WEEK OF JULY 18 - NUMBERS

~Punkin is 23 months old.~

I decided to do a week focused on numbers, as it seems Punkin suddenly is confusing a few numbers even though she used to know them all very easily. However, it ended up being a very busy week, and we didn't get to spend the time on stuff that I would have liked. But we did get to do quite a bit, just not as in depth as I would have liked.

TOT TRAYS

Punkin got a Leapfrog Jr. for her birthday, along with 5 books. I put them in her trays, and she has LOVED "reading" her new books this week. She always goes for this tray first....and would spend the whole time on this one if I didn't prod her to do other trays.

I saw this fun idea on Counting Coconuts. I made a placemat template of how to set the table, and put a plate, cup, fork, knife, and spoon in her tray with it. She really had a blast "setting the table." I didn't think she would. But she is really into pretend play right now, so I think that is why she liked it.

I set out this "oldie but goodie" and she had fun with it again. Simply putting rings into an empty wipes container. She also really enjoyed just pushing the button to make the lid pop up, putting the lid down, popping it up...over and over again.

She used our homemade foam lowercase letter set to put in our pocket chart....a new skill for her to figure out how to get them in the pockets. Then, she also had fun using our pointer to hit the letter I told her to find...Notice I said HIT, not point. She wanted to HIT them....hard. I had to finally stop her and ask her to be more "gentle." LOL.

I left this one in the trays for this week since she had so much fun with it last week. Again, she had to test the objects in her basket to see if they fit in her tubes.

NUMBERS

Here are our favorite number books we read this week

We got out our foam number tiles, and Punkin and I jumped, hopped, and ran along the number line as we counted the numbers. Then, we threw a bean bag and hopped until we reached the number it landed on.

I used this sheet from Carisa at 1+1+1=1. I had Punkin use her Do-a-Dot markers to mark the dots on each number. We counted the dots as we did it and then when we were done as well. I also had her identify "the yellow dot number" or the "purple dot number" for me.

I also wrote numbers on paper and had her dot them to create the number. I added dots for her so she had something to aim for.

And we put cheerios around the outline of numbers as well. She was really enjoying eating them, though, and it took forever to get the cheerios on the numbers. LOL. But she didn't mind. She had fun.

I made a sheet that had numbers at the top with the correct number of circles below. Punkin had to choose the matching number to glue at the top next to the one already there, and then we used small circle stickers to count out that number.

And of course we practiced counting them by pointing as well.

I made fish cutouts and laminated them and put a paper clip on the end by their mouth. Then, I got out her fishing rod from her Melissa and Doug puzzle and had her go fishing for numbers. She didn't want to do it when I introduced it to her, so I just let them set out for her if she wanted them. Sure enough, within a few hours, she was tempted enough to play with them. I had intended for her to "catch" a fish and then "feed" the fish that many snacks. But I decided to skip that last part for now as she was just having fun catching the fish.

I think I got this idea from The Activity Mom blog...but I'm not sure. I wrote numbers on bottle caps and floated them in the sink. Then, I gave Punkin a slotted spoon, and she had fun scooping them out and putting them in the other side of the sink. I'd have her scoop me a certain one or I'd ask her what number she got. She also had fun trying to get them to stay under the water, but those silly things always popped back up! :)

I was THRILLED when Punkin finally got out the bowl of number rocks I made a few weeks ago and began to play with them on her own. I had purposefully set them out for her on her table to "tempt" her this week. She would set them out in lines and turn them all over and then back again. I sat down with her and we played "Peekaboo Rocks" and had fun seeing which number we would turn over.

So, the next day I took a gamble and tried this game with her where I hid a number rock under one of her little cups, and mixed them all up on the table and she had to try and find which cup the rock was under. She loved finding the rock, and she always squealed with delight, "It's 3!" or "It's 7!" when she found it. Then, she wanted to do it for me. That was hilarious.

MISC. STUFF

We finally finished our ice cream letter match file folder game. She wasn't as into it this time, though, as last time.

She found a new way to use her Tot Trays.

We went to the 4H Fair this week, and Punkin loved seeing all the animals. Even days later, she'll suddenly start naming the animals she saw and tell you the sound it makes.

Well, that was our condensed Tot School Week. Check out 1+1+1=1 to see what other Tots were up to this week.

WEEK OF JULY 11 - MORE ICE CREAM

~Punkin is 23 months old.~

We had such a busy week! Between a day at Grandma's, a trip to the zoo, a morning spent getting shots, a morning running errands, a birthday party, and time spent with family from out of town, we actually managed to get quite a bit of Tot School done. Whew! I'm tired after this week, but I feel good knowing we accomplished so much. Oh, and Punkin took a tumble down about 5 stairs which left her with a black and blue eye and lip and left us with frayed nerves. (We called her doctor and had to wake her every four hours that night, but she has seemed to be just fine.)

