March 02, 2010

Tot School Tuesday

We had so much fun at Cash's party, we decided to stretch the circus theme into our Tot School curriculum.  We used the circus theme to reinforce our color knowledge and work on some social play.  As always, it was a ton of fun!


The boys worked on taking turns by serving each other popcorn in the stand. They each really enjoyed both roles, (popcorn giver and popcorn taker) which was fun to see.  We also paid for our popcorn and worked on counting using our money.

                                                        

Holden did take a turn serving and receiving, but he had the most fun eating.  This kid can take down some popcorn.  And, before you start yelling about choking hazards, he was closely monitored, promise!

                                      

The boys worked hard with their dot painters to create circus tents for their Little People circus set.  All of the boys love these dot painters and I have found so many great ways to use them.  We even use them as tactile cues for speech therapy!

                                         

Cash got so into the dot painting that he wanted to add a bit of something, so he threw in some popcorn for good measure.  There's nothing like 3-D artwork!

                                        

We use Little People for all sorts of things over here... this week we used the train and some of the people from the circus set to act out circus protocol.  We worked on ticket-taking, sitting in our seats and even did a few circus themed acts!

                                          

The boys loved the circus play-acting so much that they donned clown noses, and got down to playing with some circus themed music.

                                           

Holden dug through a big batch of cotton candy (cotton balls) to find the pieces for his puzzle.  He's gotten really good at putting this one together and knows the shapes and colors by heart.  Pretty amazing for an 18-month-old!
                                    

Finally, we flew through the air with the greatest of ease and pretended to be men on a flying trapeze. This was a big hit, especially with  Stone!

We used several books this week to work through our fun theme, including: If I Ran the Circus (Classic Seuss)Curious George's First Words at the CircusSee the Circus (Lift the Flap Series).

I have updated our Amazon carousel in the right sidebar to include the products that we used during this week's Tot School.  Feel free to browse through and get ideas, I'm always on the lookout for new ones!  If you're looking for ideas, check out all of the great ideas on the Tot School blog.

4 comments:

ASC said...

Oh my goodness! E. Stone looks so LONG and grown up in that photo! Would you please tell him (and the others) to stop growing?!

Stacy - midlifearmywife.com said...

That looks like so much fun! I have only begun to look around at the Tot School blog, and already I'm seriously addicted!! I love your creativity!

Anonymous said...

My favorite tool with my own two kiddos is the MagnaDoodle. It's so much fun to draw on and they name the shapes and numbers and letters. It's how Maggie learned the whole alphabet!

--J. Johnson

Tara said...

I love the popcorn stand! That is really fun!