WEEK OF AUGUST 22

~Punkin is 25 months old~

Well, Punkin has continued to do GREAT with the potty thing, so I thought we'd be back to a normal routine. Not so much. The weather was gorgeous here, and we ended up having a very busy week, playing outside a lot, going to Grandma's for a sleepover, having a playdate with some friends, going to our first Mom's group of the year, attending the first football game of the season (Daddy is the athletic director), and spending all Saturday at a cross country meet playing with cousins. It was a very fun week, Punkin did great going potty "out and about," and we even managed to get a few structured playtimes in as well.

TOT TRAYS

I ended up leaving out a lot of the same tot trays from last week since we didn't really do tot trays last week.

Melissa and Doug puzzles

Trying to put colored paper clips on foam pieces. She obviously did great matching the colors, but try as I may, I could not get her to understand how to put on the paper clips. She enjoyed taking them off, though.

She still was not into putting the beads on the colored craft sticks, but she still loved lining them up!

I put out some of her foam puzzles and her hammer that makes noises when she hits something with it. She had a blast "pounding" in the pieces.

Matching up her buttons on her pocket chart.

"Playing" checkers.... or really just matching the colors on the board.

LESSONS

I'm just lumping them all together again since we didn't do as much.

I found these back to school bingo sheets on Creative Learning Fun. I just cut apart the tiles and had her glue on the matching pictures. She actually really loved this and did it without any help.

I printed these paper Mr. Potato Head parts from 2 Teaching Mommies.

Punkin knows lots of body parts including shoulder, wrist, cheek, chin, neck, ankle, etc. when you ask her to point to them on herself. But it was interesting to see her try to put the basic body parts in the right places. I helped her the first time if she needed it to put the parts in the right spot. (She insisted the mouth should frown instead of smile. LOL.)

Then, I had her try it totally on her own.....ummm...not too bad???? :)

We worked on counting using Trix cereal. I gave her a handful to put on the pink flower, then she had to move them one at a time onto the yellow flower as she counted them. Then, after she counted them all she could eat them. We did this quite a few times. I was surprised that she worked hard to count them without trying to eat them first.

Then, we worked on patterning with the Trix. She didn't quite get it, but she diligently lined up the colors as I told her which came next.

I haven't gotten these color word tiles from Confessions of a Homeschooler out in awhile, but Punkin always really enjoys them! I'm trying to get her to put the tiles on in order....

We used a bowl of buttons for our sensory "tub" this week. She asked for a spoon, then proceeded to bring over her baby's potty and spoon the buttons into the potty.

I found this My First LeapPad at Goodwill, and Punkin has played with it for hours this week! She LOVES it, and knows now how to push the green go button on each page first. This was well worth the $5 I paid for it.

Well, that was our fun week. To see what other tots were up to, visit 1+1+1=1.

WEEK OF AUGUST 16 - POTTY TRAINING

~Punkin is 24 months old.~

We spent all week on potty training. Monday was rough, but after that, she has done SOOO well. When we went to church today, she even told the nursery workers that she had to go potty....and went .....on a strange potty! I am so proud of her. We're still working on being poo trained, though she will go if I can catch her cues, she just hasn't told me that on her own yet. But I feel a huge burden lifted after this week, and it makes me realize that my baby isn't a baby anymore. It's kinda sad...

Anyway, we didn't do much tot trays or any "formal" tot school stuff, due to the fact that we remained in the kitchen most of the week (where we have tile floor and accidents were easier to clean up), and I wanted to focus on the task at hand and not take on too much. But that being said, I brought out a lot of her favorites and we did a lot of fun stuff.....in the kitchen.

TOT TRAYS

(We did a few tot trays on Monday morning before we got deep into the potty training.)

She loved putting Q-tips into an old parmesan container. She even figured out that if she shook it hard enough upside down that some of them would come back out the holes, too.


Playing with her magnetic fish puzzle. She is getting very good at this!

And her latch puzzle. Another favorite.

A FEW "SCHOOL" LESSONS

I numbered the bottom of an egg carton from one to twelve and stuck a marble in it. Then, I had Punkin shake the egg carton, open it up, and tell me what number it landed on.