TOT TRAYS

Sorting beads into a heart ice cube tray. I gave her a tweezers to use, though she has always hated tweezers or tongs or anything like that. I just set them out to see if she would be interested this time. She couldn't use them real well, but at least she let me show her and help her try without crying this time. One thing I noticed this time as well was that she'd try to pick up 3 or 4 of the same colored bead in one hand and then put them in the correct spot (instead of doing one at a time.)

I found these round styrofoam pieces at the Dollar Store along with these toothpicks with pretty colored tops. We have had lots of birthdays around here lately, and she is really into singing the birthday song, so I had her "put candles on the cakes" and then she pretended to blow out the candles. She LOVED this tray, and got it out a LOT. She often would sing "Happy Birthday" as she did it, too. One day I noticed she took quite a few "candles" in her hand, then put them on her "cake" one by one as she counted them. She got to 7, then stopped. Also, sometimes I would call out a color of "candle" for her to find and put on her "cake."

I saw this simple idea at Counting Coconuts. She took her favorite buttons and put them in her "bank." She loved the "plink" they made and had fun opening the can to get them out.

She got this Fisher Price Magnadoodle with shapes for her birthday, and has loved making pictures on it. She will take the pen and make lines all over and declare, "I writing."

This was another simple idea (from Home Grown Families) that Punkin loved....shoveling packing peanuts into her bucket. I knew there was a reason I saved all those! After she'd fill her bucket, she would push them all down and "smoosh" them so she could try and fit more in.

She found many other things to do with them, too....like dumping them all over the floor, rubbing her face in them, and balancing them on her knees.

The last tray I didn't get a picture of her doing, but I had a bucket of random things from around the house, and two different sized cardboard tubes in the tray. She had to try and find the things that fit inside each tube.

LETTERS / ABC'S

I have seen this idea on a lot of blogs, but the one that I remember recently is Creative Learning Fun. I made the capital and lowercase letter i on her paper and made dots where I wanted her to put the pins. This was a great fine motor skill activity as well. She worked very hard to get the pins right on the dots.

We started off doing it on a stack of towels, but it wasn't working too well, as the pins kept falling over. Daddy noticed we needed help, so he brought us this thick insulation piece he had leftover from the basement, and it worked so much better. Punkin really enjoyed this activity. I think I'll have to do it more often. (I have just been hesitant about the pins...but she did great.)

I finally got a laminator from Amazon, thanks to Carisa's recommendation here. I was excited to make my first file folder game (from Making Learning Fun). I used the lowercase letter cones and glued them onto the file folder and then had Punkin match the correct capital letter scoop. I folded over the folder and only gave her the pieces for one side so as not to overwhelm her. She loved this game and completed it without my help! I was thrilled!


Grandma had these new ABC cards for Punkin this week when she went over to her house. Punkin loved seeing what picture was on each card. She'd call out the picture and I'd ask her what letter it started with. She didn't get what I meant at first until I pointed to the letters each time I asked her.

NUMBERS / MATH

I made this worksheet to help Punkin with one to one counting.

She had fun using the stickers, and I was surprised how good she has gotten at putting them on the dots.

We worked on pointing to them one at a time with her finger as we counted.

And of course, she likes sticking her sticker on places other than the paper.

I also gave her an ice cream cone sheet with numbers 1-10 on it from Home Grown Hearts. Instead of cutting out the matching numbers to glue on, I gave her the yellow do-a-dot marker and had her stamp the number I called out. She did great, although she still mixes up 6 and 9. I did give her a plain piece of paper first to mark all over as much as she wanted to get that "out of her system." That always seems to help us a lot. When we were done with this activity, she surprised me by putting the cap back on herself without my help. You have to twist it back on, which I didn't think she knew how to do very well.

We also did another size order activity, which she did very easily. I think I need to add a few more into the mix. I forgot to take a picture of her actually doing it, though, because this was the day she fell down the stairs, and I was a bit flustered.

COLORS

I found these great ice cream cone bowls at the Dollar Tree, and couldn't resist. I wanted Punkin to sort the beads by color into the correct bowls. She used her fingers to do a few of them that way.

But then she had more fun stirring the beads in her bowls.

And on the floor.

ART

I printed out an ice cream cone and let her color it with markers. Then, we got out glitter glue and she had fun squeezing it on her cone.

It was even her idea to put the pom pom on top.

MISC. STUFF

She got this Fisher Price Little People set for her birthday. She has spent a lot of time playing with it this week. She loves moving the colored discs back and forth and listening to it count as she does it.

Grandma had this new game for Punkin at her house this week. It is a Fisher Price Animal Farm Bingo game. She didn't actually play the game, but she enjoyed putting the pieces into the top of the barn....

