Tot-School

RockerTot is currently 32 months old.

I thought we were dropping out, but I guess we'll be here for a while. I still feel challenged when it comes to finding/creating activities for RockerTot. He's grown bored of most of our activities and while I'd love to continue until he's 4, I just don't know if it will be possible. I'm hoping for some inspiration so that I can continue to provide him with these types of play-based activities while still challenging his little mind and body.




These photos are a few weeks old. I've been making his cutting strips/cards/sheets for him. He's going to start working in his "I Can Cut" book soon (it starts easy, but moves rather quickly, so I'm creating cutting activities to build up to the book.



These are several activities that I set up to reinforce AB Patterns. He laced colored straw pieces onto dowels, laced his large wooden beads onto string and he duplicated patterns I made for him onto a blank card using his novelty erasers from The Dollar Tree (download pattern cards here).


We also played jumping and shouting games with these contact paper shapes that I stuck to our hall floor in an AB pattern. We also played lots of alternating motion/word games ("stomp/clap", "word A/word B", etc). He now not only recognizes the pattern, but he understands that it's an AB pattern.


He used Scrabble tiles with his Boggle, Jr game.


I laid out his First Words Puzzle cards as endings only (leaving off the first letter). I placed the beginning sounds pieces upside down (no picture, just the letter) so that he had to find the right sound for the word and then verify that the piece was correct (there are a few of some letters) by checking the picture (it changed things up a bit and reassured me that he wasn't simply working by picture alone).


This is RockerTot's newest game, Travel Perfection. It's a great pincer grasp/fine motor activity, plus the timed aspect of the game provides a challenge for him in placing the pieces. I think it was $5 at the Dollar General Store. He adores this toy (and giggles hard when the pieces "jump" out) and I love that all the pieces fit in a drawer in the side of the game.


Matching upholstery scraps from RockerDad's work. We've never done anything like this, so I used this as an introduction to the upholstery scraps. This will most likely become a mystery bag type of activity in the near future.


New puzzles are at the top of my wish list right now. Here is a shot of him working the puzzles in his Tonka puzzle book.


I made this for our fridge out of white contact paper. I've since added the lines to make it a magnetic number line puzzle.


I just introduced craft sticks as a math manipulative this week and, as always, I'm giving him time for exploring the materials before trying more formal activities with them.






Here he is with his magnetic, glow-in-the-dark dinosaur playset and his flashlight. (It was dark in the room, but the flash makes it look like it wasn't.)


Play-Doh!







RockerTot and RockerBoy having fun with Wii Fit Yoga!




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