cut the edges to create snowflakes. After I cut them out, I smeared glue on the back and she pressed them onto pink sparkly tissue paper. I cut around the snowflakes, put some double stick tape on the back and hung them in the window.

Tuesday:
Morning mall walk/play area with friends

Playdoh Snowman: My friend told me about her making a snowman with a paper plate and playdoh so we had to try it out that afternoon. I realized when I went to get out the playdoh that we didn't own black playdoh so he had blue eyes and a brown mouth instead! We also made orange and blue snowmen with the playdoh.
Snowman tracing page from IBP: This was just for fun because I didn't think she'd be able to trace the lines, but we showed where to trace and she had fun trying.

Wednesday:
Story and Craft time at Wellspring Christian Book Store: I love this story time. The leader is great and the activities are fun, too. This week she read a story about the 10 commandments and the kiddos colored 10 commandment bookmarks. After they were finished coloring, she laminated them, punched a hole in the top and put a ribbon through. Last week she read a Jesus Loves Me book and they made trains out of toilet paper rolls. An activity I'll for sure do again with her!

Construct a Snowman: I cut out pieces of construction paper to construct a snowman.
Here's what you need:
1 blue piece for the backgroun
1 large white circle (head)
2 small black circles (eyes)
1 orange triangle (nose)
5 smaller black circles (mouth)
1 long black rectangle (brim of hat)
1 square (top of hat)
2 long red rectangles (trim on hat/scarf)
2 small red triangles (ties of scarf)
I had her smear glue from a gluestick on the back of the large circle and push it down on the blue paper. The rest of the items I adhered the glue and handed her the piece, told her it was like a sticker and pointed to where it went. It was such a simple craft and an easy way to talk about colors and shapes. I love how it turned out! (she'd just had a quick bath in these pics)
Frosty Shape Puzzle from Itsy Bitsy Printables: I printed these and colored in the shapes since they were colored before. This was another great activity to work on shapes and colors, especially since we'd never talked about diamonds and hexagons before. She did it twice before she was ready to move on to something else.
Snowflake matching from 1+1+1's Winter Tot Book: She's done this before so it was fun to introduce it again during snow week.
5 Little Snowmen: I printed this little book from IBP, laminated it, then tied it together with a red ribbon. This is such a fun book for counting and colors. I made it into a song so we sing it and do hand motions! I'll post the hand motions on a later blog.
I found "snow" batting at Hobby Lobby in the 90% Christmas pile for .40! So we dumped some out on the floor and played with it. We shoved it into a measuring cup and I hid toys in the snow for her to find.

Thursday:
Morning playdate at our house
We ran LOTS of errands (grocery shopping at 3 different stores!) in the afternoon and didn't have much time for tot school. But we talked a lot about what we were buying and she bought her snack at Trader Joe's.

Friday:
Waterbabies at the Y (our swim class)

Snow Sensory Bin: I also found large plastic snowflakes at Hobby Lobby for .20! I poured in white pompons, clear decorative beads and cotton balls. She's really into this bin. She likes to put the "snow" on her chin and say, "Ho Ho Ho!" We made snowmen out of 3 cottonballs and did counting activities with the pompons, cottonballs and snowflakes.
She spent Friday afternoon with daddy while mommy worked!

It was so fun having a theme this week. See what other mom's are doing at 1+1+1=1.
Next week's theme: Groundhog Day.