...and then releasing the lever to pop them back out again.

One day Punkin wanted to make cookies for Daddy, but I didn't have time, so while I made lunch I told her she could pretend to make Daddy cookies. I gave her a tray of flour and sugar along with a couple cookie cutters and a spoon. She absolutely enjoyed this! She made lines and shapes with her fingers and had fun filling up the insides of the cookie cutters with the mixture.

And of course we spent some time in her pool. She had more fun pouring water around the deck and using her squirt bottle to make "pictures" on the deck than she did actually being in the pool.

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

WEEK OF JULY 5 - THIS AND THAT

~Punkin is 23 months old.~

We took a very laid back and relaxed approach this week to Tot School, and took a break from our "i is for ice cream" unit (I still have tons of activities to do with it), and just had fun doing random things not related to anything. It was a much needed break for us both. I found out that even in our laid back activities that weren't necessarily "academic" in nature, Punkin actually was "learning" quite a bit! We still stuck with our Tot Tray time, but since the rest of the week wasn't focused on anything, I'm going to try posting pictures by day instead of topic this week.

TOT TRAYS

I had red, white, and blue pipe cleaners, as well as toothpicks in a tray for her to put into a sugar shaker from Dollar Tree. She loved this tray!

I filled a tray full of containers and lids and had her take them off, match them up, put them back on, etc. She did great at learning how to turn the lids to unscrew them on and off.

I also added my "beloved" letter rocks that I made last week (that she didn't want to play with) and had her see which rocks would fit into each container.

I put her new Melissa and Doug latch puzzle and matching blocks in a tray. She played quite a bit with the latch puzzle, but not so much with the matching blocks.

I would ask her to find certain things for me to see if she remembered with latch to open. She has a great memory! Then, I'd take out a few of the magnetic pieces from under the latches and give them to her and have her put them back in the right spot. She loved that.

I finally went through some of my tubs of materials from when I taught first grade, and I found quite a few things that I used in my first grade classroom, that I knew Punkin would actually be able to do. She liked these colored paintbrushes that she matched to the correct paint bucket.

Her favorite thing about it was putting the brushes in the slits. She matched them like a pro.

I was so excited about this tray, but Punkin was not. I used our magnetic pom poms and this flag page that I printed from Making Learning Fun. I did it a few times for her to try to entice her to do it with me. (Isn't it sad that I get excited about and have fun doing little activities like this?)

She humored me once and put about 4 pom poms on before going on to other things.

Again, another tray I thought she'd like, but she never touched this one. She loves animals, and she loves puzzles, so I thought she'd enjoy matching the baby animal with the mommy. Nope. Oh well. We'll try it again later.

A few times instead of doing her trays, she pulled down this photo album instead and spent a long time looking at the all the pictures. She has always loved looking at all the pictures of her and her family members.


MONDAY

My husband has been doing lots of sawing in the garage lately, and so lots of Punkin's toys got all covered in sawdust and were pretty dirty. So, on Monday I took out a bucket of soapy water and a rag, and told Punkin to wash her toys. Oh my, did she ever have a blast!

She washed her car, her "bike," her slide, and even the sidewalk and Mommy's face. :)

TUESDAY

We spend Tuesdays at Grandma's house. I didn't have my camera with me, but Grandma got out some file folder games that she has, and Punkin matched up colors with race cars. She also enjoys learing how to "play" the piano on Grandma's real piano!

WEDNESDAY

I took an empty spice container and filled it with crushed Fruit Loop "sand." Punkin had a ball just squeezing the glue bottle as much as she wanted. She finally mastered what "squeezing" means and is finally able to do it herself. (This activity therefore became good fine motor skill practice.) Then she shook out the "sand" all over her paper onto the glue and we dumped off the excess "sand" and had a colorful picture to hang up.

We ended up doing three different pages because she kept saying, "More pease!"

I had a glue bottle, too, and I made numbers, letters, and shapes on her page for her and she told me what they were as I made them.

We had to vacuum the floor when we were done, and Punkin thought she'd help. (She uses this toy as her pretend vacuum and typically follows me around when I vacuum.)

In continuing just a tad with our i unit, I cut out some pictures that start with i and had Punkin glue them onto her Ii paper. She loved using the glue, and I had her repeat each picture and the sound of i each time. When she was done, she took her page and said "I show Daddy." Then she ran over to Daddy and said, "Wook, Daddy! Pitty!" Daddy asked her what all her pictures were and she could name each one for him.

As we continue to work on drawing straight lines from top to bottom, I made some dotted lines with dots above them for lowercase i's, then I put it in a page protector and gave Punkin a dry erase marker for the first time. She loved it. I showed her how to make the straight line down and then make a dot. After a few tries she was doing them really well and remembering to start at the top! We have done this a few times each day since then, and she still enjoys it.

