Henry is 18 months old
After last week, I had pretty low expectations for this week's tot school. I figured Hen would continue to fight me. But, much to my surprise, Henry did great. This week, we continued our fruit theme as we moved onto squares.
Henry seemed to enjoy the activity wall this week. On the magnet board were four foam strips with a number on the front and a magnet glued to the back. These strips allowed us to make a square shape and introduce numbers. Hen spent a ton of time putting these on the board and taking them off.
On the felt board was a bunch of squares. Henry enjoyed these, like always. This week, Henry also spent a lot of time playing with the weather wall. He thought it was so silly to pick random weather combinations.
The tot trays were an enormous hit this week. The first tray was a shape puzzle. This was just one of his normal toys, so I didn't expect him to play with it a ton, but he surprised me. Henry still played a bunch with this, and by the end of the week, he could place all the shapes in the correct place with no assistance.
The second tray picked up on the fruit theme and squares. I used the fruit flash cards he loved last week and a whole sheet of cards from 1+1+1=1. This way, he had a little matching game. The cards and spaces were squares, which was an added bonus. Usually, Henry hasn't really understood matching, but something clicked this week! He was crazy good! By the end of the week, Henry could match every single fruit, no matter the order he picked up the cards. I was really impressed.
Henry blew me away with the third tray. I made a sheet with three different colored, and two different sized squares. Each square corresponded with a wooden or foam block of the same color and size. Henry could then match them, but had to sort by color and size. I expected him to just stack and play with the blocks. Instead, Henry matched and sorted each block! By yesterday, he was doing it perfectly over and over -- seriously, something clicked this week!
Finally, I've added a small bin to the trays. This bin will have pack of Sesame Street shape/color flashcards {Target dollar spot} in them for Hen to use. This week, he pretty much ignored the cards.
The book bin was OK. It was filled with circle, square and fruit themed books. Henry would sit and listen for a few minutes, but mostly just pulled books in and out of the bin, or tried to read multiple books at a time.
Other things we did this week included:
Played with Play-Doh for National Play-Doh day on Sept. 16, 2012. It went a ton better than last time we tried Play-Doh.
Painted a sheet with shape and name templates. I used by Circut cutter to cut out the words "circle" and "square" then taped them to a sheet of paper. Then I cut out a circle to tape, and taped a square using masking tape to those same sheets. Then, I had Henry paint the sheets. Once he was done, I removed the templates so we were left with the words and shapes. Sadly, the masking tape squares, wouldn't come off and the artwork was ruined.
