Tot School Day 1!

Today is our first day of Tot School. Addie is a very independent little girl anyway, so it was interesting to see how today would go... She is 14.5 months old at the moment.

Well, Tot School is planned from 9am to 12pm - a 3-hour work cycle as per Montessori. Not sure if toddlers are meant to have the 3-hour work cycle yet, but we are just going with it... Or we would if Addie didn't sleep from 9am to 11am (the perils of taking Daddy to work in the car!)... 

I am not Montessori-trained for this age group, so it is a little strange for me. I am planning to do the NAMC's Infant Toddler course as soon as I can afford it so I can get some better ideas of what to do... I have looked at other blogs (more on this later) to get tips, and basically I am planning on a weekly basis what I want Addie to cover, and we shall just see how we go. My plan is to start with 2 lessons a day - one art-related and one practical life for now. So the goals for this week:

- Learn to draw
- Drink from a cup

Also, Addie is going through a 'I want to walk everywhere' phase (despite not being able to walk more than a few steps herself) and we are working on clearing our garden (it is big but mostly overgrown - a BIG task!). She wants to go in the garden a lot, but I am trying to explain to her that we can't go and play in the brambly bit! Try telling that to a 14-month old headstrong toddler!!

Learning to draw

Addie has had pens/pencils to use before, but cannot seem to make marks very easily... And cannot hold the pencil well either, so this was something I wanted to work on. Here are the photos:

We bought this little table from a car boot sale. We just need a little chair now for her to sit on!

This was just after I showed her how to hold the pencil. It didn't last, but it's a great picture!

Here is the first drawing - I decided to draw around our hands too so Addie could see how to hold the pencil... She enjoyed this, although she looked at me oddly at first!



Forgot to mention... We have a classroom and another room we will be using for tot school, but the classroom currently has a tumble dryer in it which we need to deliver to my cousin, and the shelves are bare... I am planning on migrating to there maybe next week.







Here is my first planning sheet - it is a work in progress as I think of what we can do...

Well, end of Day 1! I will try the Drinking from a Cup at lunch time, which is now!