Welcome to Sweet E's first letter-of-the-week theme! She is almost 2 years and 4 months old, and it's unofficially fall, so it seemed like a perfect time to start with A is for Apples! Click on any of the links below to revisit similar tot school themes, or keep scrolling to see what we did this week!
Books
Sweet E loves to read! But she doesn't sit through anything but board books at the moment. I chose these three books from the library, because they are fairly simple and short, a nice bridge between board books and picture books for her. She looooved Ten Apples Up on Top! And after just the first read, I found her returning to it on her own and re-reading it aloud to herself. Definitely a winner!
Letter A - Circle Stickers
As an introduction to the letter A, I printed out my trusty do-a-dot template from Shannon's Tot School. Love these! They are so versatile, and can be used with manipulatives, dot markers, or as we did here, circle stickers! I provided Sweet E with just the apple-colored stickers, and allowed her to peel them off herself, and place them onto the A.
She enjoyed this, though she didn't complete it in one sitting. I left the stickers and the paper out for her, and she returned to it throughout the week till it was finished!
Apple - Cut and Paste
For the next activity, I provided Sweet E with strips of red paper, scissors, a glue stick, and a template of an apple that I printed from the internet.
I reminded her how to hold her scissors, and she got to work on cutting some of the strips into smaller pieces.
She ripped some with her hands too! Then she covered the apple with glue.
Who remembers this bit? If a project requires a lot of focus, she'll attack it from all sides, including from over the arm of the couch! This is how she finished it!
Apple Soup - Sensory Bin
Next I took our apple manipulatives (purchased at Michaels a few years ago for $2-3) and put them in a bucket with tinted water. This is an activity Little M&M did during his A is for Apple week, which we borrowed from And Next Comes L. I gave her some of her play kitchen accessories and she had a blast mixing and pouring!
And pretending to eat!
Later we also grabbed her Melissa and Doug baking sand toys (which we LOVE) to whisk and mix some more!
It was a fun activity for a lazy, warm afternoon!
Color Sorting
I found this fun color-sorting idea from Moments with Miss, although instead of craft sticks, I used our apples!
The apple printables are taped onto toilet paper tubes. Sweet E identified the colors first, and then we began to drop the apples through the right tubes!
This was a great activity for her!
She definitely knows her colors, but sorting is something we haven't done in a long time. I took these down off the wall when we were finished, but she found them in my room later in the week and asked to do the activity again!
At the end of the week Little M&M took Sweet E into her room to do some more activities. He created his own color-sorting activity, brought out the playdough to make apples and A's with her, and also used some craft sticks to create A's. What an incredible big brother!
Pouring Apples
This is just a simple activity we did right after sorting. I gave Sweet E two large cups, and showed her how to pour them from one to the other. I remember Little M&M loving this activity so much.
She did too!
Kitchen Science - Making Applesauce
Things get a little busy in the kitchen, so I only have this one picture. But Sweet E also helped me make homemade applesauce this week! She helped to peel the apples, stirred our ingredients in the crockpot, and tasted the finished product with dinner that day. Love the smell of the house when something's cooking in fall!
I had so many activities planned out for A week, and we really only got to about half of them! Things are so busy around here! I think she had fun though, so we're going to go for a relaxed approach with to our tot school. See you next week!
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