we're back! tot school prep....

so we are starting tot school on April 4th....so this week we are just getting used to some of the ideas again....i haven't really done tot school with my oldest since he turned Two!

here's a few things we did today!

R saw a little girl on the box of this activity with the pegs on a string, so he decided he wanted to do the same thing!! he decided on this pattern. we made a necklace or a 'man band' haha!

Thomas the Train Puzzels! This puzzle is almost too easy for him! ha!

We talked about letter D!! Practiced his cutting which he LOVES- he actually cut around the objects with limited help. He doesn't get frustrated with this even though it is challenging whereas drawing is such a chore for him. crasy! after that he glued and pasted!

B really likes tops so i gave him so tupperware to try to put the tops on!

B had some puzzle time while i was working with Reid. 

*no picture on this, but R decorated a ribbon for a project at school- painted, glitter glued, and used stickers!

Tracing shapes. let him do the first one and i guide his hand for the second one.

This started out as B's activity, but R decided that he wanted to try and decided that doing patterns

was more fun than stacking them!

B had his first introduction to utensils! He did some transferring too. And turned them into music as well.

Rockin' around Shutterfly, it's a shutterfly-holiday!

For the past three years, I have used Shutterfly for Christmas Cards, Birth Announcements, and printing all of my pictures! I love the quality of their work and their service!! The desiI want to share with you their current promotion, so YOU can get in on the great things that shutterfly is doing, too!!  

Take 20% OFF ALL HOLIDAY CARDS using the link below!

“Shutterfly is offering 20% off all holiday cards” 

The first year I ordered with shutterfly I did a photo card; the color came out just as I saw online and I was so happy. Last year, I went with a cardstock 5x7 with holiday bells on it- I couldn't find a religous card that really worked for us. This year, I am so happy to see MORE of a selection of designs with a Christian Holiday theme! My choices are wider and for our family, that works!! I also browsed the other holiday choices and they are greater this year too!!! Everyone get's more of a choice this year- whatch out tiny prints, shutterfly is coming!!!

We are having our family portraits taken this weekend to use on our Christmas Card from Shutterfly.

I will decide if i want to use ONE or Two pictures on the card once I see our proofs, but i have pretty much narrowed own our choices to these two cards!

I love this one because we are wearing blue and brown in our pictures and this one will coordinate great! There is enough room to write a message not just names! I could do one traditional family picture, one artsy picture, and a picture of each of my sons! I just love this layout!

This one is another favorite! This one also coordinates with our blue and brown theme! This is a little bit more simple, but sometimes that is the best way to go! I love that the 2010 is big because i'll never forget which year this card came from!! The font's for joy and magic are great too! I would use this card as a 'folded' card, so I could have more room to write a message on the inside and really personalize the card for each person we send them too!

Use these links below to find fabulous Hanukkah, holiday-story, and religious Christmas Cards that fit your style and your family!

http://www.shutterfly.com/cards-stationery/hanukkah-cards

http://www.shutterfly.com/cards-stationery/holiday-story-cards

http://www.shutterfly.com/cards-stationery/religious-christmas-cards


Please leave me a message on this post if you have any questions about using Shutterfly for your holiday cards this year!

we're about to start tot school again!!!

Preschool started in September and We've been focusing on that, but we are about to start tot school at home on Fridays and also starting tot school for baby brother!!!

exciting things are coming!!!

Tot School This Week:

gross motor skills: riding a bike, galloping like a horse, sumersaults, throwing a football!
fine motor skills: writing letters with mommy/learning to hold a marker properly, woring with bigger puzzels, building train tracks, doing finger games to nursery rhymes, practicing zipping!
memory skills: two new songs this week (jesus loves me and our god by chris tomlin)
spelling: recognize the A sound in words!

tot school with two...

this week is all about squares!!!

1. watching the shapes movie by preschool prep!

2. crafting with squares: gluing little squares in a big square

3. puzzle time

we mixed all the pieces up and he had to find the square and put it in its place- and he DID IT...

as he would say...: REID DID IT! ...lol, we talk in third person right now!

4. coloring our square for a soon to make 'shapes book'

no pictures....but...

we 1. decorated SQUARE styrofoam blocks with golf tees, tooth picks, and feathers

2. played with chalk outside by drawing SQUARES and jumping in the and then putting some trucks into each square

3. played with soapy water and had our first experience with sponges (squeezing and soaking)

4. gross motor skills fun: running through the sprinkler (aka: fountain) - ran in 'circles' (even though it was 'square week' the sprinkler is a round ring that squirts water up like a fountain and he was fixate on running in a 'circle' around it...hey, learning is learning!)

23 months- tot school week one!

tot school this week was all 'on a whim...'

and it was super fun that way!

played with and identified all of his letters and numbers 1-9...

and then placed them in 'lines'- horizontal and vertical!

while i was cooking, he had fun stirring!

memory game- what's under the cup...and do you remember with the 'x' was?

making pretend cupcakes and decorating them with shapes (one or two)

color sorting trains

fine motor skills with the money sorter along with sorting colors

fun with lids...shape recognition, matching correct shaped lid to the correct container

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'!