Tot School

We had our first day of Tot School today! She loved it. For those who don't know, Tot School is all about having fun with the little munchkin. It's about letting them explore learning in a fun and inviting way. The focus isn't on her mastering a checklist of little skills as much as it is about her have fun exploring new things. And we're all done before it stops being fun. And that's it in a nutshell!

 

Princess L loves everything about outside. So we went outside with a cup, some crayons, and paper. In her cup she collected flowers, leaves, some grass and rocks. Our project today was to make a leaf rubbing. Simple and just her thing. Princess L loves leaves and flowers. After she made her crayons naked (her way of describing how she peeled the paper off the crayon), she placed her leaves where she thought they needed to go, we placed a blank piece of paper on top and began coloring. It certainly brought back childhood memories to see the impression of the leaf pop up! And there's nothing quite like getting a two year old's approval when you do something cool!
 

After that she was off to find a rock, climb a tree and bathe her My Little Ponies! That was our first day of Tot School, and I look forward to so many more. As she bathed her little ponies she looked at me and said, "I want to do 'Tot Tool' again!" We must have done something right.

 

And so we begin..

Ahhh, homeschoolers.
What unsocialized little freaks they're raising!
Not.

We don't know if we're going to homeschool Princess L yet or if we're going to put her in school, but we do want to feed her little mind productively. I mean, why not?

I am a habitual Google-er and I research my ideas to an exhausting level. When we were pregnant, I spent countless hours searching for cloth diapers. I became a self-proclaimed expert on all things baby. Now that she's a walking, talking, exploring toddler I've spent a crazy amount of time searching for the best ideas to prepare her for life.

Truth be told, I would love to homeschool Princess L. I believe strongly that we are responsible for what she learns - good, bad, weird or silly, in and out of the home. Homeschooling is an extremely valuable and highly effective method of teaching if it is a good fit for the family. Having said that, there are amazing benefits to public school, private school, and Montessori learning, too. I think it's all a matter of what works for your family!

I came across a few different options in my quest to find the ultimate schooling method for our little monster. {If you don't think she's a monster, you should hear her roar!} These are options that I'll label under "Tot School", a name I stole from this awesome site. Tot School is basically a toddler version of Preschool. We schedule a time each day, or certain days, to sit down with her and do little things. Nothing too stressful. We just want to intoduce her to intentional learning in a fun way. She has plenty of time to build an aversion to things like long division or the scientific method. Right now, we want to nurture the healthy excitement she already has for learning and exploring.

We haven't started Tot School yet, but I'm thinking we'll start in the next few weeks. While many of the little curriculum options I found for Princess L were great in their own merit, I kept coming back to one specific one that I thought was best suited for her. As soon as we get our little ducks in a row, we're planning to go with the Letter of the Week Preschool Curriculum by Confessions of a Homeschooler. The link takes you right to it, and this stuff looks incredible! Will it be too advanced for a two year old? I'm sure some of it will be a challenge for her, but that's not a bad thing. A little bit of challenge is healthy, and she'll grow into the activities that are too much for her right now. We bought her some ABC flash cards last week after seeing her recognize the letters "S" "T" and "O". To our jaw-dropping amazement, we realized that she could consistently pick out over half of the alphabet. I have no worries about this curriculum being lost on our child!

Our blog is here to chronicle our new adventure in learning. It's exciting, a bit scary, but it will be a good thing. Join us if you will. We'll try to post often; feel free to comment nicely below!