Our first official Tot School post. For those of you who may not know what Tot School is you can go to their site HERE. For those who don't want to go there- here is an explanation from the Tot School website:
Tot School isn't really school at all! Don't let the name confuse you! Tot School is basically a focused time each day on the tot in your family. Tot School is the time each day I spend with my tot, exposing early learning skills through FUN play. Tot School is not forced, is always fun, sometimes doesn't happen the way I plan, and is always focused on my tot.

I've decided to do Tot School with Lydia (who just turned two) during her pre-school years. Most things I do with her won't be anything really new or terribly exciting but will simply be activities that will help her learn and develop new skills while playing. Of course, she's been doing that all along but I wanted something that would help me focus on her and begin to understand her learning style(s).

So, anyway, here is our very first Tot School activity:

I had been given some foam beads and plastic string. Lydia had not seen them before so she was excited to see a "new toy". I wasn't sure if she'd be able to put the beads on the string herself but thought we'd give it a try as well as use the beads for sorting games. We started out attempting to sort by color.

It started out well- she wanted me to take a picture of the "blue one, mama!":

I used my silicon muffin 'tins' for sorting (since they were in the basement gathering dust ever since I first used them to bake with and hated them). I got her started:


We looked at the difference between light blue and dark blue. Then- oh look!- the circles are like wheels, they roll!!! "see, mama, it roll!":

"this one roll too!":

Ok, so back to sorting colors....or not...."I dump it out now":

Alright, sorting colors wasn't a big success, maybe she learned something that I am not aware of....we'll move on. I got out the plastic string and showed her how to put it through the hole in the bead. She immediately said "I do it self, pease".
She tried:
And tried:

And finally got a few on all by herself. And I didn't get pictures of that, but she did! I was pretty impressed because the holes are rather small and she was having a lot of trouble with it at first. So, good job!! We learned something new today! :)

Then I thought we could try sorting by shape rather than color. That went better:
I think she put two of them in the correct place before dumping it again. So, sorting isn't her favorite activity right now.

Then she picked up the muffin 'tin' and began singing and pretending to read:

I think she was thinking about the big scroll in the skit at vacation Bible school. She sang a good rendition of "Jesus Loves Me" , "The B-I-B-L-E" and held Anna's figure up for her while singing "This Little Light of Mine". Good job, Lydia!

Then we did some stacking of the square beads, which went well for a few minutes- complete with knocking the towers over, of course:

So, our first Tot School activity didn't go quite as I had planned but I think that will probably be the norm. We still had fun and learned a new skill as well as reviewed colors and shapes. Even though she didn't actually do the sorting we were still able to talk about them as we strung them onto the string.

See, she had fun- she's smiling....maybe some day I'll be able to get a cute smile out of her for the camera:

I'm sure we will re-visit this activity again in the future and even make some jewelry out of it some day.