Sunday, May 8, 2011

Tot Trays - Beach Theme


We're headed to Florida next week so our trays this week are all out THE BEACH!! 


Pouring sand
Pouring is always a favorite at our house!!


Counting seashells
I made these number cards which have the number as well as the correct number of seashells to help Sweet Girl with simple counting.


Tonging "sea urchins"
I got these little spiky rubber balls in the party section at Target months ago.  They "kinda" remind me of sea urchins so I thought these would be fun!!


Pushing umbrellas into styrofoam
I saw this neat idea over at Counting Coconuts!!  What a great fine motor activity since you have to open up the umbrellas and then press them (with a little force) into the styrofoam.


Spooning glass beads


Ocean animal matching
This is from the awesome "J is for Jellyfish" printable from Carisa over at 1+1+1=1.  I printed out two copies and cut out the ocean animals from one copy.  For this activity, I'll have Sweet Girl glue the animal onto the correct match (using a glue stick).  I'll also use this as a language activity by talking about the different ocean animals.


Fish pattern


And I'm trying something new this week....I typically put out half of our trays at the beginning of the week and the other half around Wednesday or so (unless Sweet Girl spies the trays first and wants them all....).  Sweet Girl loves her "plates", as she calls them, but gets so excited about what's on the other plates that I usually can't get her to complete one tray without looking at all of them first.

This week I'm doing this....
After I took all the pictures for you guys, I stacked the trays and cups and packed all the contents into individual snack size plastic bags.  Then I put all the contents into one sandwich size zip-loc bag.  My plan this week is to pull out an activity and put it on the tray, show Sweet Girl how to complete it and then leave it out for her to play with it as she pleases.  I'm hoping this will allow us to focus on one activity and work through the trays together.  We'll see!!! 


Be sure to check back tomorrow to see our OCEAN SENSORY BIN!!  It's so cool!!



Tot School

11 comments:

  1. Beautiful trays! I've tried different approaches for how I put things out, and it seems like it takes some experimenting to find out what works best for you. Hope your approach works well for you!

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  2. How fun! I actually have those same cute little umbrellas and am going to be using them this week. :) Thanks for sharing.

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  3. Tonging sea urchins! Brilliant!!

    We did the ocean this week too. We live near one so it made the field trip easy. LOL

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  4. Very nice. I love your presentation on each tray, they are well thought through!

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  5. Love it! We're doing an ocean theme around Father's Day so we'll be able to use some of these fun activities! Have fun in Florida!!

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  6. Thanks everyone for your comments!! :) We're loving our beach theme this week!! Can't wait to actually enjoy the beach soon!!

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  7. Thanks for your comment on my blog. I love your beach themed activities! It looks like fun and makes me want to go to the beach :)

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  8. Thanks for leaving a comment on my blog. I love all your beach themed activities! They make me want to go to the beach:)

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  9. Hi There! I just stumbled upon your blog and love all your creative ideas with you Tot Trays... it is SOOOO helpful to me! I'm totally inspired. Where do you get most of your materials? How do you organize your materials? How do you display the Tot Trays in your home? Look for more ideas! Thank you for sharing!

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