Last week I had mixed some food coloring into water and put them into plastic containers and stuck them in the freezer. I did yellow ones, red ones, and blue ones (primary colors). I filled the sink with water and added yellow food coloring to it. Then, I got out the big red ice and let Punkin play with it in the water. I asked her before we started what color the water was. Then, I asked her what color the ice was. After a little bit of her playing with the ice, she noticed it was "get small" (getting smaller) and at the end when I asked her what color the water was now, she noticed it had turned orange! Cool! We talked about how red and yellow together make orange. What a fun little science activity! We will definitely be doing this again soon with the other colors.

After her big red ice cube melted, I gave her some regular ice cubes. I told her to "catch" them before they melted. Without my prodding to do so, she began taking them one by one and throwing them into the other side of the sink as she counted each one. Now, though she can count easily, we have been working on one to one counting objects. She can do it easily with my help as I guide her hand to point to each object. But lately, I have been trying to get her to count by moving objects from one bowl to the next. She hasn't been interested. Then, here she goes and does it on her own! Just goes to show that sometimes I can't force something and that there really IS so much learning that takes place through play.

THURSDAY

I found this computer keyboard for 25 cents this week at a garage sale, and since Punkin has been enamored with wanting to use my "puter" I set up a little "play" computer for her at her table. She has played so much with it this week! She'll climb up onto her chair and tell me she's typing on her "puter." Sometimes I'll even hear her saying what letter or number she is "typing." Since we are working on lowercase letters right now, I think I will take little stickers with lowercase letters on them and cover the capital letters on the keyboard.

She wanted to do some more letter tracing. She did these in the picure all by herself!

And of course, she found out it was just as much fun to erase her lines.

FRIDAY

I used painters tape to tape ice cream numbers in order on the floor. Right now Punkin is into "jumping" so I helped her jump to the numbers in order as we said them. Then, she wanted to step on each one. Finally after a few times of that, she decided she was done and went in order and picked them up off the floor one by one. I had her tell me each number she picked up as she did it. (Sidenote: I have noticed lately that she is calling a 9 a 6. Guess we'll have to work more on that.)

We went outside and blew some bubbles. She can actually get a few bubbles out by herself now which makes her giggle.

I also brought out the sidewalk chalk for the first time this week. She loves it and calls them "dalk." She enjoyed drawing as well as lining them up in a row. Unfortunately, she also found it fun to throw them to see them break in pieces. :(

After playing chalk, she had it all over her. I had brought out a spray bottle (for another activity), so I sprayed her with it to wipe it down. She thought that was great. Then, I showed her how to do it, and she tried her best. She didn't get much out, but she had fun trying.

SATURDAY

I took those same ice cream numbers and taped them up around the kitchen for her to go find. She had fun at first, but then got freaked out when Daddy was using the nail gun ("Daddy's noise") in the kitchen, and that was the end of that.

Saturday was Daddy's birthday, so we made him a torn paper collage as a card. She really stayed focused on this better than I thought. The tearing was hard for her, so I had to help her by starting the tear for her to finish. In the end, I did most of the tearing for her, and she did the gluing and putting the pieces on.

I glued some pieces around the edges to finish it off, and then we wrote, "Happy Birthday, Daddy!" on it.

While I was making lunch, I gave Punkin her bean tub, a couple measuring cups, and some of her drinking cups. She had a blast pouring beans into the cups.

Of course, we also had a bit of mess to clean up, but that's part of the fun, right?

Since Punkin's birthday and Daddy's birthday are so close, and since we are going to be gone on her birthday, we had a party Saturday night for them both. She got a doll stroller, swing, and highchair, and a big kitchen which were both a big hit!

Eating cake.... :) Punkin is allergic to milk, and last year we were thinking maybe eggs, too, so last year I had to make her a special cake that was.....not so good. This year I could use Duncan Hines yellow cake mix because it doesn't have milk and Pillsbury frosting. She has never really had cake before (we are also picky about how much sugar we allow her to have), so she thoroughly enjoyed it and has been asking for "more cake pease" since then. :)

Another thing we did a lot this week was categories. She started this on her own one day by starting to name all the things she saw at the parade. One other day she saw the park and started naming all the things at the park. On another day, when she saw the airplane in the sky, she also started naming other things in the sky like clouds, moon, etc. Each time, I tried to expand on what she was saying and ask, "What else can you see at the park?" or "What else can you see in the sky?" It was kinda an impromptu activity that turned into quite a great Tot School lesson!

Next week I will try to get back to my "ice cream" activities, but we'll see. Visit 1+1+1=1 to see what other tots were up to this week.