Tot School - Flowers/Plants

Sprout is 21 months old

I thought that we would spend the next two week focusing on Spring.  And as it worked out we did flowers and plants this week.  And will do more with butterflies, and insects next week (and possibly the week after).

Tot Trays
This week's Tot Trays were

• Visual Discrimination Matching Game
• Playdough
• Stickers
• Dot Painting
• Pom Pom Egg Color Match Up
• Foam Shape Flowers

Sprout is so good with the shadow matching games that I thought we should try this File Folder Game.  She did pretty well.  Though I had to encourage her to really look at the butterflies.  I think she is so accustomed to matching the shapes that in her mind they were all fine.  When I encouraged her to look again, she did pretty well for the most part.  (I'm sorry the butterfly in her hand is out of focus.  She was looking for the match.)  We'll keep practicing this one next week.

Sprout doesn't really seem all that interested in Playdough.  I'm going to try making a new color when I get a chance to see if that helps some. 

Sprout loves using her Dot Markers.  I printed this from Making Learning Fun.  Ironically, Sprout had 3 pictures to choose from, 2 of flowers and 1 butterflies, and she chose the butterflies.  And as usual, Sprout thought that matching the tops to the markers was as much fun as actually using them.  She did really well (only swapped two, blue and purple).

I set up a sticker notebook for Sprout.  I took butterfly stickers (and some Mickey and friends) and made a matching page for the different types of stickers.  The Disney stickers were bigger so I cut them in half so Sprout could try to find the matching part.  This one didn't draw her interest right away, but I will encourage her to do this one some more next week.

I got some of the plastic eggs, thinking we could use them for different activities.  This week I pulled out 4 eggs and stuffed them with Poms Poms of a matching color.  Then I let Sprout open them up, dump them, and play with them.  She did really well with putting them back in the right egg.  (I was surprised because she's not normally all that in to sorting the colors.)

On the last tray, I cut out a flower and put foam shape stickers in a snack container (that I got for Passover and didn't love for actual snacks, I will put up a review at some point).  Sprout really enjoyed taking the shapes out of the container, and was really proud of herself when she figured out how to take the paper backing off the shapes, so that she could put the stickers on the flower.  She really enjoyed this, so I will probably cut out a butterfly for next week so that she can continue this activity.  It's great fine motor practice!

 

Projects

The only art project we did this week was our stART project which went along with Planting a Rainbow.

   

We also did some planting this week.  I found these little pots with seeds at Target (in the $1 area) and thought that we could add to our herb garden.  We got oregano and chives.  They give you peet pots that need to be reconstituted.  I used an old formula dispenser. 

This was the oregano at the end of the week (4 days later).

We also planted our avocado plant.  A month or so ago, I split open an avocado and the seed split open too.  I saw that sprout had started to grow, so I thought I would put it in water and see what happened.  So far we have a very nice avocado plant growing.  I know it will be a long time before we get any avocados (if we ever do), but I thought it was a fun project.

All that planting was tiring.  So Sprout had to take a break on the couch to finish her toast.

Tot Pack

We didn't really use a Tot Pack this week.  Though we did use some Mickey and Friends flower matching cards that I will load on the Tot Pack page.

Sorry, I didn't get any pictures this week.  I'll work on it for next week.

Practical Play

In addition to the planting, Sprout thought she would try her hand at couple other activities this week.  She helped me make cornbread.  (Sorry the photo is a little dark.)

And thought she would try her hand at photography.  She would come by this honestly as both her Nana and I love taking pictures.

I think she took this.  It's the only explanation I could come up with.

On Another Note

I am so happy.  The blueberry plant we got in January (remember we are in Southern Florida and the growing seasons are messed up) actually has some blue blueberries.

Next Week

Next week we will do more Spring activities.  Including a visit to a butterfly garden and some other gardens too!

Hope you all had a great week!  To see what other Tots were up to this week go to 1+1+1=1.