Tot School: Winter

~Caden is 25 months old~

{Theme}

The theme for this week was Winter and Cold Weather Fun. We used the letter ‘Ii’ printables from 1+1+1=1 and talked about cold weather, outer wear and animals. The book of the week was The Mitten by Jan Brett (affiliate link). Caden enjoyed reading this book each day and would point out and name the different animals in the book.

{Progress Report}

Caden is saying new words almost everyday. Some recent additions to his vocabulary include “boot”, “mitten”, “kitty”, and “game”. Caden is also getting better at putting together his own sentences. He is also beginning to recognize colors and more shapes. He will usually ask if something is “green” and then repeat me if I correct him, and he will name shapes as stars usually, but knows hearts and circles too. He loves to draw circles. Caden is even picking up some letters. He usually identifies any letter as ‘A’, but recently started to point to letters and words and saying ‘C’.

{Language Development}

This week we worked on words related to cold weather and winter. I used the vocabulary flashcards from 1+1+1=1 and created a matching game. I tried to hide the flashcards in the winter sensory bin for Caden to find, but he wasn’t interested in finding the cards and playing that way. I also used dress up play to introduce vocabulary such as “mitten”, “glove”, and “scarf”.

Caden enjoys playing matching games and he does a pretty good job too!

We had such a good time dressing up in our winter gear and playing in our igloo. To make the igloo I simply covered our child-sized table with a white sheet, I suppose covering the kitchen table would have been even more fun! Then more kids could fit inside and even mom too! 😉

Caden loved crawling in and out of the igloo and even brought the tiny igloo inside. The igloo reminded him of an episode of Curious George where he builds a large igloo. Caden’s memory amazes me sometimes.

Even mom dressed up! Haha! It was a lot of fun!

{Early Literacy}

The book of the week was The Mitten by Jan Brett. It is an excellent book and I made sure we read it everyday at nap or bed time. We also focused a bit on the letter ‘I’. I printed out a couple of letter pages from the Ii Tot School printable pack and Caden colored on it with markers and dot markers. He didn’t learn the letter ‘I’ but for now I am just trying to expose him to the alphabet and let his interest grow naturally.

{Early Math}

This weeks math activity focused on shapes. I found a cute little penguin on Making Learning Fun and Caden fed the penguin shape fish. This is a fun way to expose toddlers to shapes. Caden knows some of his shapes and can tell me what it is when asked. For the other shapes I showed him and told him what shape was on the fish.

{Early Science & Sensory}

On Friday night a blizzard blew into New England and Caden got to explore some fresh snow before heading off to bed. Caden described the snow as “cold” and “wet” and thought it tasted pretty yummy too!

We also played with snow-white play dough this week. One afternoon we added some snowflake cookie cutters to our play and another afternoon Caden enjoyed making impressions in the “snow” with Arctic animals. While playing with the animals Caden learned their names.

{Fine Motor}

I like to think that Caden does pretty well with fine motor skills. But this weeks activity proved to be a challenge for him. I saw these cute beaded snowflakes at Mommy and Me Book Club and thought Caden would enjoy making some. Caden had a hard time beading the pipe cleaner and didn’t have the patience to try for very long.

{Gross Motor}

Caden gets a gross motor work out at Gymboree every week. We really enjoy our time there. In addition to Gymboree Caden enjoys running around the house. This week I snapped a picture of Caden walking like a polar bear.

{Practical Life}

Caden enjoys any time he can get in the kitchen. This week he helped me make cake dough cookies and he helped grandma make coffee cake. He like to mix the ingredients up and sneak chocolate chips.

{Creativity}

To go along with The Mitten by Jan Brett, I thought it would be fun to create a mitten collage like the ones I saw again at Mommy and Me Book Club. But Caden has different ideas for fun. He likes to try to squirt the glue. But getting glue on your hands? Not so much. This activity was a bust.

Help. I have glue on my hands, wipe it off, quick!

I added the paper pieces to soak up the glue. I think my mitten turned out cute! What do you think?

For more Tot School ideas please visit:

Save

© 2013 – 2017, Stir The Wonder. All rights reserved.