Monday, June 6, 2011

What's on the tray?

Super Tot is 28 months old.

I have to confess that Tot School has been a little unorganized and casual the past couple months in our home.  I finally got a bookshelf cleared off this week to display our Tot Trays, and Super Tot was SO excited!  Every time he sees the shelf, he points to it and says, "Tot Trays cool!"  I guess it's safe to say that he likes the new set-up!  

I need to get back into the practice of having my camera on hand during the day.  I didn't get any pictures this week of Super Tot actually using the trays, but I have a few pictures of the trays themselves.  Here are a few of the activities we did this week.

My absolute new favorite Tot Tool is this Lauri Fit-A-Space set.  It includes these little round puzzles for working with shapes & colors, as well as fine motor skills with the puzzles.  You can also use the individual puzzle shape pieces for lacing for additional fine motor work.  The set is available at the Lauri site for $15, but I found it at a used homeschool curriculum sale for $3 (in a bag full of other items, too)!  
We work on transferring often.  This tray actually had 3 palettes (one for each pompom color).
Another new item I found recently was this set of Teachable Touchables.  It is a set of 20 textured bean bags in a bag.  It comes with a sheet describing MANY different ways to use them over a wide spectrum of educational levels.  I could have easily made something similar, but I was happy for the convenience of finding the set.  
Super Tot loves to lace miscellaneous pony beads onto pipe cleaners.
We got this Lakeshore Sort-A-Shape Activity Board last summer.  Super Tot has gotten really good at it and enjoys racing to see how quickly he can put all the pieces on.  
We worked on button sorting by shape this week.  I saw a button sorting set at Lakeshore last year for WAY too much money!  I eventually found these sorting mats online and printed them out.  I cannot recall where I found them, so I apologize for not giving credit to the right person.  If you know where they came from, feel free to leave a comment so I can link back to the correct source.
Our favorite activity this week was making homemade pizzas.  We were short on time, so we used refrigerated pizza dough, but the pizzas turned out wonderfully!  This is a super fun dinner to prepare and way tastier and more economical than delivery.
  Look how tasty it looks!!  And boy was it DELICIOUS!
For lots of other Tot School ideas, click the button below:
Tot School


7 comments:

  1. Looks like a great set of activities! I'll be interested to see how you use the Teachable Touchables. It sounds like a neat resource.

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  2. That pizza does look delicious!! We LOVE making pizzas! That pillsbury dough is the best!

    Looks like some fun trays!! We have the Lauri Fit-A-Space set (came with some curriculum) but everytime I get it out we lose a few more pieces. I might have to try again :)

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  3. Thanks for sharing the great ideas. I have never seen the fit-a-shape set. Just added it to my wishlist. Oh, and the pizza looks yummy!

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  4. http://www.scribd.com/doc/28988076/Shape-Beginnings-Button-Sorting-Mats that's the site I found for the button shape sorting mats. Thanks for sharing the great ideas. I have a 20 month old foster daughter and am looking at ways to help entertain her. She is already losing interest in her toys so. Thanks again

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  5. where did you get the trays? I've been looking for some with kid-friendly colors like that (metal cookie sheets just don't work well for all activities)

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    1. Kenderyl, here is a link to for the trays from Oriental Trading Co.:

      http://www.orientaltrading.com/plastic-cool-craft-trays-a2-57_9001-12-1.fltr?Ntt=trays

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