Tot School: Letter B

This past week, Pumpkin explored the second letter of the alphabet: B! We had a shorter than normal week with Tot School activities this week, as we had to see a pediatric urologist in another state on Monday, and Pumpkin protested quite a bit on Tuesday when we tried to get back into the swing of things. We began Tuesday by coloring a B; however, he was more interested in putting the crayons back in the box. Good practice for putting his toys away!

After coloring, we moved on to making the letter B for his Alphabet Book. I took the idea from the Now I Know My ABCs section of the Totally Tots website. Pumpkin loves getting to use a glue stick. They absolutely fascinate him! They're sticky, they make things stick to other things... To him, they are magical.

Our last activity for Tuesday was to make blue playdough, because blue starts with B! I think that Pumpkin had the most fun with this activity, because it was the most "hands-on" activity of the day. Special thanks to my aunt, who gave me this recipe:

Playdough Recipe:
3 cups flour
2 packages Koolaid
1/2 cup salt
2 cups boiling water
3 Tbsp. vegetable oil

Combine flour, Koolaid and salt in a bowl. Bring water to a fast, rolling boil. Combine water and oil into dry ingredients and mix together. Let cool a little, then knead with hands and enjoy!

Please excuse the pacifier in this last picture. We haven't quite yet given that up. :)

On Wednesday, we again began by coloring. Pumpkin is starting to get used to the idea that there can be letters and images on a piece of white paper, and he can still take a crayon to them. After coloring, we tried some more hands-on activities: sorting. Since the sorting idea came to me spur of the moment, we had to use what I had on hand: poker chips and gift tins. The poker chips were a fairly good size, so that Pumpkin couldn't really put them in his mouth, and they offered the opportunity to sort the three different colors into different tins.

We also made a letter collage. We went through a couple of magazines, and we pointed out the letter B as it appeared, and we cut out a few pictures of things that start with B: boots, boat, blueberries, bananas, bear, burgers and books! We then sorted through a rather large pile of foam letter stickers to find all the Bs.

Again with the gluesticks!

Thursday was fairly low-key. The only activity we did on Thursday was work on stacking. We worked with a bag of blocks that were found at a yard sale for $1.

We rounded out the week on Friday by marble painting, again using the color blue since it starts with B. Pumpkin really enjoyed this! I put some blue paint into a couple of baby food jars, and let him drop the marbles into the jars. After watching me shake on the jars to cover the marble in paint, he shook the others, and he retrieved the marbles out of the jars and dropped them into a shoebox. We then tipped the shoebox in a number of different ways. I have new artwork to hang up with last week's apple finger painting.

Pumpkin really amazed me this week. He very proudly can say the letter B, accompanied by the correct sound. He also learned new words this week, all starting with B, including saying "blue" while holding a blue crayon. To top that off, my father's birthday was this week, and Pumpkin gave him one of his apple finger paintings in a frame. When Grampy asked how he made it, Pumpkin told him, "Apples!" It truly amazes me that he was able to remember that he made that picture with apples and paint. This journey with Tot School is one of the best decisions I've made thus far on my motherhood path.

To learn more about Tot School, please visit 1+1+1=1.