Tot School - Letters V and W

Well, here's my bi-weekly post on Tot School! :) Apparently this is how I roll, at least the last few weeks. :) We studied the letters V and W these last couple of weeks - we are getting so close to the end of the year, and of course you know what that means- time for the real fun - picking out next year's curriculum and ideas & activities!!!! So exciting!!! :) When I get it a little more sorted out, I'll share my plans for next year. :) For now, I'll share what we studied these last two weeks. :)

Here is our morning board for the letter V:

Z enjoyed learning about what an 'orphan' and a 'widow' is & talking about serving others, though he kept saying, 'worphan' and mixing the two up. :) For our V collage, we used vanilla - we smelled it, tasted it & painted it on our V with q-tips. Natalie got to help, too!!!




The finished product:

Zachary did this cutting skills page (this is from the Musings of Me Space Unit), and he did really well! So far he's only succeeded at cutting fringes around the edges of stuff, so I helped him along & encouraged him to 'stuff' the scissors farther into the paper to cut lines & he did awesome! One day I told him we could play a game, and he asked to do this 'cutting game' again, so I guess he enjoyed it! :)

We used our consonant cards, and we played hide & seek with them! We looked at them first, discussed what they were & how they each started with V, then, as he played, I hid them around the room.
He is really bad at finding things, so here's an example of a 'hidden' card:

This week, we did this again & I hid the 3 W cards around the room & also 3 random cards that were objects that did not start with W. He really enjoyed finding all of the things & identifying which ones began with W.

We played a file folder game I made called Animal Match - you match the fur patterns with the bigger animal pictures - Z enjoyed playing this.


Natalie enjoyed playing it, too...she liked just playing with the pieces & looking at the animals. With a yellow strainer on her head. Of course. :)

We painted this week, too! Natalie painted on a plate with a brush & a couple of sponges...

while Zachary painted on our papier mache planet!


He had to add green for grass & plenty of brown for dirt. :)

Natalie ended up with pink 'rocker hair'.

Natalie's finished plate:

And our finished planet:

Our planet hanging in the schoolroom:

While we're at it, here's an updated version of Z's sight word wall. I never thought I'd teach reading by sight words, I always learned by phonics & thought I'd teach by phonics, and while Z does know the sounds that the letters make & we discuss it often, we don't often 'sound out' words. He just absorbs sight words & memorizes them so easily, we focus more on that. Anyhow...these are the sight words we've learned so far! :) Plus as we read books together & talk about the things he learns from Word World, I'm discovering words I didn't know he knew! :)

Aside note: Word World is an awesome PBS tv show - it is SO fun and educational & Z LOVES it - it is his current favorite. :) The concept of building words is so clear from the show & today he said to me, "Does bow begin with W?" I said "No..." and before I could launch into the whole "b...b...b...bow, what says b?" thing, he said, "Nope! But it does END with W!" I was like, Oh, wow! Ok! Yes, it does! :)

And here are some colorful posters on one end of the schoolroom - I picked these up at a local thrift store & I have had the clock since high school. :)

Here's Zachary's sunflower that he planted last week:

and my little plant!

Here is Natalie pretending to be a volcano for our Active Exercise Card of the week.

And Zachary the Volcano:

We watched a YouTube video of a volcano erupting, and it scared Z to death!!! So, that wasn't a hit! :)

Here's Zachary wiping off his tracing sheet - a pre-writing sheet from the Musings of Me Space Unit.

And tracing a V on his playdough mat: (love Nat's face in the background of the first one)


This 'treasure box' activity was in Zachary's High Five magazine (which he loves, it was a great Christmas gift), and he kept asking if we could get a pinecone so we could make it. So we did. :) It has been dropped on the floor several times and is more resilient than I expected! :)

We made Handprint Lambs a couple of days before Easter, and we talked about how Jesus is called the Lamb of God, and what exactly that means. We used this page from the book A is for Adam by Ken Ham to discuss it.

We also made Resurrection Rolls, on Easter afternoon. We flattened out canned biscuit dough, and wrapped it around a big marshmallow, then we rolled the whole thing in cinnamon sugar.


Ready to go in the oven!

The finished product: I read that the marshmallow is supposed to disappear - ours did get smaller, but did not disappear, it did appear mostly empty like the tomb - does anybody know if this is how they are supposed to turn out? My other theory is that our marshmallows could have been old.

We also studied the letter W this last week. Here is our morning board for the week:

Zachary had an easy time with our verse - he acted like he'd said it before, probably in Sunday school. He enjoyed being a windmill, too. :)

We played Play-Dough this week, and Natalie enjoyed playing, too. :)


For our W collage, we painted with the wheels of a couple of our little cars. First, we ran our cars' wheels on an ink pad (he picked yellow).

Then we drove our cars on the W paper & made yellow wheel tracks:

Our finished Wheel W:

We used our clothespin cards, with a new slider I made. :) I set a goal for Z of doing 5 cards this week, as he's always wanting to play or read books instead of doing the activities I have planned, and he did well with the set limit.


And here he is 'reading' a Berenstain Bears book. More often lately, I hear him being quiet & ask, "Zachary, what are you doing?" thinking he's into something, but instead he's just reading a book - I love it! :)

To see what everyone else is doing for Tot School, head over to 1+1+1=1!