Tot School - Blue Week

 

We recently wrapped out our second week of tot school. We're doing color themes and this week was blue.  As with the boys, my goal is not for her to learn her colors. You can see my tot school goals here.

Juniper was 15 months

Juniper's little area on our wall. I put up her color poster was free from Isla Hearts Teaching on TPT. I put out some "blue" themed books for her and a Non-Fiction Sight Words book. Being my pickiest reader, she was kind of hit or miss on all of them, which is perfectly fine. I don't force her to read things she doesn't want to, but I do provide the opportunity.

Magnetic tiles and translucent blocks on the light table. Even big brother wanted to join in.

Using markers and crayons for her little blue coloring book pages (free here). 

We also tried out some blue paint with some funny foam brushes.

Stickers on blue paper.

Blue playdough. She's a big fan of play dough in general, so we used some stampers, a roller and some shape fondant cutters.

I got out our 3D shapes for her to play with. She was excited by the 2D ones that she recognized.

I'm introducing her to Montessori 3 Part Vocabulary Cards with some color cards. She's not ready to do them independently, but I'm modeling for her and eventually she'll get it. She does like trying to help put the word card on the picture. Sometimes she does it correctly, sometimes she doesn't, and sometimes she knocks all the cards on the floor.

Doing the Little Reader lesson that goes with the vocabulary cards. While she doesn't like Your Baby Can Read like my boys did, she LOVES Little Reader. If anyone who uses it wants the files, send me a message and I can email them to you.

Sensory bin with aquarium rocks, some blue cups and pom poms. She played with it in our sensory play mat.

Pony beads in some blue hair gel. Its a little bag I made when Archer was little and thought this was a perfect time to put it up on the window for her to play with.

Freeing the animals from painters tape.

Simple school shelves for her. The shelves had a basket of finger puppets (left out from last week, because she loved them), a bin of blue toys, a mailbox toy, an ocean magnet puzzle, peg pop up toy, a parking garage, a coin box and car carrier.

She always has to be IN the bins.

She loves her brother's parking garage and has kind of taken it over. She likes to hold up each car, enthusiastically say "CAR" and have me acknowledge it and tell her the color.

She enjoyed her coin box, but preferred it without the drawer so she could watch the coins drop and get them out easily.

You can check out our other Color Theme posts here:

Mexico Week

Next stop in our Around the World Homeschool curriculum was Mexico! 

Books:

I'm not going to list out our spines every week, but I thought I'd share some of our other books. 

Cinco de Mouse-O!

Just a Minute: A Trickster Tale and Counting Book (Archer's Favorite)

A Gift from Abuela

Dreamers

Too Many Tamales

Feathered Serpent and the Five Suns

Living in Mexico

Mexico

Abuela

Read Aloud:

This week we read Pack-n-Go-Girls Mystery of the Thief in the Night. This was our first time reading one of this series. I really liked how it told a story, but wove elements of the language and culture into the book (lightly). Archer liked the story enough that he wants to read another one for a different country in the future.

Activities:

Coloring a map of Mexico.

Mexican flag and dot-to-dot from Little Passports

Recipe:

We did two recipes this week. First we tried a new recipe for enchiladas from Isabel Eats. It replaced out old recipe, hands down, particularly the sauce. The kids now want to add enchiladas to our regular rotation.

We also tried making some pineapple cucumber lime paletas. I cheated by using store bought pineapple juice. They were surprising and a little sour at first because the lime zest falls to the bottom of the mold. Everyone in the house liked them, though!

Games:

Neither game was related to the theme this week. Archer played Connect 4 and the logic game was 3 Little Pigs. Had I planned better, we would have played Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza.

Art:

We were able to pull off two art projects this week! First we made a Paper Mache pinata. He had never done paper mache before, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to explore that medium. He was not a fan of how messy it was. Once it dried we covered the balloon in tissue paper. (We used this video for reference).

Next we made a clay "sugar skull." We learned a bit about Dia de los Muertos. He used a skull cookie cutter as a mold for air dry clay. He used some kinetic sand tools to carve the face and then markers to color it when it dried. I think paint would have looked better, but he loves markers and I wasn't going to push him since clay is already a new artform for him.

Videos:

This would have been the perfect opportunity to watch Coco, but Archer will not watch movies. Instead, we watched some YouTube videos.

Tot School - Red Week

We did our first week of Tot School for Juniper! We're starting with color themes and this week was red. As with the boys, my goal is not for her to learn her colors. You can see my tot school goals here.

Juniper was 14 months

Juniper's little area on our wall. I put up her color poster was free from Isla Hearts Teaching on TPT. I put out some "red" themed books for her, a Meet the Sight Words reader and a Non-Fiction Sight Words book. Being my pickiest reader, she was kind of hit or miss on all of them, which is perfectly fine. I don't force her to read things she doesn't want to, but I do provide the opportunity.

Magnetic tiles and translucent blocks on the light table.

I tried to give her a chance to use different media for her little red coloring book pages (free here). She used crayon, marker and her first time using Do-a-Dot Markers.

I'm introducing her to Montessori 3 Part Vocabulary Cards with some color cards. She's not ready to do them independently, but I'm modeling for her. She's was excited about the picture of an apple because she can actually say that word, so she kept pointing to it saying "apple."

First time painting. We're now 3 for 3 of kids tasting paint the first time the use it. All three have hated it. 😋

Red dot stickers on paper. For now, I am still pealing the stickers and handing them to her. Getting them on the paper is hard enough for her.

Not exactly "red," but she got to play in the red, white and blue sensory bin from big brother's USA week.

For another sensory play activity, I threw some read counting bears and vehicles into some gelatin. She initially liked it, but didn't like having the gelatin on her hands, so lost patience. Archer ended up having a lot of fun with it.

I also threw some little red acrylic apples into some oats for her and that she LOVED and played with for a long time. Also, I recently got this sensory play mat and it has been wonderful for containing messes!

Simple school shelves for her. The shelves had a basket of finger puppets, our latch barn, a rainbow stacker, a chunky puzzle, North American Animal Matching (left over from big brother's school), peg pop up toy, a different stacker, a coin box and a basket of random red toys.

She enjoyed her coin box, but preferred it without the drawer so she could watch the coins drop and get them out easily.

Finger puppets were used constantly this week. She also enjoyed putting them in the clear cylinder of her stacker.

She still can't do a full puzzle, because she isn't good at rotating pieces. However, she's starting to understand the idea of putting the pieces in their slots and can do it sometimes.

Random bin of red toys.

You can check out our other Color Theme posts here: