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!

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!