Tot School: Textures & Letter V

Last week I seriously considered skipping Tot School. Actually, I seriously considered skipping it this week too. We've just been so busy. I'm sure that is shocking :P  On top of our very full therapy schedule, Henry had his 18 month check up and I've had a couple of dentist appointments myself. Good news from Henry's well baby check - he's on the growth chart! Finally made it above that 1st percentile and into the 3rd percentile for weight!

I did pull it together and do some Tot School play with the boys that went along with the theme and letter that I had planned for last week. (I am pulling it together this week too, but we haven't had time to do much so far :/)

Our theme last week was textures. I interpreted this as any type of texture... fabric, food, etc. Here's how we played with textures:

Touch and Feel Books

I scoured our shelves for baby board books that featured some kind of texture to touch on each page. I even pulled out some holiday touch and feel books because we didn't have that many and I wanted to have a nice variety for the week.


Dress Up

I have our Halloween costumes from the past couple of years in a box for dress up, so I brought it out this week and added Calvin's fire fighter raincoat and galoshes. We had been to the fire station that day and Calvin had been given a brand new fire fighter helmet. While we played dress up, we talked about the furry bear scarf, the silky tiger costume, the slippery raincoat, and the hard fire fighter helmet.

Mini Sensory Bins

#bedhead

I set up bowls with 4 different sensory fillers, each with a very different texture: sticky yogurt, rough sea salt, soft pom poms, and smooth lentils. Then I put a couple of dinosaurs in each one so that Calvin would have something to move through the filler. Eventually, of course, the yogurt infiltrated the other bowls and I am still finding pieces of rock salt in the nooks and crannies of my kitchen ;) Hazards of sensory bins.

Sensory Laundry

Giant sensory bin! I put both boys into the laundry basket with some clothing items that had different kinds of textures. A soft scarf, a leathery jacket, a slippery raincoat, a silky robe, etc. Henry liked it more than Calvin. We played a lot of peek-a-boo with the scarves :)




Our letter of the week was V. I almost went out of order and saved V for Valentine's week, but then I decided to just stick with my plan and do a little early Valentine-making for the letter V.


Words with V

Our usual roundup of things around the house that start with our letter of the week. V was a hard one! But I found a few things. Calvin is holding a bottle of his little Vitamin D supplement. He really liked smelling the vanilla beans. I almost pulled out the vanilla ice cream from the freezer, but I decided to save it for the letter I.

Play Dough Spelling

It looks like cheese... but it's play dough!

I think it's good to go back to working with his whole name once in a while to remind him that these letters we're talking about are all parts of his name. So we used letter cookie cutters with orange play dough to spell out Calvin and name each letter. 

Van Go? Painting

Vroom! Vroom! Painting with vans! I've been really into the idea of alternative paint "brushes" lately. I think it started with the pom pom painting we did last week. Then we used Calvin's plastic dinosaurs to paint dinosaur tracks. So this week, the vans seemed like the perfect thing. Plus I modeled writing the letter V in the fingerpaint. Henry used yogurt, as usual, for painting because he can't help but put it in his mouth :) It's van-illa yogurt!


Valentine V

At the end of each week we decorate our letter. Soon we'll have Calvin's whole name! For V, I pulled out some Valentine stickers left over from last year. At first, Calvin was more interested in putting the stickers onto himself... but eventually we decorated the V :)