Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Kid Time: 1+1+1=1

Hey everyone! Today for our Kid Time post I wanted to tell you all about a blog I absolutely LOVE for great ideas for kids as young as 10 months all the way up through elementary age.


1+1+1=1

This blog is written by Carisa, a public school teacher turned homeschooling mom. Through her experiences homeschooling she has come up with some really creative and age appropriate ways to encourage young kids to learn through exploration and mommy-led activities.


Tot School is her name for intentionally playing with her toddler. In other words, Tot School is the when you just focus on your toddler and play with them. You choose toys that you use to teach various concepts such as colors, letters, sorting, etc.

I have loved planning tot school with my son. Some days it is just playing with blocks and sorting them by colors or lining them up and counting them.





My little girl even got in on the action when she was about five months old.
(Really, it was just tummy time, but on a new play mat.)

Other days, our tot school is a little more formal. We might practice cutting, gluing, or pouring. These are activities that I wouldn't normally let my son do, but because it is a structured setting I make an exception. I will admit that these are some of my favorite days.

Lately, we have been using Carisa's Tot School Printables.

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Carisa's printables focus on:

letters

beginning sounds

sequencing

concept of left to right

shapes

numbers

Carisa has so much information and so many ideas that it is hard to do her blog and accompanying website justice.

She has created Preschool Pack and Tot School Packs which are kind of like file folder games, but more inclusive.

Here are some examples:

Toy Story



Her Preschool Packs cover so many themes, including:

Cars

Princesses

Gardening

Books (like Brown Bear, Brown Bear)

and SO,SO, SO much more.

I promise that if you visit her website you WILL find something that you like. Don't be surprised if you find a ton of things you like.

Most of her printables are totally FREE because she wants to give other moms a chance to use them.

(She does have a Members Only section with even more incredible resources that you can join for a very small price.)

Carisa has done a lot of work in putting together her ideas and organizing them for other moms to use. I love that her ideas all came out of her desire to teach her children. I felt that a great way to say THANK YOU was to pass on her information to all of you.

Check out her blog. You will not be disappointed!

Lisa




3 comments:

Carisa said...

THANK YOU so much for such an encouraging post about my sites! I appreciate you sharing and taking the time to write such sweet things about what I share! ;-)

Tannie Datwyler said...

Lisa! Thanks so much for sharing - I can't wait to go onto her website. I try to do "learning time" with my kids every day, but my ideas are getting kind of stale. I'm an elementary teacher, but I taught older kids, so fun ideas for my little ones are harder for me to come up with. I'm very excited about this!!

Anonymous said...

Thanks! It's nice to have resources in one place, instead of googling random stuff to try to find the things I want that I have been brainstorming!