Tot School Tuesday: SNOW

Well, we did it! We finished our first week of Tot School and it was full of fun, surprises, and a few Pinterest fails 😉 I am thrilled to be sharing my very first week of Tot School with you today, and can’t wait to keep the fun going. So in case you missed my post last week and you’re wondering what on Earth I’m doing, you can check out here: Getting Started with Tot School.

Here were our plans for the week:

Now of course, the best laid plans…often go awry. And that’s okay we still had an awesome time and that’s all that really matters, right? Okay let’s get started.

First up, we read 5 different books as a focus for each day, but Madelynn also enjoyed looking through our bin of books for the week.

I’d have to say the fine motor activities were the favorite. Here are the activities we tried:

Marshmallow Letter S:

I printed letter S dot sheets from Confessions of a Homeschooler on pretty blue paper and planned to have Madelynn place the marshmallows in the circles to practice one-to-one correspondence, but she had her own agenda of course. She played with the marshmallows a little bit before discovering they were delicious and fun to eat, so fine motor time, turned into snack time 😉

Snow Stickers:

Stickers are always a big hit around here, so I found some cute winter stickers and paper and let M go to town. Easy Peasy! Sticker tip: If your little one has trouble getting stickers off of the sheet independently, pull the extra outline sticker paper off, leaving just the stickers making it easier to pull them off.

Contact Paper Mittens:

This idea came from the fabulous Maria of Kinder-Craze. You can grab the directions and FREE printables here.

Q-Tip Snowflake Painting:

This was another easy set up activity. Just grab a few q-tips, some white paint and paper. Have your sweetie dip the q-tip in the paint and dab on paper to make a snowy scene.

Tape Resist Snowflakes:

Since I already had the paint and paper ready I figured why not make another easy paint project. I took some white tape and made simple snowflakes on the page. Madelynn painted over them with white paint and after they dried we peeled the tape off to reveal snowflakes.

Fill the Snowman:

I hot glued a few odds and ends to an empty water bottle to create this little snowman and had Madelynn fill it up with marshmallows. Only a few were eaten in the process this time 🙂 Suprisingly this was probably her favorite activity of the week and she keeps asking to play with her snowman every day!

We didn’t get to all of the gross motor activities I wanted to this week, but the ones we tried were used over and over again.

Indoor “Snowball” Fight:

This was inspired by a game I would always play with my kindergartners. I would write sight words on paper, ball them up and let the kids throw them at each other until I yelled stop. Then they would read the sight word closest to them. For M, balling up and throwing paper was enough excitement to last us several days.

Snowball Toss:

We’ve been working a lot on throwing things lately so this was another easy game to set up and provided great practice for Miss Madelynn. All I did was set out a few clear cups and cotton balls/marshmallows so she could experiment with throwing both things.

Indoor Ice Skating:

I wasn’t too sure how this would go over, or even if M would really get how to do it, but I thought it was worth a shot. I cut 2 small squares of wax paper for “ice skates” and demonstrated a few times. After that Madelynn was skating around, and falling all over the place. Definitely entertaining for at least 10 minutes before she decided to crumple them up and practice some more throwing 😉

Making snacks was a lot of fun, and also got Madelynn to try a few new things.

Pretzel Marshmallow Snowflakes:

Easy to make ahead of time, or make together. Just push pretzel sticks into mini or regular marshmallows.

Snowman String Cheese:

M for some reason isn’t a fan of regular string cheese although she’ll eat pretty much anything. This snowman did the trick though and she was pretty excited to peel the plastic off and eat.

Snowman Popcorn Cups:

When I needed a mom break this week, it was popcorn and Frozen movie time to the rescue!

Banana Snowmen:

I’ve seen a few pictures of these on Pinterest, but decided to make my own fruit only version with bananas, strawberries, blueberries, and raisins. Be careful with the skewers and toothpicks so your little one doesnt hurt themselves..or you!

And last but not least…sensory fun! This was probably the most outside of the norm for Madelynn. I’m pretty good about throwing together random crafts and snacks, and reading lots of books, but sensory stuff requires a lot of thought on my part. So here is what we tried:

Snow Themed Sensory Bin:

Included in the bin: Cotton Balls, Bells, Foam Snowflakes, Pompoms, Scoops and Tongs. Madelynn loved digging for all the bells and pinching them with the tongs.

Salt “Snow” Writing:

I planned to have her make the letter S. That lasted .5 seconds. M was happy to squish the salt between her fingers lots, then got a little crazy and threw the whole tray on the floor. Salt tray writing lasted about 2 minutes, lol. We need some practice with the rules for this one.

Frozen “Slime”

And cue the Pinterest fail of the week…Apparently I don’t know how to measure things because I followed this wonderful Frozen slime recipe from Here Comes the Sun and wound up with essentially a super ball pancake. M wasn’t phased one bit however, and had fun pulling apart the pieces that became bouncing little blue things. I’ll have to try this one again to see if I can do better next time!