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Tot School Schedule & Explanation

 We plan to start tot school at the end of August so I've been prepping and printing the last several days so that we're ready for our first theme. I wanted to share what tot school is (for our family) and why we choose to implement it into our daily routine!

I didn't know what tot school was a year and a half ago. I started following several Montessori and other child education accounts on Instagram and slowly over time I kept seeing the term 'tot school' and curriculum ideas for pre-schoolers and became interested. Our daughter has a great interest in learning and wants to know the 'why' behind a lot of topics, so when I started looking into this idea I knew it would fit our family well in this season.

I think tot school can mean different things for different families and as each child is so different from the next, your approach can be unique depending on your child's interests. 

Tot school for us is at home learning with a different 2-4 year old appropriate theme per week. Last year I made note of typical tot school themes along with interests Leighton had and then lined them up with dates in our area if we chose to do outings/field trips. So, we learn about apples when there is an apple festival nearby, we do our zoo unit when the weather is cooler and kids are back in school, etc. Totally customizable and easy to fit our family! I did a lot of pre-work to get this squared away, but I enjoy this sort of thing. If you don't enjoy the prep work and are interested in doing tot school with your little one at any capacity, feel free to take my schedule and make it into something that would work for your family!

I'm not an educator, but I love to help my 3 year old learn and provide her with some challenges through the year to keep her interest peaked with learning. 

Here is our tot school schedule for the 2021-2022 year. A few weeks are empty and we will likely revisit themes that she really enjoyed during those dates. I made sure to include holidays on our schedule so we can choose to do special crafts or read books that go along with them.



In order to not overwhelm myself and to avoid feeling like I'm not doing enough each week, I've laid out some simple guidelines to go along with our schedule. 

Each unit will have a prewriting activity and a precutting activity. That's one worksheet of each activity per theme. We will also being doing a theme based learning activity for each unit. This could be stacking blocks to reach the height of a giraffe cut out, drawing a map, finding rocks to examine, etc. Something hands on and corresponds with the topic.I will be doing a craft with her for each theme and getting library books that go along with each unit. That's it! Really it's about 10-15 minutes of 'school' each day while the rest of the learning is reading books together, conversations and some activities that she will choose to do as long as she likes. 

I'm keeping it very simple and enjoyable. There are so many ways to teach our kids, but one of my favorite thoughts on parenting young children is 'the greatest form of play for a child is to work alongside an adult.' I think the greatest thing in this season is to be patient and let them learn alongside us in the every day mundane chores. Also, outdoor play will always top any other activity we might be doing indoors. If we ask her what her favorite outdoor activity is she will say 'digging with a stick.' So simple! 

I hope to share each weeks unit once they're complete and keep them documented on this blog. 

Do you do any sort of education at home with your young child? I would love to hear about it!


With heart from our home, 

Jordan

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