Tot School: Letter A

~Caden is 24 months old.~

This week we pretty much did one day of tot school, but we did a lot on that day.

Theme

This week’s theme was ‘A is for Apple’. We focused on identifying the letter A and learning the sounds of the letter. We also focused on the color red, the number one and the circle for our shape. For vocabulary development we focused on learning the names of new fruit.

Progress Report

Caden is pretty good at being able to identify the letter A, but it remains to be seen if he calls other letters ‘A’ as well. Caden can also identify circles. He has pointed out circles on objects such as iPods and radio/docking stations, which I am very impressed with. Caden can also name several fruit; apples, banana, grapes, berries (strawberries & blueberries), and now melon (watermelon & cantaloupe). Other ‘A’ vocabulary is ant, alligator and he is trying to say ambulance but it sounds a lot like ant.

Tot Trays

This week’s tot trays were not very interesting for Caden. He was not at all interested in the apple lacing card, the apple matching tray or the apple number cards with pipe cleaner inch worms. Caden did take the basket of plastic fruit off the shelf nearly every day and dumped it on the poor dog. Then we would look at each fruit and talk about it as we put them back into the basket.

One day I pulled the button worm and apples tray off the shelf and showed him how to play with it. He tried to put the button through the hole for half a second until he figured out it was too hard and that he couldn’t do it. I believe he then threw it up in frustration and was on to something else.

Caden also pulled the stacking blocks off the shelf a couple of times this week. His main motivation in stacking is to be able to knock them down! So he stacks them up with some help with the sizes, admires his work for a second and then quickly knocks them down! (I’m not exactly sure what he is doing in this picture.)

Sensory Bin

This week I created a Letter A Sensory Bin. I gathered all the letter As I could find- magnets, puzzle pieces, bottle caps, foam floor mat pieces and a felt tracing card. I also included many objects that begin with the letter A. Such as a plastic apple, a couple of alligators, a plastic ant, an airplane and I later tossed in a wooden toy ambulance. I kept the plastic cups and alphabet pasta from last week.

Caden only played with this sensory bin a couple of times. I guess the few objects that I could find that began with the letter A were not that interesting.

Printables

The printables I used this week came from 1+1+1=1. Caden was not as interested in the printables this week as he was last week. When I pulled out the pages, he would be interested in them for a very short amount of time before something else caught his attention.

First I tried the stamping page because he really seemed to like that last week. But one stamp in and he was stamping ‘A’s on his hand… (hey, at least he was continually exposed to the letter for the rest of the day, right?)

And then Mama needed her hand stamped too!

Caden picked up this neat activity from Gymboree. Thanks Gymbo.

I next tried to get Caden interested in the dot marker page. But he was distracted by tractors. I don’t even think he picked up the dot marker. I did that one dot to show him how to dot the letters.

Later I showed Caden the fruit vocabulary page. I tried this one away from the table and he seemed more interested. I gave him a dry erase marker and asked him to circle or color the fruit as I named them. He seemed to get the idea and definitely scribbled in the direction of the named fruit.

Caden liked this fruit vocabulary card the best this week. After showing him I left it out on the table. One time as I was doing something in the kitchen I peeked in on Caden and found him sitting at his table, holding the card and talking. It seemed as if he was reading a menu because right after that he came to me and asked for some melon. It was very cute and I wish I had my camera on me, but it was in the room and I didn’t want to disturb him.

Practical Life

Caden has become very interested in doing the laundry lately. If he sees a basket of clothes he asks “Dryer?” I’m not exactly sure if he is asking if they are dry, if they need to go in the dryer or if he is asking to be taken to the dryer, but he is slightly obsessed with the dryer. He often helps me load the dryer.

Extra Fun

We may not have done much traditional tot school this week, but we did a lot of extra fun stuff. To go with the fruit theme I picked up a couple of new fruits for Caden to try. I picked up an orange and some cantaloupe and Caden loved both of them.

We had a lot of gross motor fun this week too! We finally returned to Gymboree and the weather was finally warm enough to play outside for a bit! You can read more about our gross motor adventures in my Gross Motor Challenge: Week 2 post.

And as usual we got out the play dough! I printed out this number one play dough mat from 3 Dinosaurs. Caden isn’t too interested in it, but he remembered from last week that he needed to roll a ball.

And there’s those tractors again!

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