Prep for our first week

Everything is ready to implement our new Tot School time. As of right now I have it planned to start between 9:00am-9:10am. My goal is 20 minutes to start. And that will only be the "sit at the table learning" time. There will be a craft and an activity or two throughout the day to coincide with the lesson. We will also have a bible study time. I will share with you what we are using for that in a minute. Let me show you our school supplies first.

I only spent 3 dollars on everything we will be using the next several weeks. Awesome, huh?! (Dollar Tree is one of my favorite stores, no lie.) I also have been collecting tons of random craft supplies since I was in high school. So I have a lot of supplies I just have to be creative with them.

Here we go. I made a school bucket. This will be our bucket for all lessons and activities during the week.

 
Every week I will switch out for the next weeks lessons. That way everything is in one place. And since I travel everyday to work I won't have to carry supplies back and forth every time. Now, on top of this bucket I will have their "Folders" (Pictured below). My plan is to tell them it is school time and they will bring out the bucket, grab their folder, and go to their table. I think they will enjoy this task and look forward to getting their very own folder. (I'll let you know how it goes)

Mesh zipper pockets from Dollar Tree. Trying to think of something to use to add their names. 

The "curriculum" we are going to be using I found at 1plus1plus1equals1.com. She has free printables for A-Z. "Each unit has a focus letter, focus object to emphasize the main letter sound, a focus color and a vocabulary development theme that is based on the object. Numbers, shapes and other concepts will be as a whole each week." I will chronicle some of our activities and how it is working for the girls as we go through it. 

For the Bible Study times we will be using this Bible, the Hands on Bible that was given to us for Lyla from our church. It has two activities with each group of passages, a section that explains Jesus in each story throughout the old and new testament, and a prayer. This is ideal for preschoolers 3 and up. But after reading through it on my own, it is adaptable for younger. I haven't decided when we will do this and if we will do the same story for a week or do a different one everyday. I want to see how the girls respond and then I will make a more concrete plan on what works for them right now. 

Check back here next week to see how our first day and week go with Tot School! I will leave you with an activity we did today :

Matching/sorting colors.

I found this idea while scrolling through Pinterest.com one day on this blog: we can do all things. I had everything already. I just had to cut a green and purple piece of construction paper to attach to the brown bags. We didn't have blocks so legos worked since they were solid colors. You could really use anything you want. The girls enjoyed dumping them after the most. :)