Monday, May 21, 2012

Shapes - Trapezoid

Xander is 18.5 Months
Theme:  Musical Instruement
Shape: Trapezoid

 We are currently working on shapes, devoting one week to each while also reviewing those already learned.    The themes just add a fun element to the shapes lessons. I added a page to gather all of the Shape Posts and Printables to make them easier to find.  For our overall Tot School goals for our shape units, see my Goals post.

This was our second week on our Musical Instrument Theme and Xander still really enjoyed it. I used our Montessori style 3 part shape cards.  We also used  nomenclature cards from the Musical Instrument Tot Pack.   We also used some 3 part cards and pocket chart phrases from our Trapezoid Printables.  The concepts on these cards are pretty advanced, but he has been exposed to all of them on his Your Baby Can Discover movies.  Also, while I don't expect him to remember the difference between regular and isosceles trapezoids right now, I believe the vocabulary and and reading practice certainly can't hurt.  He really loves his pocket chart, much more than I ever would have expected!



I made a tracing page (in the Triangle Printables  ).  We use all of his tracing materials in either page protectors or his Crayola Dry Erase Activity Center.  He is no where near ready to trace on his own, but I have him hold the marker and I hold his hand.  We trace together and I talk about what we're doing.  He really enjoys it.  He is also really proud to erase all by himself when we are done (although I do some touch-up erasing).

My brother is here for the summer and snapped a couple of pictures of us.  This is how we do most of Xander's tracing, although sometimes he sits at his table or his lap desk.


I also got out his magnetic foam shapes and our marker board.  He likes to have me say a shape or a color for him to point to.  If I don't do it fast enough he will keep repeating YELLOW and BLUE really loudly.



I also got out the shape book that came with Your Baby Can Discover.  It is a good thing those books are sturdy because he likes to flip through them on his own...



Making Learning Fun has these great shape highway printables.  I laminated the trapezoid and he drove his car on it.  We also made some play dough snakes to go around it.


While we were at it, we used some cookie cutters to cut out shapes and a music note.


Lately I have been trying to include a song with our themes.  To go with the music theme we sang the main part of Do Re Mi from the Sound of Music.  He loves me to sing it to him and sometimes he even joins in.  I love it when he "sings."


Sometimes I help Xander trace the pages from his Tot Packs, and sometimes I have him point to things for me and I trace/circle them.  In this case I was asking where each shape was and tracing it as he pointed to it.


I know I posted about this last week, but we still definitely put our bin of musical instruments to good use.  We also added our homemade instruments.  The bin included maracas, egg shakers, tambourines, jingle bells, a toy drum, a lollipop drum, a xylophone, a triangle, baby instruments, Leap Frog Maracas, and a bunch of homemade shakers.  


Some friends came over and enjoyed the instrument bin also.

Still loving the instrument puzzles.

 I normally don't talk a whole lot about our Little Reader, but this week I was so excited to lesson featuring musical instruments (you can download it for free here).  I love that it includes not only the words and photographs, but music to go with each instrument as well.  Xander has watched this at least two or three times a day since I downloaded it.  I definitely need to take advantage of the free downloadable lessons more often (and make more of my own...).


 We lucked out when we went to the children's museum this week!  They were doing an instrument activity so Xander got to make a ton of noise music.  The guy doing the demonstration was amazing!  He got what sounded like actual music out of an empty water cooler jug.



We always make a stop in their xylophone room, but since this week was trapezoids and xylophones are the example, we spent some extra time in here.

Keeping with the music theme, we watched plenty of Trebellina.  It isn't the best animation in the world, but he absolutely loves it and wants to watch it all the time.  He even likes doing the flash cards with the piano.  He also gets plenty of music exposure from his Your Baby Can Discover DVDs.

While I was organizing some of the materials I made for next week, I got out some of our old three part cards (from our multicolored week).  He still remember all of them and wanted to just sit and play.  In fact, he cried when I went to put them away.



This Week's Books:
We read other shape books too, but couldn't find the links on Amazon.

    
 

Continuous Tot School Activities:
We are using Little Reader to work on reading skills and Little Math for math skills.  My goal is two Little Reader lessons and one Little Math lesson daily.  Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn't.


Check back on Wednesday to see this week's  Tot Trays!

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1 comment:

  1. The museum lools amazing. Thanks for the link to the little reader for the different instrument sounds just hwat I was looking for last week

    ReplyDelete

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