A Different Kind of Learner

Since I began teaching five years ago, I have taught fourth graders.  Now, I am teaching a different kind of learner.  Yes, I am still going to teach fourth grade this year.  What I am talking about is teaching my son, a two year old.  I'm used to teaching ten year olds, but my two year old is like a sponge, learning all kinds of new information.  So, lately we have done "school" at least once a day.  I'm not pushing it at all, but he has LOVED it so much and ask for "more shapes".  Here is my little student.
I cut out a triangle, rectangle, square, and a circle.  I put them down in one color (here it was orange) and I give him one purple shape and say what it is. Then, he matches it with the orange one.  He got this one down immediately!
Lately, he has been interested in numbers and we count things pretty so I did the same thing as I did with the shapes, but instead with the numbers.  In the beginning he had a hard time matching the number 7, but he has it now. 
And of course, we have to do a little victory dance when we match them all up!
The next activity has been the hardest one so far.  Matching the letters of his name.  He has a hard time with "a" and "n", although I'm not sure why because I don't think they look similar.  We start out with his name like this.
I always tell him "Now, look at it." before he puts it where it goes...

We have also been doing color flash cards!  He's done SO good.  He has a hard time with grey and brown, but other than those two, I'd say he has mastered a pack of kindergarten color flash cards.  This makes me one proud mama.

We also did a little fine motor skills activity today using pipe cleaners and a kitchen strainer. 

Are there any other toddler/Pre-K learning activities that you can tell me about?  These are not my "normal" lessons/activities that I am used to teaching!  :) 


  1. Fine motor: Those pipe cleaners are perfect for lacing. You can lace pony beads or pasta for bracelets and such. (you can also do patterns with those) You can buy practice chopsticks that are connected at the top and let him eat with them. Have him start cutting with scissors and using playdough. Also hole punches, chalk and anything pinch sized (like wind up toys) will help with this. Fine motor is always a struggle for boys.

    Playing cards are awesome because the number on the card matches the number of shapes. (8 of hearts has 8 hearts) so he can work on number id and one-to-one correspondence. He can count forks and plates as well as stuff like 8 grapes per person. You can also do exercise counting like lets jump 5 times and count them.

    Uppercase is usually easier than lowercase so I'd start there. The only little kids program I would recommend it the Leap Frog videos. Get the Letter Factory. It's 30 minutes and will teach him letter id and letter sounds.

    You are doing an awesome job with him!!

  2. Play-do is awesome. I used to freeze blocks of ice and let my kids melt it with medicine droppers full of hot water and food coloring. I also have bins full of rice my kids can play with. When I first started my kids with water color--I would get all the paint a little wet so it would work right away. Citrus Roll is a fun game. Get all types of citrus fruit and let them roll it into shopping bags. You can count the fruit, sort the fruit, touch and feel the different textures of the fruit. My boys loved to cut and Kumon makes really cute cutting books with all sorts of shapes! I taught my daughter to read from Brown Bear. I typed up all the words and cut them out--then we just put the book book back together: word by word. www.starfall.com is a fun website for letter recognition and beyond. It seems to me that you have a great start and a great boy!!

  3. He is absolutely adorable. That smile is priceless and you can't deny his love of learning! :)

    The Teaching Thief

  4. So cute and smart. I am always looking for fun ways to get my 2 year old boy to learn letters and numbers. He loves playing hide the letters. I hide a few letters (those little magnets) and ask him to find the "A" or "B" or whatever. (He still calls every letter "x" though.) He won't pay attention to flashcards at all, so I put them away for later:)


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