tot school: bears and puzzles

[Please note: I put the official "tot school" logo on one post per week, but actually, I don't do a weekly compilation of all our tot-school activities - I cover one tot-school day in each post, and upload them as we go. If you'd like to see more of our tot-school days, you can click on the "tot school" link on the right.]

Basbusa was still not 100% over her virus during today's tot school, but all the same, I think the activities I had planned for her didn't really catch her interest. Remember these bears, whom I had been hoping she might sort a few weeks ago? Well, now that she really does know her colors - well, most of them - I thought we'd have another try. And sure enough, while I was setting things up, she did hunt around for a few blue bears and put them in the blue cup without my even suggesting it. But the activity itself wasn't much of a hit. Here's what I had been planning:

I took a big green foam dice (two for a dollar at Dollar Tree), covered the faces with white labels, and colored them yellow, red and blue. Then I got out the red, blue and yellow bears and cups. I had been thinking we could incorporate plenty of running around: we'd put the cups in three different corners of the room with the bears in the middle, toss the dice, pick out a bear that matched the color on the dice, and then run-run-run to the matching cup to put the bear in it. Sounds fun, right? I thought so, but Basbusa wasn't convinced. She got the idea, and understood that she was supposed to pick out a bear that matched the dice, but she didn't seem to think it was a very fun thing to do. And as for going to put it in a cup, well, she saw even less point in that. She did maybe four or five, with much encouragement, and then was all done. She put the yellow dice into the yellow cup and got up and wandered off.

Right. Well, next up were some puzzles. Basbusa has yet to put even so much as one piece into a single puzzle, and I've tried all kinds - those big knobbed ones, ones like the ones below, and even super-simple ones like pictures of animals just cut in two with a straight line, so all you're really doing is matching the heads to the tails. She has no interest in any of them. I keep reading about tots all over the blogosphere who thrive on puzzles, so I thought I'd keep offering them once every so often just in case she changes her mind. So I brought out these (a set of 8 for $4 at the Christmas Tree Stores):

As usual, she had no interest in putting them together, and only mild interest in taking them apart. She did enjoy mixing up the pieces from several different puzzles, like this:

... and then fishing out the three parts of the pig, or the three parts of the cow, but actually assembling those three parts was not on her agenda. Ah well.

Our last activity was just playing, really, with a bit of discussion of colors and clothing thrown in. I made this felt dress-up bear for Basbusa as an activity to keep her busy on the plane for our last trip to Egypt, but she was still a bit young for it then. She enjoyed it for a few minutes this time, but kept wanting to pick up the bear after dressing her, and was discouraged by how the bear just flopped (I've since glued her onto a cardboard backing to make her a bit more robust). So this was yet another not-so-successful activity. Zero for three in tot school today! Oh well. Better luck next time, insha'Allah.

To see what everyone else is up to in tot school this week, please check out the Linky over at Carissa's 1+1+1=1.