Tot School...brought to you by the letter A

Connar has been really interested in letters and numbers recently, so I figured we'd do some fun "school" stuff to keep this 3 year old learning and busy.  He really loves doing all the activities.  Now if only I can get him to understand what school is really about....one day, I guess.  I asked him, "Connar, when you go to school with Mommy, what are you going to do?"  His response: "I'm gonna play with my friends."  :)

Here's what we did for the letter "A" in Tot School....

"Find the letter A" letter search

....next time I'll put the uppercase and lowercase on one page and have him circle them in different colors....at least that's what I'm thinking right now.

tracing his name to learn how to write those letters and recognize which letters are in his name

So proud of himself!

tracing big A's and little A's

...ever since when he spots a big A somewhere on a wall or label he says "Up! Down! Cross!"  Now I've got to figure out what lingo I'm going to use for the other letters.  :)

 singing the alphabet song and smacking every letter with a spatula as he sings it

.....If you didn't see the video of him doing this, you must watch it now!

We attempted to make homemade applesauce.  When I turned back from grabbing my camera, I caught him nibbling away!

 We talked about the core of the apple and even plucked out the seeds.

All into the pot..... It smelled heavenly while it cooked on the stove, but I'm going to spare you the after picture of the applesauce because it didn't turn out as planned.  The consistency and texture of the apples after cooking them was more like what you'd see in an apple pie filling, which would've been great for that but we were aiming for applesauce.  Oh well.  I don't even think he noticed that it didn't turn out the way I hoped.  He just had fun dissecting the apples and adding the ingredients.

We used the apple seeds to make an apple tree.  And he practiced making more A's on that paper too.

I made a list of "A" words and printed off pictures to match.  I told him the word, he found the picture that matched, and he glued it down next to the word.  It was a great activity for recognizing the letter and the sound of "A", but it was also a good fine motor activity with handling the glue bottle, flipping the picture carefully and slowly so he didn't get glue on his hands, and carefully placing the picture where it belonged on the paper.  Because there were so many words and pictures, we split this activity up over two days, but in my opinion that's a good thing because it just reinforced what we were doing the day before.

Stay tuned for more Tot School in the coming weeks and months!