M is for Monkey Tot School Unit

This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone. #FuelTheirAdventures #CollectiveBias Though our Tot school is still very much informal at this point, sometimes we do more in depth themes. And by in depth, I mean somewhat in depth as Squeaker’s attention span is still quite short. Still, I try to capitalize on her interests at the time and the most recent theme that we tried out was based on monkeys. To make it more of a theme, we decided on M is for Monkey as our tot school theme. We may revisit this in the future. For Squeaker, I wanted to keep this simple, yet fun. So I started looking through the books that we have…

Free Painting Ideas for Toddlers

Art can be messy but I think that’s part of the reason why it’s fun. Especially art experiences for toddlers and babies, who are more likely to put paint on any surface except the piece of paper or easel. As part of our informal Tot School, I try to offer art on a weekly basis but sometimes more if Squeaker is showing an interest. Sometimes we do themed projects like our handprint and pom pom apple tree or toilet paper tube apple stamping. Recently though, I wanted to offer her options and so we put on some music and tried these free painting ideas instead. Supplies needed: paint (We used fingerpaint and Tempera paint) clothespins cotton balls construction paper or art paper willing participant For…

Preparing for Tot School

Thank you to Barnes and Noble Mastercard, powered by Barclaycard for sponsoring this conversation and helping us as we continue preparing for tot school this year. Squeaker will be two in December and I’ve already started planning to start doing a more formal tot school/preschool at home with her. I understand, fully, that she’s a toddler and she may not always cooperate with my carefully laid plans. Which is why I’m not going to plan things out to the minute or even use lesson plans at this point. I think it would be futile and would only result in frustration for both of us. But, that still won’t stop me from preparing for tot school, as informal as it might be. We’ll read, do art…

The Very Hungry Caterpillar Mini Unit

Recently, as a part of the Storybook Summer blog hop, Squeaker and I explored The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. He’s one of my favorite children’s authors and I plan to do a lot with his books- through in tot school, home preschool, and homeschooling. For our exploration of this book, I’ve also created a mini pack that would be great for toddlers and preschoolers or children with special needs. Thank you for taking the time to take a look at our The Very Hungry Caterpillar mini unit! To start, we read the book. Squeaker has a board book copy as well, but we used our bigger copy for the beginning of our exploration. If you prefer, you can also listen to a reading…

Planning Our Tot School Year 2015-16

Though it may seem futile to “homeschool” a toddler, I fully intend to do just that with my Squeaker. I’ve already talked about how I’m preparing to homeschool my toddler and I’ve finally gotten around to figuring out what we’re going to do. When we finally get around to formal homeschooling, I do intend to do a year round method. I think this will just work better for us but that won’t be until we’re ready for kindergarten or first grade. Until then, I want to keep our homeschooling informal, fun, and playful with a hint of education. So here’s how we’re planning our tot school year. First things first, I want this to be about learning through playing, exploring, and every day experiences. We’ll…