Tot School

I have my bachelors degree in Early Childhood Education and decided to put it to work. I have read many many articles on how to start teaching young children, and I am firmly a believer in let them lead the learning - but how do you even begin? I decided to start by making an area in the playroom that we call "tot school" G already knows its name and where it is.

 I have a very active 18 month old so I needed a space that encouraged her to stay there... not running all around the room. So I set up our chase as a border. It worked perfect! G did not even realize she was contained and yet once I set down at the only exit, so just naturally stayed in the "tot school" area.

 I filled up the bins with just one activity per bin. G was allowed to pick what activity we did first. We pulled out the pigs.

 At first I just let her explore them, I did not touch them or try and get her to play a certain way with them. It was fun to see how she naturally put the pigs into the houses and tried sticking her hand all the way through.

 She noticed on her own that the color on the pigs matched the color on the house as well as that the numbers on the pigs matched the houses.

 Once she started to bore of the activity I added in new thoughts, I showed her how the pigs could be lined up by number and I talked about the small pig and the big pig and how they were different. I also told her the story of the three little pigs and acted it out with the houses and the big bad wolf. She loved huffing and puffing and squishing the houses down. :)

 Then we moved on to the next activity. G had to clean up all the pigs and put them back before she could pick a new bin to look at. Hopefully in time this will teach her to clean up always, not just in tot school!

 Puff balls, an egg carton, and a bowl. G is still in the phase were simply putting them from the bowl into each of the 12 sections of the egg carton is incredibly fascinating.

 We have started talking about the colors and asking her to find different colors on her own, but she really is not interest in that yet, so I don't push it. When she finished filling the egg carton again she cleaned it up, and then she was allowed to choose a new activity.

 This game has held her attention since she was 6 months old. As G has gone through developmental changes it has served different purposes. Now that she already knows how all the buttons work and can do them independently it serves as a confidence builder and continued fine motor development. It is important that not all activities in tot school be new concepts, they need to see the same things over and over to really understand them and then feel confident with them.

 After tot school we had some gross motor play. G loves pushing these large foam mats together in different ways. Today it was a slide. :)

 Action shot as she slides down on her belly!