Tot School: Pete the Cat Theme

Earlier this week I posted our Pete the Cat Learning Pack. Those, along with the original Pete the Cat Tot Pack are what we used for a theme this week.

This was the shelf by his desk. I put all the Pete the Cat Books we have. I also put the little shapes book I made.

This tray had some cupcake cards and number tiles. Archer enjoys counting and really enjoys the number cards, so it was a fun activity for him.
Letters are a big thing around here. I initially intended this to just be a matching activity. However, I decided to laminate it and add Velcro dots to make it into a toddler notebook page (I hadn't yet hole punched it when I took the pictures). Now to hope he doesn't lose any when he carries them around the house...

I used a dry erase pocket for his worksheets. He has been preferring the dry erase colored pencils lately.

  

He also used the dry erase colored pencils on some of his other printables.

I also got out his Hide and Seek Positional Word Game. He would pick a card and then go hide the toy cat there.

I picked up this Pete the Cat Hot Dots Book at a local thrift store. He can do some of it on his own, but needs his help with a lot of it (it is from the Kindergarten set, we don't have any of the preschool ones)

Pete the Cat Learning Pack

When Xander was little, and Pete the Cat was new, I made a Tot Pack to go with the book I Love My White Shoes. Now that Archer is into Pete the Cat, I decided to make some extra pages to go with it.

Pages in the new pack include:

• Match the Pairs—Draw a line between the matching items
• Number Line—Figure out which number Grumpy Toad is covering up
• Alphabet Hide and See—Figure out which letter Pete is covering up
• Coin Recognition
• Alphbet Case Matching Buttons—I printed, laminated and cut out the lower case. Then I used Velcro dots so they can be stuck to the lowercase page.
• Number Tile Cards:  Use for a matching activity with plastic number tiles or Printable Number Tiles (I used a sharpie to make a 10 on the back of one of the plastic tiles).

Download the Pete the Cat Learning Pack Here

You might also like my free Hide and Seek Kitty Cat game for positional words.

Shapes - Heart

Xander is 17 Months

Theme:  Pete the Cat I Love My White Shoes

Shape: Heart

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.  For our overall Tot School goals for our shape units, see my Goals post.

Xander likes 3 Part Cards so much, that we did them at least once a day, sometimes more.  We used the hearts from our Shape 3 Part Cards along with the 3 part cards from his Pete the Cat Tot Pack.  Unfortunately, I didn't get a good picture of us working on them.

We did a lot of coloring this week.  His grip and control are really improving!  Here he is coloring a page from his hearts packet (I will upload when my desktop is back from the repair shop).  He held the crayons and I helped him color in the correct area.  Then we pointed at the squares and I said the colors for him.  

Making Learning Fun has these great shape highway printables.  I laminated the heart for Xander.  He used the train he got for Easter to drive on it.

We also made play dough snakes to make a heart.  He can't actually do it himself, but loves to help me build it.

Xander doesn't actually put the puzzles from the tot pack together himself, but he still enjoyed them.  Basically he would find the two that went together and I would line them up for him.

And throw them around the room... he is really into throwing.

One of the activities I have available for him for our shapes weeks is his button snake.  This particular day we just used the shapes instead of threading them.  He really enjoyed pointing to the correct shape as I would ask for it.  He has square, triangle, heart, and circle down pretty well.  (Sorry for the dark photos.  My regular computer had a breakdown and is in the shop).

For his birthday Xander got this Vtech Musical Octapus.  He absolutely loves it and uses it every bath.  Recently it ran out of batteries and he was so upset that he had to take a bath without it.  Anyway, it has a shapes setting and a music setting, so we have been putting it on shapes.

As part of his I Love My White Shoes Tot Pack, I made a shapes minibook.  He hasn't gotten tired of it since last week.  We read it SO many times this week, he even wanted to take it to day care with him one day.

We did some matching with his colored shoes.

And, of course, we read I Love My White Shoes many times.

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.

These are the toys and activities I plan to use throughout our shapes units.  The toys are mostly available to him whenever he likes.

He plays with these toys all the time!

Helping Mommy change the sheets. 

Since my Tot School posts have been getting so long, I am splitting the Tot Tray portion off to its own post.  We will try it for a while and see how it goes.