Sunday, July 26, 2009

Tot School-Beach and Ocean Theme-Part 2


This is our second week posting our official "Tot School" activities and it is also our second week of Beach and Ocean themed fun and learning. If you missed our first Tot School posting with our introduction my boys are 28 and 51 months, my eldest son has been diagnosed with PDD-NOS and has some trouble with learning, even though he attends a special pre-school 5 days a week, we are working hard at home with helping to prepare him for kindergarten.


Last week we still focused on the letters O and F and re-read all of the books from last week.


We tried to do a color by number that I printed from my membership at Kid Soup but my big guy got frustrated and would not complete it.



We also did a tried a color by letter also from Kid Soup, which he got partially done before yelling "I do not have to finish this, it is an octopus"!
















We made some colored salt "Rainbow Fish" which you can read my detailed post here if you are interested. They were lots of fun although the boys were not two concerned with keeping the colors separated.



I printed this awesome "Shadow Match Game" from Kid Soup which can be used mat style or as a memory game. I laminated them and used them mat style so I could separate them giving two pages to a child without overwhelming them. Both boys absolutely loved this one and did a great job at it too.


I love the big guys "whipped cream mustache" in this pic.








I also made this beach scene using some construction paper and a palm tree from an enlarged computer graphic (I wish I would have laminated it before I spilt water on it, oh well).




I then printed out a bunch of beach/ocean themed items such as beach balls, crabs, fish, sharks, turtles, etc. I used these little pictures to work on numbers and spatial concepts with the boys. I gave them directions such as put three crabs on the sand, put one crab on the right of the palm tree, put the boy in the water, put two sharks on top of the boys (ouch). This went over pretty well so I will be thinking of more of these for our future themes.



Although I do not have any pictures we also work on our gross motor skills this week with lots of physical activities such as crab walk races and swimming in the pool like fish.


Thanks for stopping by and don't forget to come back next week, we will be working on a Garden/Farm theme. To see what others are doing with their tot's be sure to check out the weekly posts here at 1+1+1=1.
P.S. I asked the big guy at the end of two week's what does fish start with and unfortunately he did not know. Since we are having so much trouble with learning letters we were thinking of ordering the "CORE" books. Does anyone have an opinion or another suggestion? I would love your help with this.

3 comments:

Susana said...

I like your beach scene and I have Dot Paints on my "wish list" for my little ones!

My four year old won't do the color by number either. No interest in it and doesn't want to concentrate long enough to complete it. Must be too overwhelming, you know?

Hope you had a great weekend and have a great week upcoming as well!!

Natalie PlanetSmarty said...

The beach scene is an awesome idea! I might modify it a little for our ocean theme - we are going completely underwater :)
As for learning alphabet - check out progressivephonics.com. The program is completely free and my daughter (she is 33 months) really enjoys the books from there. Happy teaching!

Michie said...

I wish I'd thought of this before you were done with your ocean theme, but perhaps you can try some of it out anyway. This special education company is offering it's summer curriculum for free: http://www.uniquelearningsystem.com/Default.aspx and it is all ocean/beach related, I believe. I haven't used it with my students, but there may be some things that you could use - if nothing else check it out and see what you think. I believe signing up for the curriculum during the year is pretty expensive, but the free stuff could give you some ideas.

For the alphabet, have you tried going to www.starfall.com? There are songs/little animated books for each letter. My daughter really enjoys them. Sometimes music can help. :)