Tot School Begins with Mr. Little Man (21 Months Old)

Oh, the power of Pinterest. Since I was introduced to it, interest has opened my eyes to a multitude of crafts, products, ideas and organizational tips. Most of them are amazing ideas that I may never have discovered without this simple collaboration of pins and boards. The pin of note here is Tot School... who knew there was a name for teaching your toddlers and preschoolers about the world. What is it exactly? Well, after weeks of exploring the topic, I believe TS is spending planned time playing with your child while learning new concepts along the way. As soon as I heard about TS I knew it was for us.

I am a mom who works full time, whose lifetime dream is to be a mom and raise children... and raise them to be kind & capable people. Trying to balance work, the home, being a wife and being a mom is tough, to say the least. However, I know I am capable of doing it all but also know that I am the type of momma who needs to plan and organize so I don't get overwhelmed with that enormity of this juggling act.  Which I seem to always feel...

 

TS allows me to pre-plan (when I have time) for what I will do with Mr. Little Man.  This ensures that I am exposing him to new activities and concepts. So, in one evening, I planned weekly themes for an entire year. Yes, all 52 weeks. We would do colors, numbers & letters, one a week with a few weeks mixed in to teach about holidays and special events going on. So, 52 Weeks... 11 colors, 10 numbers, 26 letters, Birthday week, Halloween week, Thanksgiving week, Christmas week, Valentine's week, Easter week and 4th of July week. I was close... then I decided to join W&X and Y&Z. Boom, 52 week curriculum on its way to being planned!







Next, what exactly would we do each week? I did not plan all our weekly activities for 52 weeks in one night. I did, however, decide to start with colors because Little Man (LM) was obsessed with Bill Martin Jr & Eric Carle's, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see? With the help of TS blogs and Pinterest, I planned all 11 colors with 8-10 ideas per color aka 8-10 ideas for each week.  This took me a few late hours spread out over a few days. The future weeks were far enough away that I decided to would gather ideas for them slowly but surely whenever I found some time to plan.

The last key detail in getting started, was gathering all of the items we would use during TS. I was not in a place to spend lots of money on this and through my research, I realized I had activities galore throughout my home already. If planned, these toys, crafts and household items could be used for teaching LM at TS each day. From putting pipe cleaners into the holes of a colander to sorting blue and yellow craft pompoms... we had a ton of items at our disposal. I gathered my craft stuff, organized buckets and baggies of TS supplies and a few hours and a glass of wine later, I was chomping at the bit ready to start tot school with LM.

At this point, Mommy was ready and felt empowered. I knew I had prepared myself so that I could expose LM to new things, and we could play in new ways together. I felt like a load had been taken off my shoulders... no more feeling guilty that I work full time and no more being overwhelmed when LM gets sick of all of his toys and I'm out of ideas. Tot School, in sum, was more for me... it allowed me to gain control and make sure I would be spending time doing the types of things I'd always dreamed I would do when I was a mom.  All in all, 6 hours spread out over a few evenings and I was going to be able to expose my sweet LM to some new aspects of this big crazy world.

We would start with the color brown and a sub-theme of bears. Off we went...

Linking to:

http://www.1plus1plus1equals1.net/2013/08/tot-school-gathering-place-week-31/