Tot School-22.5 months

The Wonder of Utensils, Pom Poms, and Two Buckets!

practicing fine motor skills with 'tongs' (aka: cheater chop sticks)

-needs a little guidance at the beginning to get the hang of this...

Pouring!

Scooping

Transferring!

Fisher Price Garage used to RACE TWO CARS

#2 reinforcement!

He loves this toy most of all so I decided to play with him and use a little

learning while playing!

Numbers Puzzle!

I have been taking this everywhere this week! It shows up at every meal,

during cuddle time, and randomly throughout the day! He's starting to think of it as a game and is getting super excited when I give him LOADS of encouragement when he find the right number. He is now even 'tricking' me and saying its a number, then shaking his head no, and then pointing to the right one! Fave numbers are definitely seven and three!

We are stressing '2' right now, though.

Drawing:

I left this drawing mat open with shapes drawn on it and a bag of crayons next to it to let him take the initiative of wanting to color...and he did!

He called me over and I encouraged him to color 'in' the different shapes, identifying them and waiting for him to locate it to color at least near it, lol!

tot school- slow while sicky!

Color Recognition with Fruit Loops!!

Fine Motor Skills with toothpicks into foam!

He did this with a lot of toothpicks and got pretty good at picking it up the right way and holding it in a way that gave him more leverage- practice makes 'better' bc it was way difficult at the beginning and super easy at the end.

Loves to dump out all of his letters, identify them and place the on this board.

I haven't focused on letters other than when we see them when we are out and about, but he proved to still know every one of them! (little hesitation with lower case b vs d...)

Now we are working on letter 'sounds'....best way to do this is with a 'toy' from leap frog- seriously, no craft or game is going to teach them as well as this will every time you get in the car.....he's been taking to it pretty well. Some moms are already introducing 'spelling' or at least putting letters together- but I do not want to push memorization on my son at all. Once he understands the phonics of the letter sounds, then i'll let his teachers at preschool take over...this is FUN stuff at home and I don't want to teach him 'too much' too soon because that means he might now 'really' master the information and be moving along too quickly.

Tot School the past week has been slow because baby boy was sick, but we have been focusing on numbers, days of the week, and big vs little.

I tried introducing 'short' vs 'long' but he had very little interest in that! Its a hard concept to find interest in on its own- so i may leave that one up to the preschool teachers next year!

For Gross Motor skills, when he had some energy, we practiced 'jumping over' things...He's got to learn how to jump with two feet- right now it's kind of like jumping rope with the 'gallop'!

February Tot School- Week One at 22 months old!

Beginning stages of counting-

he's still to early in his learning process of numbers for this to be effective, but introduction

is also important- he loved the 'frosty snowmans' and the number 2, 8, & 9

Make Cupcakes and color match and fine motor skills activity!

colored the toothpicks with markers and stuck them in play dough cupcakes (huge hit) then matched the fruit loop colors to the cupcake color and placed them on the tooth pick.

took a while for him to figure out how to hold the loop to get it on the tooth pick...so patience is key and i showed his improve throughout the activity...

Decorating the Letter H!

Painting (colors and x review)

- i guided his hand to make it to the circles and let him do it on his own

independent story time....

'Where Does It Fit?'

he came up with this all by himself and i totally encouraged it

tried putting the ball in different cylinders and would lift it up amazed that it was now at the bottom, then tried putting cylinders into each other and putting the ball in others where it didn't fit- great 'problem solving' activity

Heart Wreath:

he helped glue and name the shape

we kept it at our snack and play table talking about the numbers

and that hearts mean love during the week