Tot School: Letter M

Littlemiss is 27.5 months old



Picture of the week. She sure does love her little brother :)



This is a look at her learning center for the week. Above the shelf is a magnetic board from Ikea with the letter of the week and verse of the week. I have her 6 activities (my version of tot trays on the Tot School website, minus the trays) to do with Mommy.

On top of her activities is the book I highlighted for the week, "The Mittens" written by Jan Brett. The theme for the week was small mammals and the book has some small mammals in it.

I handpicked books for her reading area. She had a few books with bunnies (small mammal), monsters (letter M), and of course Curious George (who is one of her favorite characters).

We tried lacing this week and Jemma just didn't have the patience for it. She quickly became frustrated and threw it down. I've been encouraging her to persevere, but she avoided this activity all week.

She has been "cheating" when picking up the colored poofs with tweezers.

This is an awesome Melissa & Doug toy. It's a magnetic pattern block kit. I love it because it's magnetic, so the shapes don't slide all over the place.

Trying out the scissors with the play dough again this week.

She didn't want to make the letter M out of play dough, but she loves to press the glass beads into it.

I cut and laminated strips of construction paper and put magnets on the back so Littlemiss can build the letter "M." I started by putting the two strips on her magnet board and I told her to make the letter "M" with the other 2 strips I had.

She first did this...

This is her completed capitol letter "M"

This is the lowercase "m" she came up with. I wish I would have spent more time building letters with her, maybe next week.

Melissa and Doug cardboard ABC blocks. She loved to build it up high and then knock it down. She thinks it's hilarious!

Carefully concentrating.

Another activity for her magnetic board center was a book extension for the book "The Mittens." There is a print out for all these animals and mittens on the Totally Tots blog here.

I kept the animals up all week and she learned the names of some new animals.

I love her concentrated coloring!

She wasn't into the dot markers this week and quickly decided she was over coloring the shapes, so we put it down and came back to it another day...

and I cut out the squares with the shapes on them. Littlemiss glued them onto a piece of paper. At first she tried to put the glue stick on like chap stick...too funny.

Showing Mommy her work, so proud of herself!

This wasn't a puzzle I had put into her learning center, but she requested it so we did it. Another Melissa & Doug toy. Under each letter is an object of animal that starts with that letter. We took all the letters out, she would pick a letter to put on the puzzle and I would say, "D is for d-d-d-duck." She knows all her capitol letters and most of their sounds, so we are connecting the sounds to the beginning sounds of words.

Littlemiss has tricked me into believing that she didn't know her numbers. I've made it a point to do activities with her that review numbers. Apparently she's been blurting out a random number when I point to a number. When I busted out this puzzle she would pick up a number and call it out! I was shocked! She's known her numbers all along!

One excited girl ready to paint! Yes, we painted inside. The paint wipes up easily on our tile floors.

Since Littlemiss drew on a dotted line last week on one of her worksheets, I thought it might be time to introduce some pre-writing skills. The idea was to have her use the paint brush to trace the "M," but she was more interested in painting the mice. It's totally fine cause my approach is more child-directed learning through play. Maybe next week.

She was serious about her roller brush! I got a set of really cool paint brushes, etc in a pack at our JoAnn's store.

Stamping bunnies.

So we tried to sort m & m's by their color, but Littlemiss was more interested in eating them. She incapable of simply sorting them without eating them. Just like her Momma, she can't resist chocolate.

In our living room I have a basket I started rotating a toy out of. Just one toy, so she will focus on it. This week she had her zoo Lego's. She loves to play with Lego's.

Found this in the dollar section at Target. "M" is for monkey. I love that she specifically put the bow on the monkey's head, that a girl!

She just stared at her "baby monkey" as she called it and held it.

We went to the zoo this week to see all the animals and so she could maybe learn some new small mammals. That's a rescued bald eagle, obviously not a small mammal, but way cool. I didn't take a picture of the meerkats, but she just sat and watched them for a bit. They are quite entertaining.

Watching the monkey's.

 Littlemiss as an orangutan.

 BooBoo liked being held through the whole zoo.