Confessions from Toddler School: Fall Leaves!

It's OFFICIALLY fall! 🍁🍃🍂 

I am so beyond excited! The weather has cooled, the leaves are turning and I can live in my boots and cardigans with a PSL in hand (decaf of course)! That's really all I need in life. 

It's also time for all of our favorite fall themed activities! As always, we kick off our week with a new emergent reader for Cohen to add to his book bag. This has quickly become his favorite part of our new themes! We also do an interactive anchor chart and explore all our new books. 

You may have noticed our weekly planner is never full. I do this on purpose for a few reasons:

Fast and Engaging:

Our activities are meant to be quick, easy and stress free! Having too much in a day is overwhelming. I set up each activity to last 15 min tops! 

Life Happens:

I also don't like to overbook because life happens. One kid wakes up sick. One kid wakes up in a mood (you know how that goes) and doesn't want to do anything I want him to. I decide randomly I *need* to go to the pumpkin patch. You know. Priorities. 

Here's what we did this week:

You can get my blank thematic planner here.

Books:

Every month I do a sweep of our local library for themed books matching our upcoming units to add to the books I already have on hand. This time around I was a little slow to get there so the pickings were a little slim. Luckily they still had Mouse's First Fall that is a favorite around here. 

I try to buy one new book a week to go with our theme. 

Do you have any favorite fall books I need to purchase!?

Activities:

Graph the Leaves (Interactive Sensory Table):

Our sensory table this week was simpler than I had planned. All cards on the table, I was too lazy to finish it so I just threw in the silk leaves and called it a day. 🤷

I feel less bad because of our interactive anchor chart! I put one of each leaf on the bottom and then added double sided tape up the graph so you could put on and take off as many times as you want! And believe you me, this got a LOT of use. Avery loved taking the leaves off and Cohen loved putting them back on. Avery had fun and Cohen got extra graphing practice. Win-win!

Blow the Leaves:

This one was hilarious! Trying to teach Cohen how to lean down with his face by the floor to blow was by far the funniest (and cutest) thing I've ever seen. He just could not put the 2 together. Lots of giggles with this one!

Leaf Luminaries:

Oh boy! I think I was a glutton for punishment when I whipped out this activity. Cohen had woken up at 3 the night before and was a walking melt down ALL DAY LONG. I think I was delirious. 

It went really well though! Cohen was very engaged and had fun gluing on the leaves with mod podge and then we put in a little tea light. Super cute and easy.

Nature Slides:

I love love love these nature slides! We do this one every year! We start out by going on a nature walk outside and collecting things we want to look at on our light table. We found some pretty new leaves to laminate and add to our collection from the past couple of years!

DIY Light Table:

I think I posted this DIY before but just in case, here's the quick and dirty:

1. Remove plastic tub

2. Line with tin foil (you can line the inside of the lid with foil too if you want)

3. Add a line of parchment paper on the bottom

4. Fill with white Christmas lights

5. Put on lid and flip over!

Easy peasy! 

Outings:

Nature Walk - We went on a walk around our neighborhood to collect samples for our nature slides. We loved the crisp cool air and putting on our boots for the first time!

Fall Festival - We found the most AMAZING pumpkin patch this week! I can't believe I had never been before - I feel like a fall phony! But seriously, it was incredible! They had a fall festival with all kinds of activities for toddlers. We are definitely going back!

Up next: Pumpkins 🎃

Confessions from Toddler School: Football!

Are you ready for some football!?! I know we are! We are huge football fans in our household so this is always a fun week for us!

Here's what we did this week:

You can get my blank thematic planner here.

Books:

Not gonna lie, finding toddler style books for football was TOUGH. But we did find a few that we really liked! Our favorite by far was the Sports Illustrated board book. Cohen loved it! And I loved the juxtaposition (You like that word!? Sometimes my brain still functions like a normal adult 🤣) between the cartoon style and the real NFL photos!

 

Activities:

Field Goal Words:

I have to admit I was super impressed with myself when creating this activity! All I used was a piece of chart paper and a cut out football! What I loved most about this (aside from how easy it was to create) was how adaptable it is to any skill! 

Although I am kicking myself for not laminating this. After 1 day it was pretty worse for wear. But laminating could have solved that issue and would have been made it dry erase so I could swap out the learning skills. Live and learn!

Football Drop:

This is a tried and true staple in our house! We have used this exact same activity 3 years in a row and it is still in tact! 👌 It was first used as a fine motor activity to get the footballs into the slots. The next year we added shape matching. This year we're adding word families! 

So easy to make and durable!

