Tot School: Week 5 (Winnie the Pooh and some bees)

Andy is currently 37 months old

This weeks theme for our Tot School was 'Winnie the Pooh and some Bees' but it turned out to be 'a whole lot of socializing and some Winnie the Pooh'. We didn't get much in the way of Tot School done this week because the most part of Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday was taken up with visitors but Andy still had lots of fun.

We started off the week with examining the shells he collecting from the beach last week in detail...


This is our favourite one...


I prepared a 'Bee' craft for Andy out of things we had in our 'Resources' drawer...


The yellow strips are material scraps, the wings are paper and the body is a foam dish from a milk tart that we bought...


The finished bee... I'm so glad we did this craft on Monday because Andy played with it everyday zooming around the house with his bee. He had such a lot of fun. (we made his sting out of the back of a duck's feather)


Then he did some work on his 'Winnie the Pooh and some bees' lapbook which we got from lapbooklesson.com (we just added a few things of our own as well)


On Tuesday my Granny, eldest sister and 2 nieces came to visit so Andy and I spent the morning making these homemade cinnamon buns (we added chopped walnuts to the frosting)...


Here's Andy's one which he made all by himself. He had it when it was warm out of the oven and was so proud of it...


He also had a neighbour's grandson and granddaughter over to play. N is the same age as Andy and Andy asks after him everyday now.


Wednesday: Our little Winnie the Pooh display...


Andy painted this little bear and filled the container with a different snack everyday...


We spent the morning doing some random Tot Trays...


Some work on his bear counting book out of his lapbook...



And in the afternoon Aunty Rachel came for her weekly visit so Andy and his friends spent several fun hours running around outside and jumping on the trampline which we put outside on sunny days.

In the evening he asked for his The Very Hungry Caterpillar Lapbook and insisted on balancing it on the arm of the chair where Daddy was sitting and taking Daddy through the lapbook showing him everything again and explaining it and he concluded by playing with his favourite threading activity section of the lapbook...


On Thursday Morning he played mostly outside with his water activity Tot Tray...


And his little friend arrived wearing an almost identical shirt to Andy's. Of coarse the boys thought this newly invented Lightning McQueen club was just the best thing ever...


At last Andy found an equal and willing companion in pulling faces for the camera (maybe it's some secret code in the Lightning McQueen club)...


In the afternoon we had a friend over who is studing Educare and needed to do a workshop making homemade toys with some parents. So a few of us ladies did the workshop while 8 children filled the air outside with screams and laughter.

Can't put a photo because of certain contious ladies.

So it was Andy, 1 boy and 6 girls!

On Friday we read some Winnie the Pooh books and Andy did his five page Italian Winnie the Pooh puzzle book (each page has a different puzzle with a story in Italian). I was on strike most of Friday (which means sitting on the couch drinking tea and alternating between knitting and embroidering) because I felt exausted so Andy kept busy in his school area. Luckily he has a long concentration span and is content with keeping himself busy, esspecially when he has a audio book on. We've been listening to The Giraff, the Pelly and Me by Roald Dahl and Andy doesn't ever seem to tire of it - the result being that we're both completely brain washed and quoting from the story at regular intervals during our day - which often results in shrieks of laughter.


We took Andy to Cape Garden's Centre today (Saturday) where there are lots of rides and a Nursery with animals. I also went to the shop, that I bought the Tot Trays from, and bought a whole lot of bottles, trays, containers etc. that we'll be using next week and in the future.

Here are some photo's of our Winnie The Pooh and Some Bees Lapbook from Lapbook Lessons...

The Cover...


Bee Tic-Tac-Toe game with the game pieces in the floral pocket and a cute Bee Rhyme...


The lapbook folded out...


Bears counting book and a flap up Winnie the Pooh scene that Andy enjoyed painting...


Andy coloured in and counted the bears on each page and then put the corresponding amount of stickers in the circles...


The first flap of the tree...


Completely unfolded...


With a balloon colours mini book...


Some vocabulary words which we went through, each flaps open to reveal the definition...


Three question flap books... for each answer Andy did a colour in page which we put under each flap...


Who does Pooh belong to...

To see what others have done for Tot School visit 1+1+1=1.

Tot School - Week 4

Andy is currently 36 months old

We didn't have any particular theme this week as we only had half a Tot School week with Thursday being a holiday and everyone taking Friday off to make it a long weekend.

MONDAY

So on Monday Andy painted his farm animals which he received in the post last week and which we molded over the weekend...


My Mom bought him a years subscription to the National Geographic Toddlers Magazine so he received his first copy in the post and we had so much fun reading it and doing all the activities inside...


He then worked a bit on his Ressurection Lapbook which we printed from Lapbook Lessons...



In the evening he asked to do some more lapbooking so we took out our Footsteps Of The Prophet lapbook which we created ourselves and he worked on cutting and pasting the leaves onto the tree...


As well as sticking stickers of dogs in the dog section... we also read all the matchbooks, mini books and layer books we created in these sections...