I had her then put a sticker next to that number on her "graph." I used to have my students do this activity when I taught first grade to introduce graphing, and I'd take it a step further and use two marbles and have them add the numbers together. I was reminded of it again, though, after reading about it on Crunchy and Green, and realizing that Punkin could do it with just number identification.

Her favorite part was working really hard at getting the carton open and closed.

We did another pattern block page using some pattern block pieces that I already had cut out from when I was teaching. Punkin LOVES these activities. She even told me, "Mommy, we need the ocagons now." (Well, actually, they are hexagons, but she was close.)

She always holds up her creations and says, "Look, Mommy! Pitty!"

I taped some color dot pages up on her easel that I got from Home Grown Hearts. I wanted Punkin to use her pom pom magnets to fill in the dots with the right colors. BUT, for some reason the magnetic easel just isn't that magnetic enough....even for little pom pom magnets. They kept falling off.

So, we took them to the floor instead. But then, she thought it was more fun to get out her egg carton and put the pom poms in there.

She used her princess wand to find numbers I called out on her easel.

ALL THE OTHER RANDOM STUFF WE DID WHILE POTTY TRAINING

Played with her wooden shape train.

I got this science experiement idea from The Science Mommy that used milk, food coloring, and a toothpick dipped in dish soap. It was really neat and kept her interest for quite awhile.

Then, she wanted to try.

After awhile, she just started playing with it, stirring all the colors together. She said she was making soup. :)

We played with playdough ..... a LOT!

Punkin also played a lot with her bean sensory tub. She again got her egg carton out to use with it.

We tried painting with tempera paint and an actual paintbrush for the first time. This was a huge hit!

We even did a little color mixing with it!

We lined up her Disney foam numbers and jumped on them again and again. Then she got out her princess wand to point to them, too.

I got this tool set at a garage sale last week. This was her favorite toy this week. She had fun using tools "like Daddy."

We drew some more on her easel with dry erase markers.

We played with bubble wrap from a package I got in the mail.

We had to play with our tub of water, of course! Again, a favorite.

I tried to have her help me make a cake for Daddy. It kinda got all over. But that's okay. The cake still tasted pretty good!

We did lots of puzzles.

Punkin enjoyed playing with her Little People farm.

We "washed" plastic silverware in the sink.

Punkin spent a lot of time playing at her toy kitchen and table that I had moved into our kitchen. She even asked to eat snacks at her little table, and she would feed her baby and stuffed animals, too.

We read lots and lots and lots of books. (I have "Corduroy" and "If You Give a Pig a Pancake" memorized now!)

She "read" with her Tag Junior a lot while sitting on the potty.

Punkin had fun throwing balls in the laundry basket.

She also enjoyed getting into the basket and throwing all the balls back out. I also got a kink in my back from giving her many "rides" around the kitchen.

Punkin used foam shape stickers to make pictures.

She played with her shape sorter and had fun lining the shapes up again and counting them.

She built "towers" with the counting pegs.

We had "tea" and "cakes."

She found out it was fun to crawl under the table and play peek a boo.

Grandma came over one day to play. They had fun with dominoes.

She tried to put together our caterpillar number floor puzzle. I had to help, of course, and then she had fun taking it all apart again.

We ate many of our meals "picnic style" on a towel close to the little potty in case of quick needed trips to the potty. Punkin LOVED our picnics!

And this is of course how we spent a great deal of time as well. She really loved being able to pull off the toilet paper when she went in the potty.

And she also liked eating her "treats" when she went! (Bites of Twizzlers and little mini muffins from Grandma!)

And finally, this is just something I noticed this week after spending lots of time coloring with Punkin. She told me here, "Mommy, I color ovals blue." Instead of randomly scribbling all over the page, she has begun to color with a purpose. She obviously didn't stay in the lines completely, but I was proud of her for diligently coloring each one.

Here she did the same with the stars, saying, "I color stars black."


I think I can say we are successfully potty trained now (aside from nights), so hopefully, if all continues to go well, I am looking forward to a more normal week next week. To see what other Tots were up to this week, go check out 1+1+1=1.