18 MONTHS....

SO WE HAVE TAKEN A VERY LONG BREAK FROM TOT SCHOOL...BUT WE ARE COMING BACK...SINCE WE HAVE BEEN GONE....

1. we know the letters: A, B, M, N, K, O, and P!!

2. we know the number one!

3. we ROLL, Bounce, (try to) JUmp, and MARCH!

4. we can peel and stick stickers all by ourself!

5. we play independently without whining.

6. we have added ant, butterfly, bug, dinosaur, and gecko to our list of animal identifications!

7. we love trains and are starting to learn the letter T- but pretty much say choo choo instead!- our fine motor skills have improved so much while playing with trains (getting them on the track, rearranging the tracks, ect)

....I NEED NEW IDEAS FOR TOT SCHOOL ACTIVITIES FOR 18 MONTHS AND UP !

He is in childcare/school 2 days a week every other week and one day every week....but i want to keep it up at home and with his getting older, i need to be working harder at finding 'cool' things to do bc he'd rather just play with his trains!

Tot School: 15 months old

Tot School at 15-15.5 months old

Pipe cleaners through the holes of  foam numbers and letters...

a COLORS & fine motor skills activity

Pipe Cleaners in small holes...

a fine motor skills and concentration building activity

Painting!

Stacking Cups!

Playdoh fun!

the things you can teach them while playing with playdoh are amazing!

he manipulated the doh with different 'tools' and placed balls in different sized cups 

all the while focusing on 'blue'....

he LOVES playdoh and especially loves tearing it apart and distributing it among the containers

Tot School Not pictured:

pushing and pulling- loves to push his car (while someone is riding of course) and his 'baby' stroller with his monkey in it

READING all about animals! 

Singing about body parts and ID'ing them

Water Play- Scooping and Pouring 

Coloring with Crayons and Tadoodles 

(if only i could convince him that it is cool to stay ON the paper)

Tot School Week of 6.15-6.19

R-man is 14.5 months old

Pardon the wetness...I promise I change his shirt about hundred times a day and he normally has a bib on...just not this time! We are working on two molars and it causes for A LOT of DROOL!

making music with measuring spoons....after he learned how to 'scoop'!

this is a great activity because I applied what he learned here to lunch time where he was able to scoop his own applesauce...so we are currently eating all things that go in a bowl (soup, stew, yogurt, applesauce, ect) by our self!! yea!! we're still working on the fork...

This was after he had found all the 'little people' during our 'hide and suprise' game! 

He loved the texture of the oatmeal, getting his hands all messy in it- watching it slip through his fingers, ect...we he found his duck hidden at the bottom, he was so excited to see it...i just wish he had called out 'DUCK'....oh well, that word will come in time!

*pictures were an afterthought*

Sticker Fun! I'd peel a sticker off just a bit and let him pull it the 

rest of the way off and place on the paper. he loves stickers! 

i am still finding a few around the house, but he did pretty well putting them on the paper...

i had to help push them down to make sure they stuck- but he got the idea.

(Transferring) Tootpicks into small containers...

This too so much focus, but he did all of them! 

Next up is to have him put them in a small container with the little holes!

(great for more exposure to colors if you use colored toothpicks!)

Blue Day! Reid loves Blue...and yellow!

Playdoh fun! 

He used blue cups and an old baby food tray to put little torn off pieces into...

and spoons to manipulate the 'doh'. He did this for a god while. I was there

encouraging him and talking about every little thing to reinforce the purpose of the activity.

no pictures...but we also did the following:

*putting pennies and dimes into a piggy bank

*coloring with crayongs

*coloring with chalk

*using mr. octopus to learn about colors

*dance partAY!

Tot School 6.1 to 6.10

Tot School

from the past two weeks starting June 1st, 2009

R-man is 14 months old

MOM'S FAVORITE:

paint chips and wippees!

cut up some strips of paint chips in different colors and show your 

child how to put them in the hole in the wipes box! It took R-man a few

tries to master this, but after that, he was sold on the fun! He eventually figured

out how to OPEN the entire box to discover where they all went!

Music Day at Music Together!

So much learning goes on here! R-man demonstrated excellent rhythm by keeping with the beat for longer than expected, so says his teacher Mr. Dave! He loves the sticks song where they do different movements beating these sticks together or on the floor per the teachers instruction.

Tuesday was also GREEN DAY!!

GREEN STICK IN GREEN CUPS

MAKING MUSIC WITH THE GREEN STICKS WHILE BANGING THE GREEN CUPS

GREEN STICKS AS SHOVELS....see below

GREEN SHAVING CREAM TEXTURE PLAY

Mixing up the Green Shaving Cream!

He loved the ooey gooey feeling in the bag!

HIDE AND SURPRISE!

I set out three different boxes with red, blue, and green letters inside.

He had to learn how to Open the box, transfer the letters, and put the lids back on.

During the day, he would wander back to the boxes and partake in this activity all by himself: pouring out the letters, putting them back in the boxes and placing the lid on top (not securely, but enough for a 14 month old)

Last week we had BLUE DAY outside!

Fun with BALLOONS!

This was R-mans first time with balloons! 

He thought they were great! Like floating balls that mommy had to run over the field to catch to make sure they didn't fly away!

