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

end of january- 22 months

'almost' 22 months

Hide and Suprise!

*we haven't done this since his first birthday and he loved it all the more.

took him a while to get 'into' it and really dig to find the shapes, blocks, and letters that i had hid in the oatmeal- but he was happy to label the colors, shapes, and letters once he found them!

'My First Birdfeeder'

Painting fun and talking all about birds- encompasses fine motor skills,

color id, attention enhancement, and outdoor fun!

The Letter 'T' for the day!

-talked about all things that started with T for the day!

- used crayons and stickers to decorate!

Melissa and Doug Counting/Color sorter

- love love this toy!!

-engages tot in counting, color id, and shape id!

'spin spin a LETTER'

-he got this for christmas LAST YEAR and plays with it totally different now!

-learning new and refreshing already known animal sounds and letters

Shape Sorting!

-can never go wrong with going over shapes over and over if the tot likes them!....

then go around the house and try to find another shape just like it!!

1:1 correspondence!

-putting ONE letter in ONE empty hole

-I want to start working on counting correspondence, but figured I should make sure

he could master this first....and he can!

-of course it was fun to see what letters we found in a big bowl as we went along, too!

.... continued the correspondence and fine motor skills on a whim when i found him unwrapping an orbitz gum package- those things are HARD to get into!!!...so then we took the gum out and put them into the ice cube tray and counted them....yes, i let him 'taste' the minty gum too! now chewing- just licking like a lollipop! lol

Tot School- january week 2

21 months

Gluing Practice! Color Identification!

(used an old OJ box....i let him decide what he wanted to do as we went along, so grass became flowers and the feathers to represent birds never made it on there bc he didn't like their texture!- great for following directions, enforcing 'lines', and letting child make own decisions on where to put things, colors

Pretend Play: making airplanes with sticks (crossing two sticks together and flying them around...this is something he remembers doing in music class with bigger sticks)

Fine Motor Skills and Color ID: choosing a color stick out of the bag and placing it in one of two bottles, naming what color and which bottle he has chosen...

Lacing Beads! Great Fine motor skill activity, color enforcement, and improving attention span....i found that when he successfully held a bead and pulled the string through all by himself, he was so proud of himself and the encouragment provided was definitely helpful, but he recognized on his own, his success.

Letter Fun...Somewhere New: take letter fun outside, we had a little snow left on the driveway, so we used chalk to write and identify letters- well, i wrote letters, he id'd them and scribbled around...he has started scribbling, calling out a letter, thinking he has written it though! good try, buddy!

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!