F is for Firefighter

Here is what we did in tot school during the week.  Here is a link to the Tot School Gathering.  We were pretty lazy about the summer about doing school time but I wanted to get back into it since while we do send him to a preschool it's not a very academic one.  I really want to work on letter sounds with him so I decided to start a letter of the week.  The great part of this is that once Mary gets big enough to really join in then she'll be able to participate as well just with some adjusted activities.  Right now Patrick is  41 months old.

Patrick decided to add stickers

Since we're  working on Patrick writing the letter we're doing to do them in order of their difficulty starting with letters that are just straight lines.  I wanted to start with something that would immediately have his attention so I decided to do F for Firefighters.  He has been obcessed with firefighters for the past year.  All week he was eager to do school time.  We also made it part of his behavior chart so he earns a star each day that he does school time and if he gets 20 stars at the end of the week (for doing school time, not harming anyone, getting dressed and other things) then he get a treat of some sort that has been selected at the start of the week.  This is making both of us stay on top of making sure he does school time each day.

He loved his fireman printables from Home School Creations

I downloaded a lot of different things online to put together our F is for Firefighters activities.  I used pieces from both the letter F tot school pack and Reading Rock Stars letter F tracing from 1+1+1=1.  I also used the Firemen printables from Homeschool Creations.  He really loved coloring the fire trucks, which is usually something he does not enjoy.  Patrick's favorite activity though was getting out some shape flashcards and driving his fire truck over them while calling out the shape.  He has his basic shapes down but still gets confused by some less common ones.  He kept calling an octagon an octopus. 

His absolute favorite activity of the week was a sink or float experiment.  I have been getting bad about doing science with him.  He really does enjoy them a lot.  I gathered various objects for him and had him sort them first into what he predicted would sink or float.  Then I recorded these predictions on a piece of paper.  After we'd predicted he tested it out.  I wrote down all the objects and when he had the result he used S and F stickers to record his observations.  He did the experiment over and over although it did turn into just water play at the end. 

Pudding painting was also a big hit.  I have a whole post about just that activity.  This week I also started integrating Mary into some of our activities and visa versa.  I decided to create a yellow sensory bin for her and Patrick helped by gathering yellow objects for it.  Then they played with it together. 

As a special treat to end the week I printed off some Fireman Sam coloring pages for him to color.  He's obcessed with that show and they were definitely a highlight of the week.  We also did a lot of reading of fiction and non-fiction books about firemen. We also talked about the difference between a fiction book and a non-fiction book.  Pom-pom play was also a big hit with both kids this week.