Football Puzzle:

This little activity was so. much. harder. than I had anticipated. I had initially wanted to put something on each piece to help line it up properly but numbers felt too "easy" for my little one. Although thinking about it now I could have chosen a random starting number which would have increased the difficulty...Hindsight is 20/20 am I right!?

Football Word Slide:

We used the same printable football for this activity! I just cut out a window and added a strip of paper to practice -all words. Cohen loved sliding and changing the word. I loved how much it helped his fluency. I will definitely incorporate more of this in the future. 

Football Toss:

I use a box and made a large cut out to toss the football into however Cohen created a different game out of it! He called it Quarterback - and in his little voice it is the cutest thing ever. He throws the ball to mama and then once I catch it I run around the kitchen island while he chases me. Once he catches me, he "tickles" (tackles) and gives a lot of kisses. It's my new favorite game!

Want all of this week's printables and plans?  You can grab them here!

Up next: Fall Leaves 🍃🍂

Confessions from Toddler School: Apples! Apples! Apples!

Does anyone else get sick just thinking about back to school!? And by sick I don't mean nauseas-becasue-you're-not-ready-and-your-to-do-list-is-a-mile-long sick (although there was a decent share of that as well) I mean like the worst cold of your life sick. Runny nose, head pressure, cough, sore throat...the works. I swear I get sick every year during the first week of school (even when I haven't been in the classroom for 3 years...). It's like my body knows!

But we didn't let a little sickness stop us from doing our favorite theme: APPLES 🍎🍏🍎 

Here's what we did this week:

You can get my blank thematic planner here.

Books:

I love apples so much - just looking at our bookshelf made me so excited all week! All of these books were super cute and fun to read but our favorite was definitely Apple Picking Day by Samantha Brooke. I think this was partly because Cohen is reading himself now and he loved that he could read almost all the words by himself.

Activities:

Apple Orchard Sensory:

This sensory table turned out so much cuter than I expected AND got both boys engaged! That's a win! And given all the sickness going around we definitely needed a win!

This sensory table took less than 10 minutes to throw together. During nap I folded these origami "baskets", made some tp roll trees and dumped in our attribute apples! We use these bad boys all the time! If you don't have a set, you can get them here!

Label the Apple:

I am so impressed by how much my toddler schooling has done for Cohen's academics and I want to increase the difficulty and make more real world connections for him. Now that he is exceeding in math and reading, I want to start bringing in some more science and social studies for him. I have decided to incorporate an anchor chart every week to launch our theme and tie in some of these other pieces for our learning. 

I bought a roll of chart paper that I hang on the wall and I can prep anchor charts on it as needed. For this one I just drew a large apple and then hand wrote the labels at the bottom. When we were ready to interact with the chart I cut the words out, added tape and we labeled together! 

Simple, easy, effective!

Sight Word Tree:

This was one of my favorite activities this week! I used the same chart paper and made a tree outline. I wrote words that we've been practicing on the tree and on little dot stickers. I would hand Cohen one sticker at a time, he would read it and then find the matching word! 

He's even gone back to it several times to read the words even after the activity was over! Definitely good practice to help with his fluency!

Search and Find Apple Words:

This was probably Cohen's favorite activity all week! To prep this activity:

1. Cut out apples and laminate (this makes them dry erase so you can use over and over with different learning targets!👌)

2. Print out search and find worksheet - you can find that along with all the other resources used this week down below!

During his nap, I wrote some words on the apples and hid them all over the house! He was so excited when he woke up! I gave him his paper and crayons and he hunted all over the house to find the words. 

For an extra challenge little brother kept moving the apples so I had to hunt for them too! 🤣

Outings:

Apple Picking:

I am so excited about this new apple orchard we found just minutes from our house! It's a "short orchard" which means no ladders are necessary AND it's perfect height for kids of all ages. Cohen had so much fun picking the apples. We even learned how to pick them properly (twist not pull). We can't wait to use the apples for all kinds of fall inspired baking!

Want all of this week's printables and plans?  You can grab them here!

Up next week: Football  🏈

Toddler School Must Haves (and A Planner Freebie)!

Back to school? End of August? When did this happen!?

I don't know about you but I am so ready for summer to be over! Don't get me wrong, I love sunshine and all the fun summer activities but this summer was rough. Between potty training, crib training, Avery's I-can't-walk-but-think-I-can stage and then Cohen's I-hate-water-and-can't-get-wet phase, this mama is over it. O-V-E-R!

I am so ready to get back into a routine, wear my boots, drink my cocoa and start toddler school with BOTH of my boys (can you believe Avery is almost 1!?) We officially kick off toddler school this week with our Apple Theme 🍎🍏🍎

But before I jump back into the routine of toddler school I wanted to share some of my organization tips and must have items!

