Is it HOMEschool if you're not at home?

Our plan to visit the farm this past week didn't quite work out. It rained! We had to pick up our Tote for Tots at the Center for Early Childhood Education. Since the center has lots of different activities and materials for parents and children to use, I decided to hold our lesson there.

We had some imaginative play to start with because the center bought some new cool helmets. I'm not sure what they were supposed to be, racecar driver?, but he used it as a super hero mask. Bobo initiated directional references by trying to find the "bad guy." First, he was behind me, then under the table, behind Bobo and inside the sandbox.



Each month, the center has a couple of craft projects they set out. We got the September project of making a fuzzy lamb, which just happens to go along with our Farm theme. I love when things work out like that! I set up some sheets for Do-A-Dots, while the lamb was drying. I had him fill in the dots of a ladybug. He liked it so much, we went through a whole Clifford The Big Red Dog pamphlet. His favorite was dotting Mary Elizabeth. She had different emotions, so we worked on happy, sad and silly.



Bobo loves to make tracks out of anything. The center has some cool tracks, which are very colorful and easy for little hands to put together. He played with different cars. We identified them by color. Our train set at home has a bridge over a hill, so Bobo wanted to make a hill and bridge with these tracks.



He had the right idea about bridges, but since the track was so long we really needed to construct a brace. Unfortunately, by this time we had to meet the grandparents for lunch. Maybe next time...



I know Bobo loves going to the Center, because the minute he realized where we were he began to list everything he wanted to do. He wanted to play with Play-Doh, play in the sand and cut. We did everything he wanted to do and still got our lesson in. Learning life lessons on the go!