Tot School- The Beginning

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Avery is currently 17 months old 

In my last post I mentioned that I started Tot School with Avery.  If you are wondering what Tot School is, here is a brief description from the 1+1+1=1 website.


Tot School isn't really school at all!  Don't let the name confuse you!  Tot School is the time each day I spend with my tot, exposing early learning skills through FUN play.  Tot School is not forced, is always fun, sometimes doesn't happen the way I plan, and is always focused on my tot.


I knew that I wanted to start spending more time on educational play and I wanted it to have more of a goal than the random play I was doing before.  I also wanted to work in some Montessori works and I thought Tot School would provide the perfect structure for it.  So I started by reading a lot of the Tot School info and looking at the other parents' Tot School posts (each Sunday they have a linky where parents share what they did for Tot School that week and tell how old their child is).  


After that I started collecting supplies (lots of trips to the dollar stores/sections and going through all my boxes of old teaching materials) and organizing it in our guest room closet.  It's all kind of overwhelming at first so I've started out kind of slow.  After I introduced a couple of new works to Avery I went through all of the toys we had out and did a major clean out, putting away a ton of stuff and then putting out her new works.  I did not put out nearly as many as I took away but it's nice not to have so much stuff around.  So here are a couple of the works I have introduced to her so far.

This was the first one I introduced.  I started out with a bowl of pompoms, a muffin tin, and a spoon.  We worked on spooning the pompoms into the different compartments of the muffin tin.  After a while she got tired of the spoon and just wanted to use her hand.  Then we decided to get out a bottle and practice putting the pompoms into the the bottle (which is what you see as the work in the picture).  I was amazed at how long we played with this one thing (even though it did kind of change into 3 different works), it ended up being about 40 minutes in all.  She absolutely loved it and was so focused!  It was so fun watching her!

A coule days later we decided to get out her piggy bank and practice putting coins into it.  She had a great time doing this one too!  I ended up finding a new piggy bank at the dollar store just for her work and leaving her real piggy bank her room.  She loves looking for the coins inside the bank and then shaking them out.


We started Tot School a few of weeks ago and here are some other thing she's have been up to that I don't have pictures of...
- helping me unload the dishwasher
- doing puzzles
- helping put away the groceries
- reading lots of books (starting to get into looking them on her own but really loves to read to)
- helping me cook (loves to pour and stir)
- playing with play dough (especially with cookie cutters and a rolling pin)
- playing outside when the weather is nice (loves her sand box)
- playing dress up with my hats, scarves, and gloves
- whisking bubbles
- giving her baby doll a bath
- attempting artwork but not really a fan of it yet : (  We've tried crayons, paint, markers, and stickers but nothing seems to interest her


As you can see a lot of it is stuff that we would do anyway but it's nice to have a plan, even if we end up doing something totally different.


Once I get more pictures of her and her new works I will post them.  Until then here are a couple pictures of her shelves in the basement (we also have some works upstairs that I will take pictures of).