Tot School

Nathan is currently 19.5 months old.

We had another great week of tot school. Looking back I feel as though we spent much of our time with friends and in the pool, and sadly I didn't get many pictures of those events. Speaking of the pool... we have a fish for a son. He loves to be thrown way up into the air only to come crashing down into the water. He pops up and begs for more. He's also running and jumping in the pool both with and without a float. He's really loving having a pool so close to home!

On to tot school...
Books, books, books! Nathan loves books and has started to memorize most of his books. He also loves these picture books and loves to learn the names of everything!

This week, instead of crayons, we've tried bathtub markers. Here he is drawing with blue inside the orange circle. This focused on colors as well as following directions. We also worked on spelling his name and him tracing the letters.

Threading small beads on a string. These beads were a little small for Nathan and he quickly became frustrated, but with some help, he managed to string all 10 that I'd set before him.

Connect 4 - the perfect game for hand and eye coordination, working on crossing the mid line (see him reaching with his left arm across the mid point of his body), colors, and taking turns. We play it almost daily. I hope to start patterns with this soon.

Nathan likes these puzzles a set of 6 I found at target. They are made of foam and each picture is an animal made of 2 pieces. He needs help to turn it the right way, but loves to push the foam pieces in and name the animals.
After we completed all 6 puzzles, I made a cube with them and he then pushed all the pieces into the center of the cube and then pulled them out of the holes. Such a fun thing to watch him do and a constructive way to be destructive! :)

More puzzles... and an outfit Nathan picked out all by himself. Don't you love this "taylor guitar" onesie... especially with the completely UNMATCHING shorts. He sure looks cute though! And he talked about daddy all day because daddy plays guitar.

I finally got this Melissa and Doug see and spell for Nathan. He loves letters and puzzles, so I knew it would be a hit. He really enjoyed putting the different letters in and naming them. He sometimes needed help to get the letters lined up, but not nearly as much help as I thought. We'll be doing this much more!

Speaking of letters, we tried the bottle cap spelling again and he was much better at it. I think if I put pictures on the cards like Carissa, he'd enjoy it much more... that will be added to my project list!

Another fun "crossing mid line activity" was putting stickers in a notebook. I put the book on the left side and asked him to put the stickers on using his right hand. I also tried it the opposite way, but it became apparent that Nathan is definitely right handed! :)

We got this idea from Rocker Tot and his mom... hammering golf tees (aka nails) into foam. Nathan loved pounding them in "all de way". Next time I'll get upholstery foam instead of the green fake flower foam. It was really messy!

This was the first time I'd seen Nathan color with one hand and hold the paper still with the other! Way to go little man! He also named all of the body parts of the cat while coloring on them. SO much fun!
Daddy and Nathan went out for a bit one afternoon this week, and Nathan came home with two new toys... WHICH HE LOVES. The first was a sky ball. Basically a huge bouncy ball. He loves to carry it around (it is currently in his bed while he's sleeping) and bounce it!

The other fun toy... Tee ball!!!! Yeah for daddy for thinking of this. Nathan and daddy had tons of fun in the backyard learning to hit the ball. Nathan did a great job keeping his eye on the ball! He also did well putting the ball back on the tee. Yeah little man!


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