Welcome to Teeny Tot Tuesday and my first Link Up! That’s right I wanted you all to be able to have a chance to link up your Tot ideas as well, so I finally signed up for Linky Tools so you can all share ideas for Teeny Tot Tuesday as well!
I’ve been having so much fun with the Teeny Tot lately! She’s really into doing her own school. My only issue now is she wants new things all the time and I’m running out of ideas! So I’ve started adding in some games for her. She doesn’t always know how to play them by the rules, but I’ve found that they’re great for things like sorting letters, colors, logical thinking, and fine-motor skill practice!
The Magnetic Match Rings is a really fun game, and she does know how to play this one. It’s fairly simple, it comes with double sided picture cards that she has to re-create using the actual magnets. The trick is to place the magnets in the proper direction so they “float” above one another.
This game is called “Toot and Otto”. It’s sort of a version of Connect Four. So I had her try to put all the “Os” in one row, “Ts” in the next etc. She loved sliding the letters into the slots, great for fine-motor skills, as well as letter identification for O and T!
Here’s a fun color matching game that I made her. I found these oversized colorful magnetic clips at Bed, Bath, and Beyond. Then I created some colored wooden disks for her to clip them onto for a matching game. After she’s done matching all of the colors, she tells me what they all are. Sometimes I’ll instruct her to do a certain color as well, but she usually does this on her own.
Her absolute FAVORITE activity is “Dotting” as she calls it. She really can’t get enough of the Do-A-Dot markers, so I let her do the Letter K today. I have it on this small colored cookie tray to save my lovely Ikea desk! (The tray is from a KidWords Activity kit I found at a used curriculum fair, I found the entire kit here too if it helps any!)
She loves these too, they’re Holgate Toys Geo Lacing Shapes. I found them at a local teacher store and I pull these out all the time!
One more thing the Teeny Tot is loving now is the Leapfrog Letter Factory! I think my kids practically learned all their letters and sounds from this DVD! I highly recommend it!
I spray painted an old cookie sheet… (you can get the rustoleum in colors and make your own)!
I have made many file folder games and will be laminating them soon. When I taught preschool my students loved these. Also, I have gone to our local Dollar store and purchased boxes of Color Clix (colored links that when put together with the directions make a robot, airplane…or your own creation). More Teeny Tot ideas that have worked for us are 48 piece puzzles, I Spy Books and B. Pop-Arty – small pop beads for ages 4+ (adult supervision required). I loved reading all the neat ideas and hope some of mine will be helpful to you 🙂
Where did you get the letter dot pages? I can’t seem to find them!