Tot Trays!

I read about Tot Trays over at Carisa's 1+1+1=1 Blog and have been following rabbit trails all over the internet trying to garner more amazing ideas!!  (I also really enjoyed the Spinner's End Nursery School posts.)  Anyways, here are some of the tot trays we've been using this week. 

1) Sorting Pom Poms - I included a pair of tweezers with this activity, but they are a tad too small for Sweet Pea to grip... I'm looking for a plastic pair of tongs, I just havent' found a good set yet.  We tried this activity with a spoon yesterday for transferring, and she seemed to enjoy that way a lot more!

2) Lacing Cards - She has figured out how to put the string in one hole and up the next one, but after that, it basically gets whipped around her head like a sling shot!  She really likes it though, so ... almost a success!!

3) Rice - This is an amazing activity for pouring skills.  You should see the number of play dishes that were added to this tray!!  The challenge with this one is to keep the rice on the tray.  It requires pretty close supervision (but it's fun for me to play with too!).  Sweet Pea and I dyed the rice ourselves with food colouring.  I measured out the rice and food coloring into a tupperware container, and she shook it like crazy!!

4) Pom Poms - we used this one for sorting and patterning.  This was (surprisingly, for me!) Sweet Pea's favourite tray!  She requested it a couple of times during the week.  She loved lining them up in rows and was actually quite amazing at creating the pattern (for a not yet three year old!)...  I'm sure we'll use this one lots in the future, which is great because I can coordinate the pom pom colours to fit the theme!!  Next week we're doing snow... blue and white, perhaps!!

Tomorrow, I'll give you a rundown on our Rabbit Theme week and the books and activities we did!

Thanks for reading!

Jennifer