WEEK OF JUNE 7 - FLOWERS

~Punkin is 22 months old.~

Well, it's been an interesting week. Punkin has been having nightmares (we think anyway) and has been scared to death of falling asleep. (She has always been a great sleeper aside from some teething or sickness issues, so this is so out of character for her and draining on us!) Also, my husband is an athletic director at our local high school, and the softball team made it to State this weekend and won(!!!) so we've been pretty busy with that. Plus, we had a power outage on Saturday night which reset our computer to factory settings for some reason, and we seemingly lost all our files and pictures. Aagh! I was panicking. But my hubby took it to work Monday morning and had one of the tech guys look at it and he was able to restore everything somehow. I don't understand how that all works, but I am SOOO thankful to him for helping us out!

In the midst of everything, we actually did a lot of fun things this week. I tried to focus on flowers, but we threw in a few other things as well.....

TOT TRAYS

I had gotten a bit laid back on letting her just play with whatever trays she wanted and for however long and getting out new ones all the time. Well, I finally decided to add some more structure back into our tot tray time again to try and help her stay a bit more focused on a given task for longer than 30 seconds. So, I have her pick a tray, we go sit at her little table together, and I set the timer (for 4 minutes right now). She has to play with that tray for at least that long. If she chooses to continue after the timer goes off that is fine. I sit there with her to keep her focused or to "suggest" things to prolong the activity if she starts to wander off. But I still try to let her guide the play as much as possible. I do think that the timer has helped a bit, though, and she really hasn't "fought" me on it too much yet. She only did three trays this week due to this new strategy and due to the fact that we spent a lot more time outside than usual.

I found this Chinese Checkers game at a garage sale for a quarter. She soon found out how fun it was to set all the marble pieces on the board and shake it up to see where the marbles would land. I tried to get her to match the colors to the board, but she wasn't too interested in that. She did play with this a lot, though.

I also found Connect Four at a garage sale. I was trying to get her to line up reds and blacks or do a basic red/black pattern, but once again, she just wanted to do her own thing and fill up the slots then dump them. Oh well. Fine motor work is always good....

I kept this out from last week, and once again, she enjoyed it and did well. She was scooping the colored bears into the matching color sections of the tray. (I used colored dot stickers to mark the sections.) This week, she took a lot of time to make sure all her bears were standing up in the tray and not falling over.

LETTER WORK / ABC'S

I drew a lowercase f on a piece of paper and stuck velcro to it. Then, she took flower cut outs that I printed off the computer and stuck them on the f. I left this out on her table all week, and she had fun pulling off the flowers and sticking them back on.

I adapted this idea from The Blessed Country Mom. I made a flower with capital and lowercase f's on the petals and had her glue on matching petals. She had fun because she got to use the gluestick! She did pretty well, partly because I color coded the petals.

When she got done, she picked it up, held it above her head, and exclaimed, "Wook! Pitty fower!"

I printed out a few of these sunflower cards from Making Learning Fun. I folded the page so the capital letter was the only thing she saw first. After she identified the capital letter, I gave her a yellow sticker to put on the matching lowercase letter. She didn't want to do this at first, but after a few, she got into it more.

I helped Punkin do some activities from the Fisher Price website as well as http://www.literacycenter.net/. She really enjoyed the Fisher Price letters activity where you push a key and an animal that starts with that letter does something to help you learn that letter. She loved it because I let her push whatever keys she wanted.

We got this ABC picture book at the library, and Punkin loves it. She will spend quite a bit of time just looking at all the pictures. Then, she'll turn to the last page and sing her ABC's. It's so fun to hear her trying to sing it. She skips a few letters, but she is getting better, and I love to hear her sing.

SHAPES

This activity combined shapes with things that start with f. It was a hit. She was in a very good mood that day, so that helped. I made this flower on my computer and added a white shape to each petal. Then, I made matching shapes with pictures on them of things that start with f. I cut these out and gave them to her and she matched the shapes to the petals and glued them down. I would tell her to find the fan, for instance and put it on the right spot. As she was gluing it on, I'd have her tell me what the picture was and then I'd say, "That's right. It's a fan, and fan starts with f." Then, we'd make the f sound.

When she was all done, we pointed to each petal and said, "Fan starts with f. Fence starts with f." And so on. After we said all the pictures, she looked at me with bright eyes and said, "Faif!" (That's what she calls her Grandma Faith.) I was shocked that she made that connection. Grandma Faith WAS coming over that night, and we had been talking about that earlier, so I think it was still in her mind.

I made these shape matching flowers for Punkin one day. I put velcro on each petal and on the back of the shapes and had her stick the matching shapes to the correct petal.

My intent was to have her match the shapes to the correct flower but also to match them to the correct color. I realized that expecting her to do both was asking a bit much, so I helped her do it once, but then decided if she just matched the shapes to the right flower that was enough.

COLORS

We broke out the Fruit Loops again, and did this sheet from Making Learning Fun. This time she did it like a pro! As long as I let her eat some as she worked, she did whatever I asked her to do. I'd tell her what color to eat, then what color to match to her flowers. I had colored the circles beforehand so she could match the colors.

MISC.

We spent lots of time outside in our little pool. I loved it because I could sit in a chair with my feet in the water and read magazines while Punkin played to her hearts content. Fun for us both!

I decided to try the contact paper collage idea that I saw on a few blogs lately. (The one that comes to mind is the Shafer Family blog.) Punkin had a blast, though she had just as much fun dumping out the bowl of supplies and also taking the stuff back OFF the contact paper as well.

I ended up keeping it up all week, without covering it up with another piece, so she could continue to put things on and off whenever she wanted. She played with this numerous times.

This photo is a bit disturbing now that I look at it.... :) Anyway, she would take the googly eyes from the collage poster and put them on her baby, on her bear, on Clifford, etc. I thought that was clever of her, but again..... it looks a bit.... creepy, doesn't it? :)

I gave her this shape flower page from Making Learning Fun to color. I didn't expect her to color by shape as it is intended for, but she did point out a few of the shapes to me. I thought she'd love using colored pencils...something new for her... but nope. Wanted her trusted crayons.

She played with this Melissa and Doug See and Spell (is that what it's called?) a few times. I would always set out the letters she'd need for each puzzle, and she could match them and tell me the letters.....if she was in the mood. Sometimes she just wanted to "play" without me "telling her how."

Punkin once again read and read and read lots this week. Here she even just plopped down right in the middle of the hallway to read this book.

And one day I found that she had climbed up on the couch with a bunch of books and was just content reading and reading and reading.

We also met Daddy for lunch one day at a park near his work. Once again, she loved practicing the stairs.

And another day we walked to the park by our house and played and had a picnic lunch. Punkin has discovered the Merry-Go-Round and enjoys being pushed "roun an roun" on it.

One other thing I learned this week was that even though I think she has "mastered" something (like number identification), I shouldn't stop reinforcing it each week, or else she "loses" some of what she has learned. She suddenly seems to have forgotten some of the numbers that she's known for so long. We haven't done much with simple number recognition lately because it seems too easy for her, but I think I'll just make sure to hit on all the basics at least once each week if possible (# and letter recognition, shapes, counting, colors, etc).

To see what other tots were up to this week, visit 1+1+1=1.