WEEK OF JUNE 14

~Punkin is 22 months old.~

I had great intentions this week to do an ice cream theme, but not much Tot School took place. The things we did do were spur of the moment and things I could grab without much planning. We had Vacation Bible School at our church which I helped lead music for, and we are getting ready for a vacation, so I was packing, and we spent one day at Grandma's house, so.... Anyway, enough with the excuses.....

TOT TRAYS

I found a bucket of these fun foam lacing shapes at a garage sale, and Punkin has LOVED playing with them.....over and over again! She calls the littlest cylinder pieces "Teeny Tinys." I had her sort the shapes into this little craft organizer box that I also got at a garage sale. It was a big hit. She also did have tons of fun just dumping out the shapes and throwing them around, too.

Another garage sale find....I don't even know what it is called, but it's a little tray with tiny holes that you stick the pegged numbers and letters into. I had a cup of numbers for her and a cup of letters in her name. I wanted to have her put the numbers in order or make her name, but she just wanted to stick them on randomly. At least she would tell me the letters and numbers when I asked her which one she was using.

Foam puzzles are always a hit!

TOT SCHOOL

I am going to put all our tot school activities together under one heading this time since we didn't do much...

I had her pick magnetic numbers out of an empty kleenex box and match them up with the correct number on her tray. She was NOT into it at ALL. We "took turns" doing it, so she really only did about half of this tray herself.

My mom found a whole box of these file folder games at a garage sale of a former preschool teacher. I was THRILLED! Most of them Punkin can do already, and we enjoyed pulling out a folder randomly throughout our days for something "fun." Here she was matching animal shadows and monkeys at Grandma's house.

And here was a color balloons one she had fun with at home.....because she loves, bears, balloons, and colors.

I made her a new sensory tub this week with different kinds of beans. I also hid magnetic letters in it for her to find. For the first time she actually really got into hunting for the letters and getting excited when she found one, putting it in the bowl and saying the name. Then, she spent lots of time just scooping, dumping, etc.

MISC. STUFF

Making cookies for Daddy....

"Washing the dishes" when we were done.... She loved this more than actually making the cookies.

Some things I didn't get pictures of (since my camera got dropped on the floor and no longer works.....ahem!): We had a TON of fun one day playing in the laundry basket. She'd ask me for a "ride" and I'd pull and push her around the living room with her squealing and giggling. Then, she figured out how to make it tip over with her in it, and she thought that was a hoot! We also played with a big Disney number floor puzzle that I got a garage sale as well. I had her help me put them in order in a line, and then we hopped and crawled and ran and did slow motion down the line as we counted the numbers. We were both tired by the end!

Well, that's our "not so much tot school" week. To check out what other tots did this past week, visit 1+1+1=1.

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.

WEEK OF MAY 24 AND MAY 31

~Punkin is 22 months old.~

We are back after not getting around to posting last week. The last two weeks have been crazy, and not much official Tot School happened around here. We had a garage sale, we had to help prepare and serve the meal at church last Sunday, I haven't felt that great (I have headaches that make me so tired), and we have been enjoying the nice weather outside. Plus, Punkin has been working on her two year molars as well as suddenly becoming scared to death of going to sleep. (I think she is having nightmares.) So, we've just been out of sorts around here. But here are some of the things we have been up to the last two weeks....

TOT TRAYS

I ended up having the same tot trays out for two weeks in a row since we weren't around much to play with them.

Punkin had fun "arranging" fake flowers. She had just as much fun poking her fingers into the styrofoam stuff.

Pom Poms inside a whisk. What fun!

We got out our peg boards again.

She loved using her pointer to "count" the pegs. She does fairly well, but skips random numbers every now and then.

She enjoyed making tall towers!

I got this idea from 1+1+1=1. I put pictures of family members on cardboard strips and then had her spell their names with the bottle caps. She only did this once, I think. Not a huge hit as I thought it would be.

I cut up a pool noodle and had her put them on these sticks. She also had fun running around the house with them on her fingers.

She did GREAT at this! She carefully scooped the bears one by one into the ice cube tray, matching the bears to the colors I had put in the tray with dot stickers.

LETTERS / ABC'S

We got out her color word letter matching activity again one day. Once again, she loved it and did great!

And again, the apple tree letters. I called out letters for her to find and put red dot stickers on. Once again, a huge hit!

I ordered this Melissa and Doug set from Amazon, and got it in the mail last week. I took out three boards and their matching letters for Punkin to do. She did well. I have left it out on her little table, and she will often go and play with it on her own. She loves letters.

We went to a new library one day, and she had fun running around this rug saying the letters.

MATH

We didn't do much with math the last two weeks, though she did enjoy watching some videos I found on You Tube that had to do with numbers.

MISC.

We did a lot of coloring.

She enjoyed playing with her new magnet book a LOT!

Punkin finally learned how to drink from a "Big Girl Cup" all by herself!

Playing with soapy water in the sink at Grandma's ....

.... and at home. This is ALWAYS a tried and true favorite.

She played a lot with her magnadoodle, which she loves. She asks me a lot to draw her a shape, and then she tries to draw it. Here she was telling me she was drawing circles.

We got to go swimming with our neighbor friends in their little pool.

We blew bubbles outside.....another favorite activity. She is trying to figure out how to do it herself. Sometimes she gets a few bubbles out, but mostly she just gets a soapy mouth.

I took out a squirt bottle one day and showed her how to "draw" on the driveway with water. She loved this.

Then, I drew some letters and we worked on lowercase letter identification.

We spent a couple afternoons with Daddy at baseball and softball games. (He's an atheletic director at our high school, so he goes to a LOT of games.)

Punkin loved watching the players and the fast balls.

Punkin is really into "role playing" these days. She likes taking kleenex and rags and pretends to clean.

I got this little wagon at a garage sale, and she has spent oodles of time taking her baby for walks. One day I heard her say, "Go for walk, Baby? Okay, let's go!"

I found this at a garage sale, too, and she has enjoyed putting the chips in the slots.

And finally, I got this floor puzzle as well at a garage sale last week, and while she hasn't actually put it together herself, she likes finding letters and pictures that I call out.

Well, I hope to be back on schedule this week, so we'll see. In the meantime, check out 1+1+1=1 for more Tot School ideas.