Tot School: Letter Z

Tot School: Letter Z
Age: 33 months

We have reached the end!!  Z was such a fun week! I had several activities that I was hoping to get to but we never did.  There are a lot of things to do for Z and a lot of books, too!

Exploring the letter of the week.  This week I hid all the Zs under the beans and she had to find them

I have been trying to include Declan in our table time this week.  He isn't always taking a morning nap now, and I know soon he will be transitioning to only napping after lunch like his big sis.  It makes a lot more work for clean up when we include him, but I know he likes it.  When he is not in the chair at the table with us he is just trying to reach up at the table.

This week we did something we haven't done before--instead of puff ball magnets, circle stickers, or dot markers, Raelynn glued her Zs to the page.

We had to get the zebra blanket out!  We had so much fun with this blanket this week!!

Z is for zipper:

this is just a zipper from JoAnn's that I sewed to a strip of felt.  We also practiced zipping other clothing items we found around the house this week.

Shadow Match

Tot Time Notebook---can you see her straight line?!  :) She is getting better and better!

I like to have my quiet time during Elliana's morning nap time and the big kids read books in their room.  So, instead of using that time for tot school with Raelynn, I'm trying to transition to doing it with all the kids up.  Elliana has been practicing her standing up at the stairs while we sit at the table very close to her and do our activiites.

Everyone was wearing the zebra blanket this week!!  So fun!

Thought I would let Declan try to use the washable dry erase markers....he didn't try to draw once.  But he did keep trying to put the cap on--practice for motor skills, right?! :)

Shape Review with fruity cheerios.

He is always up to something! Started climbing on the chairs this week

cutting practice

Z is for Zebra:

Making a zebra Z--Raelynn had free reign of gluing the stripes on:)
Then I just cut it out and we glued eyes on.

 

 

Z is for Zebra and Zucchini puff ball magnets

I thought Declan would enjoy putting these colored pieces in the ice cube tray.  Nope.  I did the ones that are shown and he just kept signing "all done" haha

Marble Painting:

I've seen this done in a cardboard box.  But I thought this loaf pan would be fine.  It was the perfect size.

rolling the paint covered marble back and forth.
 This was a great project! She wanted to add a second marble half way through, so we did.

This was a 'mommy is going to clean up the paint, so you color the Zs' activity.  I came back and she told me she was drawing her riding on Kacia's back.

Drawing her black stripes on the zebra handprint.  Would not use black paper next time!!!

 

Z is for Zoo:

We focused on Good Night, Gorilla.  It doesn't have a zebra in it, but it is about a ZOO and I found a lot of great printables and had some ideas of my own to go along with it, so we spent a couple days on this.  It was sort of my trial run of something I am considering using in the future for Raelynn called Before Five in a Row (BFIAR).  It's a curriculum that uses literature as the base of a theme. You read that book each day of the week and use the book to base your activities from.  It's aimed for 2-4 year olds and I think I could tweak things for Declan to do as well since he LOVES books!

life happening before my eyes. 

**the printables for Goodnight Gorilla are from Living Worlds Apart and from Homeschool Share

2 part puzzles (colors of the keys and the animals from the book)
I printed on tagboard, laminated, then hot-glued magnet strips to the back.  The magnets make it much easier for Raelynn to do.

This was so fun! Raelynn LOVED this and we played it many times.  I printed off a sheet of animals from loving2learn and hid them in the cages. She had to match the colored key to the cage in order to open it to see what animal was inside.

I thought it may be too easy and boring for her, but it was a hit! I printed enough animals to keep changing them each time.  The cages and keys were a printable I found online. I laminated and taped to a file folder.

Shadow matching the characters from the book:

I still have my wildlife discovery cards from a collection when I was young. It was perfect for this because we had cards for hyena and aardvark, which were unfamiliar to Raleynn.  She matched the pictures with the character cards we had and also with some plastic animals, too!

Putting the character cards in order as we read the story

Declan loved the story!!!  He even pointed to the lion while holding a lion.

Declan learned how to beat his chest like a gorilla and throw his elephant nose in the air.

 

I picked up some locks with keys from the Dollar Store.  Raelynn really liked this, even though it was hard for her to get the key in the hole.  I even found her playing with it a few times on her own through the week

 

Another great book for Z is for Zoo--great for counting!

Declan grabbed this off the table and started playing:)

Z is for Zacchaeus:

used arm for the tree trunk.  I put circles on the paper and she dotted them.  We never got to coloring a Zacchaeus to put in the tree, but we did sing the song plenty of times!

Z is for Zucchini:

grating the zucchini for some bread

someone else wanted to help too

Thursday night after the babies went to bed and Daddy was at the ASU game, we baked some zucchini bread together

And what better way to end the week than with a trip to the ZOO!!!  Here she is pointing at the zebras!

 

Saturday I found these at a garage sale.  Declan wanted them right away and he was actually building and trying to stack.  Saturday night I added Velcro to the pieces, so I will see how he likes that this week.