This was our first week we used our new tot school focus of phonics and letter construction. It wasn't a huge shift from what we did the first time through the alphabet, but there were some subtle changes that I hope to expand over time. Our first tray in our Letter A Tot School unit was a sandpaper letter/salt tray.
Henry is 34 months.
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This was the first time I used the sandpaper letters and the salt but this is going to become a permanent feature each week. Henry and the co-op kids all seemed to have some interest in the sandpaper letter -- but not as much as the salt. I'm hoping over time the sensory aspect of the salt will lose its appeal and they will be more interested in using the tray how it was intended.
The second tray was a letter a sight{ish} word game. I made two cards with letter a words written in lower case, then the kids had to use scrabble pieces to match the letters and spell the words. The first card {shown} was apple. The other was the name/picture of one of the little boys in our co-op whose name start's with A.
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The final tray was a set of 3-part cards that we used the first time with the letter A. On this particular set, I left one set of cards together so it was a little easier to match. It was probably a little too easy for the kids and Henry but this time I also included the words, which were more of a challenge.
Other Trays
Letter A sensory bin: I'm keeping these since they provide a good opportunity to learn vocabulary and to identify words that start with each letter.
Bead Name Game: For purposes of this picture, I used a "Henry" sheet, but this week I used a sheet with the little boy with the A name. But to protect the boy's identity I'm not going to show that exact sheet. The idea was to fill in the circles of the boy's name with the glass beads. This was a hit -- especially with the boy!
Apple Color Sorting: On this tray I got to use one of my many apple trays! I included three different colored barrels and a bunch of small apples. The children could then sort the colors. This was a big hit for Henry, who is very into color sorting right now.
Letter A font matching: This was another repeat from the first time we did the letter A. The point was to match the green and black A's that looked a like. I saw one girl using this during the co-op, but otherwise it was completely ignored all week.
*Sorry for the lack of pictures of Henry. Henry has decided the camera is the most awesome thing ever all of a sudden and if its out all he does is make cheezy faces at the camera then look at the pictures. So, in order to try to not interrupt his work, I've been leaving it out of tot school. Sometimes I will catch a few moments on my phone -- see all of those on Instagram!
