Tot School - Week 1, Day 1

I decided I wanted to start teaching my daughter early preschool at home. She is 2 1/2 and very smart. I am a stay at home mom with another baby on the way, due in early February. I decided I needed to get organized and come up with scheduled lesson plans. I have been teaching her already but it wasn't consistent and I felt she needed more structure. I have planned out the next 8 weeks so far. I have lesson plans for 4 days a week and each week we are focusing on a letter, number, shape and color. Mixed into those lesson plans are different animals and foods that go along with the letter of the week. We are only spending about an hour a day on school which is perfect for her age, any longer and I loose her attention.

Today was the first day! I was excited to start with her and she seemed just as excited to learn! Here is my lesson plan for this week...

Today we focused on the letter A and A is for Alligator! She was very excited. I found some Alphabet Animal coloring sheets online and blew the letters up to one per page. Here is a link to the site where I found the coloring sheets... http://alphabetimals.com/

After she colored her Alphabet Animal we watched two videos online about alligators. I found ones where the alligators were being fed at a zoo. I didn't want anything scary. We talked about what the alligators were eating and where they lived and the differences between alligators and crocodiles, since she seemed to think they were the same. Daddy helped explain their differences.

Next, we did an alligator craft I found on Pinterest (one of my favorite sites). We made little alligators out of clothes pins. She painted them green and we glued scales to their backs, eyes and a magnet to them. Once we were done my little student decided it would be extra fun to glue a bunch of eyes to a paper plate. She had a blast doing that! After everything was all dry we hung her projects on the refrigerator.

I think today was a success for our first day! I hope she continues to enjoy each day.

When we were all done she got to put a sticker on her reward chart for doing such a great job!