Winter Themed Activities - Tot School

I don't know about you, but here in Texas we didn't really have a winter. The weather has been pretty mild and we are able to head outside almost every day. There was a brief period of time when it was really cold in the mornings, but that is about as much as of a winter as we have had so far. However, that didn't stop us from having some winter fun for tot school! Here is a quick wrap up of what we did.

Not having snow on the ground didn't keep us from having fun building a snowman! I grabbed three boxes, wrapped them in white paper, and cut out some coal, a carrot, and a scarf from construction paper. Then the boys helped me build our boxy snowman. He ended up looking a little weird, but that is ok! Matthew had fun with this one!










We matched up our mittens. We also had lots of fun wearing our winter gear (hats, gloves, scarves) and looking at ourselves in the mirror. I am so sad I didn't have my camera then because the boys had SO MUCH fun!



We had our toys play in the 'snow' outside in the backyard. They played with the shaving cream snow for at least 30 minutes and had a blast.





Matthew made a 'P is for Penguin' picture with stickers. He LOVES stickers and is so cute when he picks out which one he wants next. I mean, look at that cute face!





They both made a 'S is for Snowman' picture. John's was very neat and put his stickers in the S perfectly whereas Matthew was a little more haphazard. :)





I found a really cute printable book from playing with words 365 so one night John and I made one together. Then he read it with Daddy during the week.





We 'ice skated' across the living room floor using paper plates. I got the idea from Oopsey Daisy (who had the cutest Winter Packet with TONS of fun ideas!). Yes, we used Halloween plates. The boys liked this one even though they couldn't quite get the hang of skating. They just shuffled across the floor. So cute!





Matthew matched colored snowflakes (from Oopsey Daisy). I was very impressed that he was able to do this! I don't think we have done matching cards yet so I was skeptical of how he would do with matching colors. I gave him three at a time and he got them right most of the time!





We had a little science fun as we used droppers to make colored ice cubes (using food coloring). Then we used the ice cubes to paint by tilting the baking pan so that the ice would slide across the paper. John was really interested in playing with the ice. The paper ended up just turning purple but I think if we used water color paper, it would have been much cooler!









The boys made snowmen with their names. I cut out the pieces and wrote the letters (obviously!) and I was so proud that John did the whole project on his own. From using the glue to placing the letters in the correct order, he did this with out even one word from me. I was busy helping Matthew with his and when I turned around, John was done!



Last but not least, Matthew colored with markers in a winter coloring book. He really loves to color with markers. John has never been much of a coloring kind of kid, but Matthew LOVES markers!



I am getting all our Valentine's Day stuff ready over the weekend and I am so excited. I am going to have the kids play in a pretend post office. I think I will have more fun than them with all the stamping and mailing going on. Check back to see what we did!

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P is for Pirate - tot school

John is 32 months

I am so proud of myself! I FINALLY got a real week of tot school stuff put together again. Since Matthew's birthday party was pirate themed, we did 'P is for Pirate' last week. We will probably continue it this week since we didn't quite get to everything.

A big thanks to 2 Teaching Mommies for sharing their great printables so there was very little work on my part!

The first activity we did was a do-a-dot P (although we used my old bingo daubers!). John hasn't done this type of activity in a while and he showed HUGE improvement with this! He was able to cover most of the dots whereas he used to just make dots all over the paper haphazardly. I was so proud! Then I asked him to try to make a P out of dots with a blank peice of paper and he did a pretty good job of making a P on his own! Very exciting!



We used the foam p and pegs. John only wanted to use green pegs. Matthew played with the pegs as well. He was so cute because he knew that the peg needed to go in the hole, but he didn't have the coordination to get it there!









I put play-doh in the shape of a P on a sheet of laminated paper. Then John used a peg to punch holes in the P. Very similar to the do-a-dot activity. I like that this also helps work on pre-writing skills and he is practicing making the shape of a P.





We did a pirate puzzle. I love that this was practicing numbers 11-20. John did pretty good with this although he lost interest in it before finishing all the pieces so I helped finish it.





I guess when I type it out, it doesn't seem like we did a whole lot, but we are SO busy that I am glad we can squeeze in even the little that we did! Hopefully this week we can do even more activities!

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