January Week 2 .... (to be updated)

working on our 'letter book'- coloring the letter T, letting him choose his OWN color by identifying the color before using it first....

started working on putting things in 'LINES' this morning...

and by this afternoon after mommy made a line with blocks, Reid made one for his trucks to ride on too!

21 months

paint with water

color matching- placing a train of a certain color on the matching color mat

no pictures from today- bummer, but i'll list what we did:

melissa and doug magnetic letters board-

starting with T and then spread them all out on the floor and let him identify them and place them on the board when he id'd them correctly! he got so excited when finding a letter that he knew and eventually made it all the way through the alphabet. He also learned more about 'magnetism' which he found very interesting....

printed out a big T and little T coloring sheet...

he was having difficulty differentiating between T and I so i wanted to focus on that a little bit.

Color Stacking and Nesting....

two of each color, practicing identifying similar color families (ex: dark purple vs light purple) and grouping them by color

tot school- january 1

fine motor skills- picking off grapes!!

painting letters- K this week! plus colors!!

putting the caps back on our 'do a dot' paint

cotton balls into trays- filling up and cleaning up

stickers- peel stick push

building towers...color work!

color sorting...not into this at all!

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!