Henry was officially back to a full tot school schedule this week. Our theme this week was bugs and our shape was diamond. It was kind of weird for him at first and he was not used to having so much space and so many distractions at tot school. But by the end of the week, he was figuring out that we weren't going to watch TV, play with random toys, or run up the stairs during tot school time. I think we will eventually get back to where we were before moving.
One major change from last week was that our activity wall stuff finally got unpacked -- although not hung up. Henry really liked me to quiz him and make him point to each shape. He also spent a good amount of time carrying around the board which was pretty funny. The magnet board had bug and diamond shaped magnets. The "bugs" were a little girly (mostly pinkish butterflies) but that's what I had so, oh, well. Hen didn't seem to mind.
This week, the tot trays weren't as engaging as I thought they would be. The first tray was this Busy Bug game. Henry and I take early childhood family education classes {ECFE} through one of our local school districts and this program offers a toy lending library. For a small fee ($15 for the whole school year!!), I can rent toys for 2 weeks at a time! They have great educational and non-educational toys, including this one. So, I expect to be using these toys quite a bit for tot school, which will save our family so much money!
In this toy, there were cards asking Henry to do different tasks -- match the type of bug, match the colors, patterns -- then it had corresponding bug shapes. Henry loved the bugs. But, he couldn't do most of the activities. He understood color matching and kinda specific shape matching, but couldn't do any of the more advanced pattern work.
The second tray was a "Shape Worm" that I made. The body of the worm was made of all the different shapes that we have worked on so far. I then cut foam shapes to match the shapes so it was like a little puzzle. I made sure that the shapes were not the same color as the shapes in the body of the worm. Henry has become very good at color matching, so I wanted to challenge him. Turns out this was WAY to easy for him. He matched all the shapes with ease without even being shown. If anyone would like the shape worm print, leave a comment and I'll share.
The final tray was another toy library game. It was a shape, color, bug matching puzzle. Again, it was too advanced for Henry. He did the basic shape matching pretty easily. But the colors themselves were difficult to match since they required really specific placement to fit. So even if he matched the color/shape correctly, he struggled with actually placing the piece. Therefore, he mostly just ignored the color tiles and stuck to the basic puzzle.
The book bin was empty this week. We haven't been able to go to our new library and sign up for the new card yet and I didn't have time to drive to our old library. Getting the new card is number one on my list for this week.
Other things we did this week included:
Making bug shapes from dot paint.
Bug puzzle. This was hard for Hen without pictures on the board so he needed a lot of help, but he actually liked this challenge.
Tracing a diamond shape with dry erase markers and wooden sticks.
Played with Sesame Street shape flashcards.
Apple color/number match-up game {totally unrelated from theme but we made it at ECFE and Henry loved it}
