For the past 3 weeks, Ive started doing tot school with my son. I searched through Pinterest TIRELESSLY trying to find curriculum. Finally, I decided to make it up as I went along, I learned a long time ago that the more you plan, the more can go wrong! A lot of ideas I found needed A LOT of prep work, or a lot of money put into them. I don’t really have the money, or the time, so I needed to make this as easy and cheap as possible so we could stick with it. I tried to make this as easy as possible and hope you all can see that you don’t need a lot of money to get started on this!
The most expensive thing I purchased was a HONEY CAN DO teaching cart. My husband found it for $60 at Staples. Honestly, if you don’t want to use it for “teaching” Use it for crafts! Its holds tons of stuff and has wheels so you can move it about the room. I love it!
http://www.staples.com/Honey-Can-Do-All-purpose-Teaching-Cart/product_1682668
*i see that the cart now is WAY more than the price we paid! I guess my husband really did find this for a great deal! He frequents a website called dealnews.com. If you have never looked at the website, check it out!)
Everything else I use I either already had on hand, bought from the dollar store, or the dollar section at Target! I rely on free black and white printables online, or I hand draw the things I need. My next big purchase is going to be Microsoft Office. It will cut down on prep work tremendously. I still can’t believe my computer didn’t come with it already loaded!
I’m a little organized though. I created a binder
I created a loosely followed syllabus. I wasn’t sure how he would take to certain “lessons” and wanted to give it a few weeks so I could see what learning style would work best for him.
As you can see, I focus on a specific letter every week. Every day, I then pick one topic that begins with the letter of the week.
To start each day, I tell him the letter of the week. I ask him if he knows what today is. If he doesn’t know, we go through the day of the week (IE today is Monday, yesterday was Sunday, tomorrow is Tuesday) You may think they are not old enough to grasp this concept, but my son gets it most times! He repeats each day of the week after I say it, and if I ask him later in the day what day it is, he remembers!
We then go to the window and look outside. I ask him what the weather is and he chooses the appropriate window cling at puts it on! He loves this part in the day 🙂
A is for apple
I talked to him about how apples are grown from seeds. Seeds grow into trees, and then apples grow on those trees. We talked about the different color of apples and I told him that they have different flavors. I drew a picture of a tree the night before and had him paste foam apple stickers on the tree and then we counted how many he stuck on there. We also made torn paper apples
Then as an activity, we went to the grocery store and picked out a few different types of apples so we could see the different colors and taste the different flavors. We counted the apples as we put them in the bag. I wanted to take him to the apple orchard, but the weather was still too hot
A is for alligator
I had a couple of printables for this.I used different verbs to describe a alligators skin. He had several alligator toys which I incorporated into this, and I had him pet each one and tell me what it felt like. I told him about their habitat and their eating habits. We then took pom poms and I asked him to put a specific number in the large alligators mouth. We sang an action song and then went off to the beach to “swim” like alligators.
A is for ambulance
I’m lucky (in a sense) to live near a hospital where I could take him to see ambulances. Even walking around the block we are able to observe and ambulance or two going by! I explained to him what ambulances are for, and why people need them. This also was a good Segway to talk about 911 and emergencies. I found a couple of videos online to help me get this across to him. I printed out a pictures of phone key pad and had him practice pressing 911 send.
In the living room, I laid down some paths with masking tape for him to take his toy ambulance through. I had fun with this the rest of the afternoon, taking his toy cars through the different paths!
A is for airplane
My wonderful husband handled this one. (I work 1 day a week, on Fridays. He has every Friday off) He told him about different types of airplanes, why people use airplanes etc. They made paper airplanes and flew them, did a counting worksheet and then made planes out of popsicle sticks. They then stuck them to paper and made cotton ball clouds. 
Bear with me as I try to back track and remember what different activities we did. ( we’re already up to C) Ill do my best to post links, and pictures! I’m trying not to make it sound so boring, its hard! I also apologize for the crappy pictures, I’ll start using my good camera 🙂
farfromperfect 