He then made a little dog puppet which is actually a toilet roll craft from dltk-kids but we made it with a paper backing so that it could go flat to put into our lapbook pocket...


TUESDAY

On Tuesday morning he asked to 'do' his Humpty Dumpty Lapbook which we did a few months back. That's one of the many things I love about lapbooks - you keep using them over and over...


It was a beautiful Spring day so Andy spent many happy hours playing outside...


We hang some lavender up to dry so that Andy can make some lavender pouches for his Grannies for Christmas presents...


In the afternoon we had SO MUCH FUN creating and playing with homemade toys out of one of my favourite books...

It's a South African book called Learning With Scrap which my Aunt gave to me when I was still at College studing Educare. It has lots of templates and wonderful ideas...


This is a outline board I made as one of my College projects 7 years ago and it's such a joy to be using it with my own child...


You just collect household objects, outline them on a piece of A3 sized card and laminate the card.


These are threading cards we made a few months back. I used a colouring book with very simple outlines, traced a picture onto white paper, pasted it onto card, cut it out and punch holes along the edges... I put some clear tape at the tip of the thread to make it more sturdy and easier to put through the holes and the other end of the thread I taped to the back...


We made this 'feely matching board'. We had fun collecting different textured objects round the house, cut two of each into squares, pasted one of each onto a piece of card and pasted the others onto individual pieces of card...


I let him play with it in two ways. One - to put the matching pieces into a dish concealed by a napkin. He put his hand under the napkin took hold of one and without looking felt it and with the other hand showed me on the 'feely board' which one he thinks it is. After he's guessed he takes the square out from under the napkin to reveal wether he was right or wrong. It was such fun and he wanted to do it over and over again. I think the whole mystery about it thrilled him to bits...


The other way was to just match them up by sight which he also enjoyed...


So here are our homemade toys Tot Trays...


WEDNESDAY

On Wednesday we did a bit on construction and farm vehicles. Andy did some colour, cut and paste...



Then he did some sticker fun on the topic as we discussed each vehicle...


He also did his Open Ended Art which I blogged about here and it was by far the highlight of the day...


Andy 'helped' bake some choc chip cookies...


And dipped the end product into a glass of milk with all the sucking and sighing and aaahhhhhing accompaning such a consuming task...


THURSDAY

On Thursday we spent our holiday in Hermarnus about a 2 and a half hour drive up the coast to my Aunt and Uncles house for my Aunty's birthday. It was also the whale festival at Hermarnus so we decided to take the alternate root which was mountains at your immediate left and the sea at your immediate right with a heck of a lot of twists and turns. So 2 hours into the drive after only two stops Andy exploded with vomit from car sickness. So we were inbetween mountain and sea half an hour away from our destination with a quarter roll of toilet paper and a back seat covered in vomit. We cleaned Andy up and changed his clothes (which I packed in forseeing either vomit, wee, mud or cake) and used the last of our valuable toilet paper cleaning up as much vomit as possible. One can but learn from ones mistakes.


Our peaceful drive before the above mentioned episode...


After we had lunch at my Uncle's house of which Andy had none and we had very little (still vividly recalling the vomit episode) Andy and I headed to the beach down the road with some of the family and Luke stayed behind to remove the seats from the car and wash them in my Uncle's back yard.

Andy has been asking all winter to go to the beach and this is the first time after winter that he has, so before any of us had a grain of sand between our toes Andy was on the beach in a flash just sand, beach toys, waves, sky and him...


Andy with his cousin nearest in age to him, Jude...


Some cousins walking my Uncle's dogs and some enjoying the rocks...


Jude the very brave one headed into the freezing water...


Andy preferred to stay on solid ground telling me, "The water is going to pull me far into the ocean"! I don't blame him cause no matter how much explaining I got I thought exactly the same till I was a teenager.


Escaping from the waves...


He found solace in patiently collecting shells and was very proud of the result of his labour...


FRIDAY

On Friday my eldest sister and I with her two girls and Andy went to visit my Mom and seeing as my Mom is our dear mother hen with her five chicks hardly ever further than half an hour away from her my brother and his family and my sister and her boys were also there for the day with only one of my sisters being absent.

All the cousins played in the storage flat at the back of my parents property and built a house out of empty boxes as the prison and Andy as the prisoner, feeding him pieces of sandwiches through the 'window'...


Hope, his 6 year old cousin is a second mother to him and when they are playing alone he is in her capable care as she reports the smallest incident which might raise concern. When most of the kids were inside getting doughnuts I went looking for them and there they were in the storage room with Andy in a stored cot and Hope lovingly watching over him from a stool and giving him half of her doughnut. :)

Here she is joining him in the prison. She will even willingly put herself into prison for the sake of her beloved Andy. :)


Okay so I've said far too much this week and if you've reached this far - well done! :) These Tot School posts just gets longer and longer don't they!? Please don't be put off by the length I'll try my best to make next weeks one shorter.

I'll put the link to the other's Tot School posts here once 1+1+1=1 has put her Tot School post up.