Hello everyone and welcome to Tot School. You can click on the link of the icon on the side bar of our blog here to go there and check it out.
Today we made our very first Totbook. Maggie really enjoyed making it along with Mommy, and I enjoyed making it with her too.
She really liked it and I think it made her feel big like her big sisters.
Here are some pictures.
We made the Noah's Ark Totbook. I made the cover by using Word Art on our Microsoft Word and then finding the clip art from googling Noah's Ark Clip Art.
The inside of the book I cut out the number cards and we sat and counted the animals and noah. I laminated the cards with packaging tape instead of contact paper. This saves alot on contact paper and is much cheaper and sturdier to use. Maggie had lots of fun coloring her color book in the middle and we read the Animal Book about each animal going in the ark two by two.
My next project is to make her letters on bottle tops from water bottles so that she can match them with her name and other words. I will post that when I am done too.
Also I included some pictures of our Matching Colors File Folder games. These are fun and you can find all types of File Folder games for preschoolers that are free to print out online.
Also for good measure I've included a picture of Hannah working on learning ordinal position (1st , 2nd ,3rd).

Katie's Math Mini Office

Well its not to often I do two posts in one day but we completed Katie's mini office today and she wanted to share it.
What is a mini office you ask? Its like a lapbook but is designed like a small office that has information for the child for when it is needed. Its not a cheat sheet. But a reference so it can cut down on that never ending question ... " Mom what does..... mean? Or Mom how do you spell....? The child has the info right there in front of them to reference, and I can continue to teach my other child without being interrupted. Phew! That was long wasn't it?
This turned out really neat and I do need to get a laminating machine for Christmas because I am not good with laminating paper. But this is our first and I'm sure we'll continue to get better with this as time goes on.

The first picture is that of our cover. I traced Katie's Hands and wrote right and left on them. The picture that I printed out was from Busy Teachers Cafe (www.busyteacherscafe.com/resourced.htm

Some of the pictures inside are a mix from Busy Teachers Cafe and Lapbook Lessons Mini Office link (www.lapbooklessons.com/MiniOffice.html )

The only thing I had to do was write a small square for keywords for multiplying and dividing with word problems. I could of typed them and printed it out. But ink is just getting to darned expensive to print out something I can write out.

Get your Christmas Wreaths here !!!!!

Tis the season to start getting ready for the holidays. Right now we are selling Holiday Wreaths for our organization the VACTERL Association. For each wreath sold $6 goes to our group to help with next years VACTERL conference ( what is VACTERL? visit our youngest's website to learn more.... www.caringbridge.org/visit/margaretreed1 ) This helps cut costs of the conference so that other families can attend. And let me tell you when we went last year it was a life saver. To meet other familes that had been were we were going and going where we had been. The wonderful feeling that we weren't alone in the world. I wouldn't take that back for anything in the world.

So with further adue. Please stop by and order on of these beautiful holiday wreaths. I haven't gotten one yet but I've been told that these are wonderfully made and they last the whole season. They have an extended date to November 7th for orders.
Please be sure to put our name ( Tracy Reed ) on the order form somewhere so we can get credit for the sale.

Just copy and paste the link into your browser :
http://sites.google.com/site/wreathsforvacterl/

Letter Book

Here is a neat letter book we found on a website called Kinder Plans (www.kinderplans.com ) if you scroll all the way to the bottom of the page and clikck on the Zaner Bloser Book -Another Format this cute little alphabet book will pop up. It also has it in Denealian Style writing as well.
I used this to fullfill her requirements for her monthly assigments for our cyberschool. Plus it was much easier then having her write it on paper and sit there and have to have her space the letters out. This way the letters were spaced and she was able to write them neatly. Plus it was an extra bonus for her teacher , because well , teachers appreciate creative stuff. I was able to punch holes on the side and attach a pencil that I cut to fit the book with a rubber band.