{Tot School} A is for Apple

We started Tot School a couple of weeks ago in order to prepare my little man for preschool next year.  I also figured it was time to start some type of "school" activity with him because he keeps telling me he wants to go to school and go on the school bus.  I just don't have the heart to tell him he won't be riding the school bus next year because he will be going into school with me very early in the morning.



I love the focus on my little guy's face!

Before we started Tot School I really searched online for pre-preschool activities and came across a ton of great websites, many with FREE downloads.  I introduced you to Oopsey Daisy a while ago and found her sight to be the best at having everything in a nice neat packet but I also wanted to share with you some of the other sites I found some great activities at.

At 1+1+1=1 you can find a whole section dedicated to teaching tots including activities, games, books all free to download, print, and use with your little one. 

You can check it out by clicking the link below.

1+1+1=1

 Here's a peek at our very first day of Tot School!

I started the lesson by introducing the letter A card.  We pointed to the letter A, the apple picture, and the apple word a few time.  Then I said to my little man "point to the letter A", "point to the apple", "point to the word apple".  He was able to do these tasks with ease.

Then I gave him his new school tools.  He has new crayons, new big pencils, a glue stick, and his very own scissors (which I keep far away from his little hands right now:).



Then we worked on creating a lower case 'a' into an apple.  I found this printout at ABC Twiggles which is Free but only for the letter A.  I am currently thinking about investing in this program because they include letter activities, word walls, prewriting and tracing activities, crafts, folder games, letter books, snacks, and movement activities for each letter!

Here's my little man using his glue stick to glue each piece of the letter a.  He absolutely loves his glue stick!

Next, he colored (with both hands of course) the inside of the a with the color red to make it look like an apple.



We then worked on practicing making an A.  I repeated the words, up, down, and across to help him remember how to make the letter and guided his hand through the motions.  This is definitely an area we will have to work on because it was very difficult for him to form the letter correctly but then again he is still really young right now.  His favorite part was the across part!  He kept repeating across, across, across.

Lastly, we finished our school day with an "apple picking" movement activity.  I cut out a bunch of apple shapes using my Cricut in red, green, and yellow.  Using a little bit of tape, I "hid" them around our living room.  Then I called the little man out and gave him a bucket to go apple picking.  He had a ball picking the apples and putting them in his bucket.  Next, we counted all of the apples, and sorted them by color.  I was pretty impressed with how well he did with this and I plan on creating a pumpkin picking activity too for our next unit!



Day one of Tot School = A huge success!

I definitely suggest going to the two different sites I included in this post and printing out their packets.  As I include more about Tot School, I will have more sites for you to take a peek at.  You will be amazed at how much fun you will have with your little one while they learn about letters, numbers, colors, shapes, etc.

Are you working on Tot School with your little one? 

Where did you find your great ideas?