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!