First things first, my weekly planner! I use this bad boy every week (usually while sipping a hot chocolate) to map out my ideal week. This is by no means set in stone because let's be honest nothing is when you have little kids. But it is nice to have an outline for the activities and outings I would like to accomplish! You can snag your freebie below! 👇

In addition to this weekly planner there are a couple of other items we use every week. These are staples in our house. We couldn't do toddler school without them! 

Sensory table 

Don't have one!? They are really easy to DIY (and super affordable too)! I used this DIY from A Teaching Mommy a few years ago and ours is still standing strong! Highly recommend! 

Liquid water color

This stuff is a miracle worker for sensory table fillers! Rice, beans, oats you name it! This stuff gives the most vibrant colors!

Bookshelf

We love our bookshelf! For just $12 this thing has been amazing. It has lasted 3 years. With boys. Who climb. On everything!

And that's it! 

 What about you guys? Any must have items for your little ones!?

Confessions from Toddler School: Cars!

It's that time of year again! Cohen's favorite theme: CARS! 

We busted out some of our favorite activities from last year to incorporate into our new activities. It was really cool to see how far his development has come in a year!

 (link to all those activities below)

Here's what we did this week:

You can get my blank thematic planner here.

Car City:

This was the perfect week to whip our car floor mat! We don't keep it out all the time so Cohen was very excited to see it! If you don't have a car mat like this there are plenty of other DIYs to create a car city to explore! 

Cardboard buildings:

Dig through your recycling and pull out any boxes. Cut down one side, flip inside out and tape! I cut out little holes for cars to go in and out of and added some details, but it's not necessary. 

Tape roads:

If you follow me already you may remember this idea from last year! You can use any masking tape for this activity OR this awesome tape that we use! And just start taping! Get creative! 

Not the creative type? Look on Pinterest and get inspired! 

Table Top City

This is another fun way to create a car city for your little one! Just take a large piece of butcher paper and start drawing! Now I know my drawing abilities are lacking  (I used to get made fun of a lot in the classroom) but little ones don't care! He thought this was the coolest thing ever! I started with a road and then started adding in buildings that my son would recognize. Of course Target had to be on there!

Stop Light Toss:

This stoplight is probably one of the best things I've ever made! Of course my kid is obsessed with cars which doesn't hurt. But we get so much use out of this bad boy! 

To prepare the activity: 

Take 2 pieces of black construction paper and tape together vertically. Using a plate, trace a circle on the red, yellow and green construction paper to create the lights. Glue lights in place.

      💡This item was too large to fit in my laminator so I used packing tape to wrap around it for durability!

The activity: 

Place stoplight on the ground in front of your child. Take turns tossing the bean bags and trying to get them on the matching color! 

Our other favorite stoplight activities:

• Using red, yellow and green stickers practice color sorting onto the stop light! (you can see the stickers in the photo)

• Create a ramp and race cars down it and identify the color the car lands on.

• Hang on a wall/fence and toss water balloons at it

• Go on a nature walk and color sort onto the stoplight (or print out pictures, cut out of a magazine, etc)

Car Color Sorting:

To prepare the activity: 

On a large poster board (I chose black but works on any color.) Using any coloring utensil, make colored squares on the bottom of the board for each color of car you have. We have hundreds of cars around our house so we could use every color of the rainbow, check your colors ahead of time!

The activity: 

Grab cars at random and ask your child to match the color. This was a really great activity to help identify different shades of colors. 

Sight Word Sentence Cars:

We have been working a lot on reading/spelling some pre-primer sight words. Now that he knows about 15-20 words, I wanted to start stringing them together into sentences. I was so surprised by how quickly he picked this up!

To prepare the activity:

Pick up some dot stickers and start writing down the skill you would like to practice with your child. (letters, numbers, shapes, words, etc). Place stickers onto cars.

The activity: 

We used ours for sight words! Call out a word and have your child find it. Once you have your sentence, point to each word and have your child read the whole sentence. 

Name Road: 

Cohen loves seeing his name on things these days and gets very excited! He has even tried to start writing his name. He has the O and H down, but outside of that it's mostly circles and lines. Any activity to help him practice is a win!

To prepare the activity: 

Print out your child’s name in large letters. Using a white or yellow pen draw in the lines. Let your child pick out a car to drive around their name!

The activity: 

Model saying the letter out loud and describe the motions used to write it as you drive the letter on the car. Ex: “C! Start at the top and draw a half circle.”

      💡It doesn’t matter the language you use to describe how to draw each letter as long as it is consistent.

Want more car fun ideas? Check out last years activities here!

Up next week: Dr. Seuss