Tot School - Christmas

Sophie is 19 months old.

Last week (and continuing this week) has been so much fun!  We've done lots of Christmas activities in Tot School to celebrate the season.  I've wanted to be very intentional about focusing our family on the birth of Christ this holiday season and have tried to create some activities that provide lots of opportunity to share that story with Sophie.

Sensory Bin 

I have been excited about this sensory bin for several weeks!  I made a Nativity sensory bin for her using hay, Nativity figurines, farm animal toob figures, and some handmade trinkets to represent the other elements of the Nativity.  For full details, check out my post over at Activity Mom.

Sophie really liked this bin.  It was so sweet.  Her high chair is right next to our Tot School shelf and the very first morning the bin was out, she was so interested in it she didn't even want to finish her breakfast.  She spent a lot of time exploring this bin.  Her favorite parts were the jar of sparkly baby oil ("myrrh") and making all of the animals and character kiss Baby Jesus "night-night." I love that I can tell her the story of Christmas over and over as she explores this bin.

Tot Trays

Her first Tot Tray was a Christmas Light matching game (free printable available here).  Honestly, she didn't touch this one.  I may try to suggest it a couple times this week, but since these trays are going to be out for two weeks I didn't bother.  If she's not interested it's no big thing, but she seems to enjoy matching even though she rarely chooses it given more enticing options! :)

Her next tray was a Christmas Tree Pom Push box.  This one was a hit!  She loved pushing the craft poms through the holes and asking "where go?"  I tried to get a picture of her sweet face and hand expressions every time but I just couldn't capture it!  You can see my tutorial for making the push box here.  I love that this idea could be used for almost any theme!

Her third tray was stringing beads.  This was her first true stringing beads experience.  We've played with the beads and we've put them on skewers before, but had never tried on a string.  She really enjoyed doing it, even though she needed lots of assistance (which was expected).  I would either hold the bead for her while she pushed the string through, or she would hold the bead while I pushed the string and she grabbed it from the other side to pull.  She was so proud of herself for getting all the beads.  You can see her wearing her necklace in many of the other pictures! :)  I love how proud she looks in that picture modeling her hard work!

Her fourth tray was a simple cookie cutter transfer activity.  I had two Christmas tins and put all my Christmas cookie cutters in them for her to play with and move between tins.  She loved the sound they made hitting the bottom of an empty tin!  I also learned that she could identify and name a star through this activity!  

 The fifth tray this week was a fine motor activity using a little peg game I found at the Dollar Tree.  She really liked the "little men" and did a great job putting them in the holes in the Christmas tree.  This one was great to throw in my purse when we were going somewhere like a restaurant!

Her final tray was kind of a carry over from her Winter theme.  It was a jingle bell transferring activity, but it was mostly out because I wanted us to be able to play with the jingle bells.  We loved singing "Shake and Stop" and "Shake those Bells" from Carisa's Song Notebook at 1+1+1=1.  We also loved just putting on the Christmas Pandora station and dancing around with our bells.  

Other Activities

Sophie spent a TON of time playing with her Little People Nativity set.  It has been out all month, but we play with it almost every day.  She even wanted a blanket on her head like Mary to rock Baby Jesus. 

I also got her a magnet Nativity set I found at Hobby Lobby.  She was so sweet telling Daddy to "look" at each piece when he came home that day!  She would then jabber on and on like she was telling him all about it. Precious!

We also did lots of craft projects (some of which cannot be shared because they are Christmas gifts for family!) but she has fallen in love with glueing!  You can find my printable for the shape Nativity here.

Here I just made some simple shapes for her to glue on the Christmas Tree.

We won't be doing Tot School next week, because we will be at Disney World with my family!  We are so looking forward to seeing Sophie's reaction to all the exciting things there.  You can be sure I'll have some great pictures and stories to share.

We'll be starting with our shapes in the New Year!  I hope you have a very Merry Christmas!

For tons more ideas be sure to visit these sites I'm linking to this week!

Tot School Gathering Place at 1+1+1=1 

Teaching Tuesdays at Intentional Homeschool
Tuesday Tots at Rainy Day Mum
Link and Learn at No Time for Flashcards
Show and Share Saturday Link Up at I Can Teach My Child

Tender Moments with Toddlers and Preschoolers at The Chaos and the Clutter 
Sunday Showcase at Learn Play Imagine
TGIF at 123Homeschool4Me
For the Kids Fridays at Sun Scholars

Tot School - Winter

Sophie is 18.5 months old.

If you have seen a weather map of the country lately, you would probably know that while a Winter themed tot school would be perfect for most of the country, it seemed highly inappropriate in Florida this week!  We have had almost 80 degree weather some days.  The state obviously hasn't gotten the memo that it's December...but I digress.  Needless to say, even though it was almost hot outside, we were talking about a winter wonderland inside! :)

Sensory Bin

Sophie really liked the sensory bin this week.  I used cotton balls as the base and then added some "ice" in the form of clear and blue glass stones.  I also included some sparkly plastic snowflakes and Sophie's favorite part - two pretend cardinals (tree decorations from the Dollar Tree).  Her favorite thing to do (other than kiss and "love" the birds) was to pull out all the glass stones and put them on a plate.  The cotton balls kind of bothered her, because they pulled apart ("uh-oh"), but she loved separating the parts (a great toddler-created sorting activity!)

