This Little Piggy

This month with Experience Early Learning we have been given the chance to review their new Experience Toddler curriculum.  It comes with 4 weekly themes, and just like their preschool curriculum everything is included.  Last weeks book was This Little Piggy, and all the activities for the week centered around this book.  Every day we reread the story, plus we also listen to it being read on the monthly CD.

The first day we read the book Ronan had to find where the pig was on every page.  He's just learning English so having him repeat words while matching them to pictures at the same time is helpful.

The Experience Toddler curriculum comes with 4 activity cards for each day.  One of the activities was using the 5 little pig stickers to retell the story.  Ronan worked on pulling the stickers off the sheet, which is a good fine motor activity, and then he colored the paper.  We listened to the story being told on the CD while he worked on this.  On of the great things about using Experience Early Learning as a preschool curriculum is that there are different curriculum levels to choose from.  There is one for babies, toddler, and preschoolers.  There is also a literacy/math workbook you can get for prek kids, a toy box option, and a Christian based curriculum.  It's nice having so many options in a preschool curriculum.

Ronan had to sort pink foam triangles into a pink cup, and yellow ones into the yellow cup.  I had to show him what to do quite a few times before he understood the colors needed separated, but once he understood it he easily sorted them out.  He even started saying yellow.  He really liked doing this and dumped them out a bunch of times and resorted them.  

We used the same triangles that were included in the Experience Toddler curriculum to work on pattern mats.  After that we danced to songs on the CD.  Ronan loves music so he always enjoys when songs are playing.  

Toddler Curriculum

We've been using the new Experience Toddler curriculum this month.  It's set up a bit differently from the Experience Preschool curriculum, but it's still really easy to use.  Each week focuses on a different book and has activities that go along with it.  It's a great preschool curriculum for younger kids.

The week we focused on a forest friends book about resourcefulness.  The Experience Preschool curriculum also comes with he same forest friend book so you can easily use both preschool curriculum with multiple ages at the same time.  

We started by learning the sign for fall, then we read the book.  Every time I said fall/fell/fallen the kids would drop a pom pom into a bowl to make it fall.  Ronan loved using the pom poms and after we were done with the story he continued to drop them into the bowl and dump them out and start over.  One of the nice things about the Experience Toddler program is that it comes with a monthly CD with all 4 stories recorded as a read aloud.  While we worked on the rest of the activities we listened to the CD and got to hear the story again.  

Ronan worked on building bridges with popsicle sticks in play dough.  This is good fine motor practice and he loves using play dough.  

While Ronan worked with play dough Elli used the play money from the preschool curriculum to do math problems.

She made a wallet to keep her play money in.  

While Elli was designing her wallet Ronan got to sponge paint a triangle tree.  Triangle is the shape of the month and it is reinforced with games, crafts, math work, etc.  

Experience Toddler

This month we have been given the chance to review the Experience Toddler curriculum.  It's set up a little bit differently than Experience Preschool, but just as easy to use.  It's still a complete preschool curriculum in a box.  Instead of a lesson plan book with daily bags you get activity cards and weekly bags.  There is a suggested order to use the different bags, each of which comes with a book.  There are 20 cards in each weekly bag, you just match up 4 of the same number (we started with one) and you have the whole days lesson.  

We started off by reading the book that was provided in the preschool curriculum, "Bella and the Umbrella."  This was a long book and I wasn't sure if Ronan would listen to the whole thing, but I think the big colorful pictures really helped hold his attention.  After we finished it he said book and flipped it back to the beginning to read again, but I told him we'd have to wait and read it later.  One of the things I love about Experience Toddler is that the books are included as read alouds on the included CD.  My 6 year old is just starting to read and later sat and listened to the book while following along.  Of course Ronan heard the story playing and came in to listen to it again.  

There was a sticker sheet with a scene that went along with the weekly book.  Ronan worked on his pincer skills trying to get the stickers off and put them o his paper.  He ripped a few of them trying to get them off the sheet, but was getting better by the end.  

There was also an included double sided play dough mat.  Ronan practiced rolling play dough into balls and counting to 4.  He loves play dough and I like that the mat keeps the play dough from getting all over everything.  Our last activity was dancing to and holding up a yellow piece of paper (we used a yellow egg) when we heard the word yellow.  Each monthly box from Experience Toddler comes with a monthly CD that is a great addition to have with a preschool curriculum.  Ronan loves music so we wound up listening to all the songs.  Our first day was a success and I think this simplified preschool curriculum is a better fit for where Ronan is developmentally at this point.