Tot School: Penguins

This week for tot school we learned all about penguins and other winter animals.

Circle Time
The girls are continuing to love circle time. They are so eager to help with the calendar each day. I am still experimenting with different ways to use the board so a post on that is still to come, but I realized that I forgot to post a picture last week so here you go.

Books:
The Mitten by Jan Brett


The Little Penguin by A J Wood

A Penguin Story by Antoinette Portis


Songs/ Poems:

Peter, Peter Penguin
Peter, Peter Penguin, marching by, 
Toes turned out and head held high (Stand very tall with legs together and toes pointing out)
A long black coat (Sketch coat down back)
And a clean white vest (Pretend to hold edges of vest in hands)
Peter, Peter Penguin, you're the best! (Waddle like a penguin)

Music and Movement

"Going On a Bear Hunt" was still a much requested song for this week, but we also branched out and tried a little something new. I found these great kid's yoga videos online and thought we could give them a try for something different. 

I wasn't quite sure what the girls would think of them because they're a little slower paced, but they absolutely LOVED them.  The videos have a cute story line that helps to keep their attention and gives purpose to the yoga poses. The girls have requested these videos multiple times this week and tell me that they LOVE yoga!   I just wish I wasn't busy making lunch at this time so I could join in too!

Sensory Play

Snow Dough - We brought our snow dough back out from a couple of weeks ago. It is so incredibly messy, but so incredibly fun! It cleans up easily so it is a win in my book!

 

 Salt Trays - The kiddos had fun drawing, writing, and playing in salt trays this week. The babies had salt in a bin to confine their mess a bit more. This activity is fun, but I have two notes 1) don't use trays with holes in the sides like mine. The sand spills right out when the shake it around to erase their design 2) don't use salt trays directly on a wood surface. I discovered later that the little bits of salt that spilled onto the table acted like sand paper each time they slid the tray around on the table to erase. Thank goodness my table has already seen better days! We'll be putting towels on the table next time we do this though!

Arts and Crafts

Penguin Craft - The big girls made this adorable toilet paper tube penguin craft while the babies made their own simplified version. 

 

 Arctic Animal Spray Pain - The big girls were given cutouts of different arctic animals ( polar bear, penguin, rabbit, and seal) to use as stencils as they "spray painted" their paper by flicking their brush. The animal shapes didn't exactly turn out because they kept lifting them up to check on them, but they absolutely loved this method of painting!

 The little ones created their own snowy scene using these fun foam bushes!

Snowflake Painting - The babies had fun painting with these plastic tinsely snowflakes that I picked up at the dollar store last year. They loved the feeling of them covered in paint!

 

 Gross Motor

Penguin Waddle Race -  We all had fun burning off some steam at the end of the day with this fun penguin race game. We put a balloon in between our legs and raced from one end of the room to the other, waddling like a penguin. Little man was right in there racing with the big girls, although he didn't need a balloon to help him waddle :) The person who reached the finish line first got to be the one to say "ready, set, go..." next. We have just recently started playing games with a "winner" and it has been interesting to watch the competitive side of the kids come out. We have had some talks about what it means to be a good sport, an important lesson to learn!

Animal Walk - For a fun way to get the kids moving, I made a die out of a recycled box and drew pictures of diffent winter animals on each side. The kids took turns throwing the dice and they all moved around the room like the animal that it landed on!

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Tot School : Winter Animals

It's snowing!!!
We finally got our first measurable snow of the winter. Granted, it is barely an inch, but it still puts me in the mood to share with you some of the winter activities we have been up to over the past week. I have to confess that I didn't make it to the library this week (actually I did make it but I forgot my card) so we didn't have most of the books on our lesson plan and probably wont have any for next week either. Never the less, the kids enjoyed all of our wintery activities.

Though not really winter related, E continued to enjoy her tot trays at home. This weeks trays included rice pouring work, a salt try, and the tonging work from last week instead of the stacking sugar cube work listed on the lesson plan. E's favorite by far was the salt tray. We had tried this once several months ago and she wasn't quite ready for it. Though she is still a ways off from actually writing letters, she is definitely using it more appropriately now, making designs and prints in the salt. All great pre-writing practice! Here you can even see some squiggles that kind of resemble the letter S.

She also liked when I would write an S in the salt and then help her trace mine by guiding her finger!

vigorously erasing her designs

She spent quite a bit of time doing the rice pouring work and can do it well both left and right handed!

We started off the work week by reading The Mitten by Jan Brett. Thankfully we own that book so we were still able to stick to our plan. We followed up by doing a mitten lacing activity. This was the first time I had introduced lacing cards to the kids so I was interested to see how they did. E and C both gave it a real effort. It was pretty challenging but I think with a little more one on one instruction they could quickly catch on.

I am sure B could have done this, however he decided it was much more interesting to fashion his mittens into some sort of trapping device and enjoyed tying things up with them instead ( I wish I would have gotten a picture. It was amusing to see his little imagination at work!)

Monday was a gloriously beautiful and sunny day which is hard to come by this time of year in Ohio so we made it a point to get out and enjoy the great outdoors.

 E was afraid of the big red swing last time we visited the park ( several months ago ) but not anymore!

 Her favorite thing was the teeter totter! She had the biggest grin on her face and proudly chanted "teeter totter bread and water" which she must have learned from Nana and Papa because I have never taught her that.

 The tots both enjoyed looking for wild life. Here they are trying to spot a woodpecker that was making noise at the top of the tree. They were also convinced that there was a crocodile in that little creek :)

We spotted several brilliant cardinals along the way. I can't get over how beautiful they are against the bare trees and bright blue sky.

We finished the day with a fun painting technique using water colors and salt.

When sprinkled on the wet paint, the salt absorbs the water which concentrates the paint around each grain creating a speckled effect - art and science all wrapped into one!

Thursday we learned all about bears and hibernation. I turned the dining room table into a bear cave which provided much entertainment throughout the entire day. B even requested it as a repeat activity on Friday. We discussed the meaning of the word hibernation and talked about why some animals sleep all winter as we played. We went through many cycles of the year, gathering food in the fall, curling up to sleep in the winter, and waking up to stretch and eat blueberries in the spring.

Sorry for the terrible photo quality ( my good camera should be fixed soon) but I hope you can still appreciate the cuteness of these jammied little ones all curled up in their cave on a snowy winter day!

In the afternoon, the kids made a simple bear cave craft. They colored in a brown bear I traced for them and glued cotton on a paper bag cave to make it look snowy. I taught them a this cute little song and they enjoyed acting it out with their bears and caves!

Time for Sleeping
(Sung to the tune of "Sing a Song of Sixpence")

Now it's time for sleeping
The bears go in their caves
Keeping warm and cozy
Time for lazy days
When the snow is gone and 
The sun comes out to play
The bears will wake up from their sleep
And then go on their way.

Bear going in cave

Tucking bear in with a blanket to keep cozy (her idea!)

Bear waking up and going on its way

Brady had a snow day on Friday so I nixed the rice poring that I had originally planned on and threw together a quick winter animal sensory box instead. 

The kids always enjoy sensory boxes and, as usual, added their own items as play progressed. Some how or another we ended up with a tractor, a truck, a toy garbage can and a cookie jar that was really a shark included in our little forest by the time they were done. I found it interesting (and cool) that B chose to use a plastic container as a shark rather than grabbing his actual toy shark. 

We finished the week playing with play dough and using animal figurines to make tracks in the "snow". 

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