Tot Trays

Her first tot tray was a total mom failure.  I got a snowflake stamp and an ink pad and planned to let her explore stamping.  I thought she would love it.  She did - only her mother made a horrible assumption that an ink pad placed with children's crafts and children's stamps and called "Silly Winks" would be a washable ink.  WRONG.  My daughter strongly dislikes getting her hands dirty, so when she got ink no them, I tried to wipe it off and allow her to keep stamping.  It wouldn't come off for anything.  She started freaking out, looking at her hands crying and saying "rub rub" (what she calls washing her hands).  I did what any sane woman would do in such a situation - called my mom for a solution!  I tried every suggestion she and google had (that wasn't a strong chemical or potentially harmful) and that ink wasn't budging.  My daughter was traumatized the rest of the night.  Way to go, Momma. I'm adding washable ink pads to her Christmas list.  We'll try again after we both recover.  Needless to say, there are no pictures of this one. ;)

Her second tray was MUCH less eventful.  I made one-to-one correspondence sheets for the numbers one through three and gave her enough plastic snowflakes to go in each spot.  We would count as she placed them in the circles. 

Her third tray was a big hit.  She definitely needs practice with a spoon, so I got some large jingle bells and a snowflake bowl for spooning practice.  She was occasionally successful with the spoon, but the real fun was shaking the jingle bells to music. :)

The fourth tray was more one-to-one correspondence and transferring practice.  The idea was to use the tweezers to move the "snowballs" into the ice cube tray.  She did that a few times, but the tweezers are still really difficult for her.  However, she likes exploring them, so I keep including them for her to play and practice with.

The fifth tray was by far the favorite and the one we spent the large majority of our time on this week.  It was a pouring activity using two metal condiment cups (four for a dollar at Walmart - they were absolutely the perfect size and one of my favorite finds!) and small glass beads.  She LOVED this activity.  It was the first pouring activity I had given her and we seriously spent all week pouring back and forth.  She did a great job, although sometimes she liked spilling the beads on purpose and playing with them on the tray.  

Her final tray was probably her second favorite.  I cut out some foam snowflakes (umm...WAY more difficult to do than I anticipated!) and she put them in and out of the snowflake jar.  She loved opening and closing the snap lid.

Other Activities

Window clings - these were such a hit for fall that I had to get her a new set for the winter and Christmas season.  She loved the "window stickers" and put them on and off all week long.  These will stay up through the new year.

Painting with cotton balls - She painted with cotton balls and white paint to make snow.  She really enjoyed it!  Although I honestly think she likes cleaning up afterward more! :)

Up next week:  Christmas!  I am so excited about the Christmas activities I have planned for her.  We've been doing several different crafts for Advent (I'll share some soon!), but tot school for the next two weeks will be all about Christmas.  I can't wait! :)

I'll leave you with this sweet picture from the Christmas parade last weekend!  Care to guess who she gets her great dimples from? ;)

For tons more ideas be sure to visit these sites I'm linking to this week!

Tot School Gathering Place at 1+1+1=1 

Teaching Tuesdays at Intentional Homeschool
Tuesday Tots at Rainy Day Mum
Link and Learn at No Time for Flashcards
Show and Share Saturday Link Up at I Can Teach My Child

Tender Moments with Toddlers and Preschoolers at The Chaos and the Clutter 
Sunday Showcase at Learn Play Imagine
TGIF at 123Homeschool4Me
For the Kids Fridays at Sun Scholars

Two Nativity Activities - on Activity Mom

Be sure to check out my two latest posts on Activity Mom!

Nativity Sensory Bin

Nativity Shape Craft [Free Printable!]

Cookie Day - Our Black Friday Tradition

While other people are scurrying around huge crowds of people trying to get the best deals, my family has always spent Black Friday staying home with ridiculous amounts of flour, sugar, butter, and plenty of creativity baking cookies all day.  We call the tradition (very creatively, I might add!) Cookie Day.  It is probably my favorite family tradition.  Each of the kids could invite a friend and we would spend all day baking batch after batch of different types of cookies to share with neighbors and take to Christmas parties in the coming days.  Christmas music playing, we gorged ourselves on cookie dough and ordered Chinese for lunch.  I have so many sweet memories of this day and it is one I plan to continue with my own family.

This year was Sophie's first opportunity to participate in our own little Cookie Day.  (Unfortunately, my family lives too far away for us to join in the "big" festivities).  We had so much fun baking together, as we always do, but this day seemed extra special.  And the teacher in me can't help but see all the fabulous life lessons she's learning as we spend this sweet time together!

We made chewy oatmeal cookies - nothing really special or even Christmasy, but it's what I had on hand.  (Unlike my brilliant mother, I had not done a spectacular job planning for the day).

Sophie was a great helper pouring in the ingredients.  We would count the scoops of flour or sugar as we poured them in.  One day this will be a great lesson in measuring, as well!

She loved watching the mixer do its thing, and of course pushing the buttons to make it happen.

Baking is full of fun sensory experiences like smelling cinnamon and feeling flour between your fingers.

The food processor is her favorite kitchen tool by a long shot.  She's already a professional at pushing these buttons. I love the excitement on her face!

Our tradition had something my family's didn't have - a Christmas music dance break in front of her reflection in the stove.

And of course, no Cookie Day is complete without sampling the fruit of your labor!