My boys love music, I do too, but honestly sometimes I can’t handle their idea of music (LOUD). But I am a believer in music, I even taught a toddler music class for awhile through my ministry. We have lots of instruments around our house, and often use the kitchen supplies!
For Tot School the other day I brought out one of our boxes of random instruments. K has seen them before but they stay tucked away mostly so when they do come out it is always “new” again. Almost all of the items I use for our Tot School time are things that I keep put away and bring out at special times. That way neither child gets bored with it. Here’s the boys exploring the stuff…
P located the train whistles, and K quickly followed his lead, trying to make his blow!
We sing songs for our music time too and I use these small finger puppets. P took an awesome music class when he was a toddler which is where I got many of my ideas from. Lots of the songs teach basic music concepts (high-low notes, etc.)
And of course, in perfect K style, he finds an alternative use…
And when he’s done, we’re done. He left the music time after about 15 minutes and wandered in to get out the play doh. He seems to be really into Play Doh right now! We got a few cans out and let him play for awhile. It was a great morning.
What are you doing for Tot School lately? Let’s define a “tot” as an 1-3 year old. I would say anything before a formal Pre-K curriculum. You know, the stuff we do with our little ones to provide opportunities to develop their love of learning and maybe teach them a few things. If you have any ideas you’d like to share, link up your exact post to Mr Linky (if you have questions about how to do that, let me know in a comment or email). Provide a link back somewhere in your post to this post so your readers can see other ideas too!
Edited to add… here is a great link explaining how to link to a direct post and not the homepage of your blog, so people can find your tot school post right away. Please remember to add a link back here in your post, so we can hopefully grow our tot school community! Thanks guys for participating, your ideas are wonderful!
We also learned about skin and fingerprints. He had a blast using the book, 
to make fingerprint animals…
We also collected fingerprints from each member of our family so we could compare. Here’s Daddy helping P get his fingerprint…
I broke down and bought the book, 
If you have an Ikea near you, get one(or 2 or 3)…I love it and it’s pretty cheap!! They are located in the home office section, you have to buy the board, the brackets to mount it, and the plastic holders separately. In the one on the green wall, I have pens, paintbrushes, Sharpies, sentence strips, reward stickers, stampers, and other “teacher” things. In the one that is lower on the other wall, above the drawers(pictured above), I keep things (also labeled) for P to get himself…pencils, markers, colored pencils, ruler, glue sticks, scissors, sharpeners, small notepads, Elmer’s paint pens (which are great if you don’t have them), etc. 
and I completely got stumped on the frog card. I honestly felt really stupid, I tried many ways and I couldn’t figure it out. I knew it was probably something obvious but I just couldn’t get it. I handed it to P, and sure enough within a minute he goes, “look Mom…you do it like this.” 
It figures…and man he’s only in 1st grade. He’s gonna be teaching me in a few years!
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Then the puzzle was finished and K led P in a walk around the puzzle. P desperately wanted K to learn his ABC’s, but I guided him to join in and follow K’s lead.
K did eventually want to find some pictures and letters and we had a good time with the boys taking turns jumping on different pictures and letters…
And then, he lost interest. I believe in stopping whenever that is. Whether it is 5 minutes into it or 15 minutes, when they’re done, they’re done! K went over and grabbed his Larry books (which he LOVES) and puzzle time switched into reading time. Yes big bro had went upstairs to get dressed in the middle of this too 
More to come as I get posts together 
