Levi has been alive for a little over 22 months. I was pregnant and tired 9 of those months, and have been tending to my new baby, Jonah, for 3 of those months. In other words, Levi has had to endure 12 months with less attention than I’d ideally like to give him.
I finally have some energy again, and I’ve started to get
into a decent routine, so it’s time to get back on track with my toddler! I came up with a loose curriculum to keep me focused on his
developing brain.
We are simply rotating through several activities a week. Each day of the week has a different focus. That just means we will either talk about the
subject of the day off and on all day long or we will actually sit down and learn/play for 15 min-1 hr once or twice a day.
He is like a sponge at
this age, so I really want to take advantage of that. Trust me; there will be days when we won’t be
able to keep up with this plan! I also
didn’t want it to be overwhelming to him or me.
I wouldn’t be interested in doing this if it was something that wouldn't be fun and interesting to Levi, would wear us out, or may make
me feel guilty if I couldn’t keep up.
We are likely to do many of the activities on the schedule every day anyway, so it's just a good way for us to go into each day with a specific focus. It will remind me each week of all the wonderful
learning tools that we have access to.
Side note: I’m not
pretending to be an expert here. We’ve
never done anything like this before. I
do not have concrete plans to home school or send the boys to public/private
school, but I figure this is good practice should I end up being a home school
mom or doing after school learning with them.
So without further ado, here is our very loose toddler learning/playing
schedule:
Monday-Basics Day
We will be looking at lots of books, learning our ABC’s and
123’s, colors, shapes, manners, foods, drinks, and lots of other words.
Tools:
books, games,
toys, DVDs, felt board, interaction
Tuesday-Music Day
Music day will be full of music, of course, with all of Levi’s
toy instruments. We will also dance,
exercise, and just try to move a lot! I
also think it would be fun to learn lots of new songs. I WISH we had a nice piano!
Tools: instruments, music, exercise/dance videos we can do
together, singing songs
Wednesday-Language Day
This day we will focus on English words first, and then we
will talk about simple Spanish words. I
don’t know how this will go, but I thought I’d give it a shot since he is
absorbing so much information at this age.
We might incorporate some sign language in, too. He watched a few Signing Time DVDs when he
was younger, so we may watch those again.
Tools: DVDs, books, interaction, flash cards,
Thursday-Craft/Art Day
We will be playing with play dough/clay, markers, crayons,
and doing various crafts that toddlers enjoy.
(I really need to learn more fun toddler crafts!)
Tools: craft/art supplies, internet: for me to find toddler
crafts
Friday-Play/Toy Day
We have lots of toys around here! I feel like we don’t use them all enough
though, so I want to sit down and play with Levi and his toys more. I enjoy play time together and he does,
too. This is a good way for us to really
bond and to utilize all the awesome toys like his building blocks, puzzles,
shape sorting toys, Mega blocks, cars, trucks, etc. Summer is the BEST, because we can also go
outside and play in the kiddie pool, sandbox, on the swing-set, etc…
Tools: TOYS!
Saturday-Do-it-Yourself-Day
This is really an everyday thing to be honest. He is more into helping me with cooking, doing laundry,
and cleaning the house than ever before. We will do a lot of those things this
day. He likes to figure out how to do
things on his own. I think this day will
be good to help him gain some independence and confidence (not that I want to
rush him growing up!). I am going to ask
him if he wants to pick out his own clothes, brush his own teeth, clean up his
messes, and I may even try to start potty training. Whew.
Wish me luck.
Tools: patience, clean-up crew, books/videos on potty
training
Sunday-Science Day
Michael, Levi’s dad, is in school for chemical engineering,
so I thought that he would have fun showing Levi some neat, easy
experiments. I could do them with him,
too. I’m thinking of baking soda and
vinegar in sand volcanoes type of stuff. We will also focus on biology and learn about
animals, plants, insects, etc. We have
some flash cards for this, but also just going outside and looking at the
flowers and digging in the dirt will be an excellent learning tool. What toddler doesn’t like getting dirty? I think going exploring around the city and
going for walks is another great learning tool here. We can talk about everything we see and
hear.
Tools: flash cards, outdoors, interaction, books, experiments
Here is the felt board we will be using. You can easily make one, too.
I made these signs for each day to hang on the fridge, so Levi will maybe get an idea of what we are focusing on.
I made these signs for each day to hang on the fridge, so Levi will maybe get an idea of what we are focusing on.