BLUE PLAYDOH EXPERIMENT!

(no playdoh was eaten- hurray!)

we mashed it with blue sticks, pulled it apart and put in it different cups, made balls with it, ect.

Another Take at Hide and Surprise Game!

The first time, he really was surprised to see his colored letters in there!

PAINTING WITH WATER! (no mess!)

This was part of our blue day continued....

GROSS MOTOR SKILLS:

lots of PUSHING, PULLING, CLIMBING, AND RIDING....

ah- life with a 14 month doesn't require any creativity for these skills!

tot school week of 5.25

R-man is 13.5 months old

Pom Poms into a measuring cup!

colors, fine motor skills, focus, transferring, texture

Blue Stick into a Cup

colors, transferring, managing two objects at once- holding cup and stick

Blue Pom Poms in a cup...

he was having fun, so we tried it again!

Stacking NEVER gets old!

Playing with His Farm set...

matching animals, button pressing, animal sounds

Using Crayons

fine motor skills, colors

Using Silverware

started using a spoon and a fork all on our own this week!

Nesting!

Nesting together and taking the nested boxes out...

Free Time....results to this!

No Pictures....

but we also mastered squating and can jump now!

he is grabbing, picking up, and throwing balls, now!

he is identifying more and more animals through his play with animal cards!

Tot School Week of 5.15

Tot School Week of 5.15

R-man is 13.5 months old

Old McDonald Had a Farm

This little leap frog toy is GREAT for fine motor skills, placing the head and tail of the animals together in the magnetic space...and it plays the animal sounds, too!

R-man is particullarly found of the chick at the top....

To the Beat of My heart!

Makin' Music

Yeup, we drum, play the piano, tap on a xylophone, sing nursery rhymes, shake rattles, make our own shakers out of old toilet paper rolls, and listen to toddler tunes on Tuesday mornings before our Music Together class in the city!

Small Objects in a Bottle:

He is a PRO at this now!! He loves putting things in bottles. I sometimes do this activity before bed because it takes so much focus and really calms him down. in this pic he is putting qtips in a bottle. 

Sorting:

sorting green pom poms into a muffin tin!

when he gets older, we'll work on sorting by color, but right now, I just want him to get the idea of putting the pom poms into a separate space.  He more wanted to put them all into the same hole, which is a form of sorting (putting all of the same together) in its own right.

Stacking:

He is so fast at this now!

These are great toys! I have to press it down after he puts it on though bc it takes a little bit more muscle than he has to actually lock each color together.

Puzzle Play:

Fabulous way to learn giraff, zebra, monkey, elephant, lion and tiger.

we've got all down except the lion and tiger.

LET'S PLAY WITH THINGS THAT ARE BLUE!

Pouring BLUE water using a BLUE cup!!

Making Music out of Anything! 

I am encouraging music with this tot and he loves it! He's got an excellent BEAT and can bang along to any song! So we made a drum out of this tub, before it was used to play  with water.

Tot School Week of 5.11.09

R-man is 13 months old

He started attempting to 'NEST' the cups this week. I have started leaving them for him to use when he is good and ready and this week he showed some interest. 

This was a fun activity that we will be working on weekly as he grows. It is great for fine motor skills, following directions, and is a little bit of hide and suprise. I cut holes in the cherrio box and asked him to put uncooked pasta in the holes. I think he got three pasta spirals in the box in total, but i think that is GREAT for his first attempt! He loved picking the box up and looking inside to see where they went! And for the first time ever when playing with pasta, he did NOT try to put it in his mouth!

This was merely a game of 'putting'.  I talked about the different colors as I gave him a new ball to place in the muffin tin. His favorite part was taking them out (which turned into teaching him how to throw- not sure if that was my best idea ever). I left it all for a while with the balls scattered about and some still in the tin. Throughout the morning he'd pick up the balls and put them back in the proper slots- when we really start working on colors, i'm going to encourage him to keep the same colors in the same line- but that is a LONG way down the road.

When R-man first started eating solid foods, I made ALL of his BABYFOOD and i used this cute little containers to freeze it in. Now, I use them for transfer containers.  We were focusing on green this week, so I gave him some green pom poms and a few containers. He was NOT intersted. About ten minutes later while I had gone to clean up a bit, I noticed that on his OWN, he had started participating in this activity without me showing him what to do! Of course, I ran to his side to applaud him, followed by repeating open and close as he liked that the cup had a lid to keep all the pom poms inside. On his own accord, he took the pom poms to the muffin tin and started placing them in the muffin holes, too!

Colors- color sticks in colored cups.  This was simply to keep him happy while I fixed breakfast! and it worked! I gave him some colored popsicle sticks and placed them in the cups, then took them out, and he proceeded to do the same...although it ended up with banging on the cups instead....hey, as long as it's FUN, that's all i care about!

Fine motor skills practice with a truck book! It's windows slide open and close! This is one of his favorite books and his little fingers are getting so good at pushing the window open and closing it again.

The Kid LOVES elmo- i can tell him to go find elmo, and he will hunt hi and low until he has found the little red monster!

Everyday we have story time!

First attempt with crayons! 

I got the triangular grip ones- and he liked it. he drew more with the end of the crayon than the tip, but he thought it was fun for all of a minute!