Henry is 25 months old.
This was one of those week's at tot school that makes all the hard work worth it! Henry had a total blast. He asked to do our tot school activities almost every single day. There was no fighting me or complaining. The only we had tears was when we had to clean up! It was truly wonderful.
Prior to this week, Henry could identify a J and a j. He can also say "J."
On our first tray this week was a printable that said "J is for jelly fish." Find it here. I paired the sheet {which I laminated} with exactly enough jelly-like water beads, for Henry to fill in the circles. I also put a spoon and tongs out in case he wanted more of a challenge.
Henry really liked this. The water beads were a little more challenging since they rolled around pretty easily, but Hen didn't seem to mind. He tried a few times to pick them up with the utensils, but pretty much just stuck to using his hands. Either way, it was fun, promoted a little sensory play and fine motor skills.
The second tray was Henry's favorite for the week. On this tray was a bunch of jars and a basket containing their corresponding lids. Henry could then match the lids to the correct jar. There was some initial frustration from Hen in getting the lids to stay on, but he picked it up really quickly. One day, he sat and repeated this tray for almost an hour -- total win!
In addition to the fine motor skills, Henry picked up some new vocabulary using this tray! He started saying "too small," "too big," and "just right." We also had a lot of smelling the jars, since many were old spice jars. Hen's favorite was the garlic container. He would smell it and say "so stinky!"
The final tray was a set of cards I made. Each card had a picture of jelly beans on it -- from 1 to 10. The images were from the Clippix ETC site! I discovered this site earlier this month and its awesome! It gives teachers license to use certain {high quality!} clip art for free!! Check it out! The cards also had a corresponding number so that Henry could count and match the correct number to the card.
Henry enjoyed this, but only for numbers 1 to 5. With the higher numbers, he lost patience and didn't want to count all the jelly beans on the page.
We also had our letter J sensory bin this week. Henry played with this quite a bit too. His favorites were the jacks and the little jaguar animal.
Other things we did this week included:
Jelly fish dry erase.
Jelly fish coloring sheet.
Letter J books.
Letter J snacks.
