23 month photos with Leo

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Wordless Wednesday

Tot School

Nathan is 23 months old

Another great week of tot school has come and gone... and not surprisingly, is being posted a bit late! :) This week, we had unseasonably warm weather, which afforded Nathan and his best buddy Izzy, some time to soak up the sun outdoors. We colored with sidewalk chalk a lot this week, yep, even on the trees. Yaya and Papa came to visit and they also colored quite a bit with our little man.

We colored with sidewalk chalk a lot this week, yep, even on the trees. Yaya and Papa came to visit and they also colored quite a bit with our little man.

We got out some musical instruments several times this week and worked on rhythm, following directions, and colors.

This was a test run to see if Nathan understood small, medium and big. He had trouble with this at first, but quickly grasped small and big which I knew he knew. Medium introduced a new size, but eventually, he got the hang of it.

Sorting different objects by color... aka "crashing" the objects into the tray and trying to "crash" them into the right hole. His persistence paid off and he managed to get them all sorted correctly.

Here's a closer look. He had to put the pipe cleaners through the buttons... each and every one. That made my husband and I laugh.

Spelling his name with lids provides another good challenge. I know he can do it, but for some reason, he hates the lids. I think I'll try a new strategy here.

Spoon skills... Nathan eats well with both a spoon and a fork, but we're trying to break his habit of turning the spoon upside down. We practiced this a lot this week.

Spooning lentils into a funnel with daddy. He loved this... especially the daddy time.

FRUGAL TOT SCHOOL... and great for restaurants... there are two holes in the gerber baby food lid; one vertical and one horizontal. He loves to put things in slots/holes still, so this is a favorite.

Puzzles, puzzles, puzzles.

Group tot school was at Colton's house this week. His mommy planned some great activities for the kiddos and they loved it. They started with instruments of all kinds and we sang songs, danced, and made music.

Then we moved to lacing beads in a pattern, the kids didn't really get the pattern, but it was a great color exercise and fabulous fine motor development.

BEANS!!!

All three kiddos love beans dumped on their heads... thus there was much dumping, and much cleanup!

This was Nathan's favorite activity... a tube from a roll of fabric and different sized balls. He must have done this a thousand times. He quickly figured out which balls were too big to go in the hole and started giving those to Izzy and Colton. Little Stinker!

Running in circles, dancing, and moving to the music.

Ring around the rosie is always better with a friend...

or two.

Bowling! A huge hit due to the crash factor. Hee hee!

It was a great week and we look forward to another week of new ideas and old favorites. Join us and participate in tot school too! Check out Carissa's blog to see what other moms are up to with their tots!

Tot School

Nathan is 22 months old

We had a great week of tot school and I'm excited to share the pictures with you! I FINALLY put velcro on the file folder games I made for Nathan (4 months ago) and realized as I was doing it, how much he's learned in the last little bit. He did several of the activities this week and they were no challenge for him, but he did enjoy them. He enjoyed this one in particular as he learned the names of the dog breeds. Somehow, he knew "dahmashen" already. I asked his daddy, and he said they've talked about Dalmatians before bed while reading the fire truck book. Oh. That explains it! :)

Three part puzzles were also a hit. We talked about front legs, head, and back legs as we matched the pieces to form several animals.

Sorting shapes... I thought this would be more challenging for him, but I was wrong. I'll have to come up with more challenging sorting since he seemed to enjoy it!

Our FAVORITE activity of the week was open ended play doh. It started as an exercise with cookie cutters and morphed into so much more!

I added tooth picks to his tray which he LOVED. He started sticking them in the little balls of play doh he'd made.

Then, he got this concentrated look on his face and before I knew it...

he'd stuck two toothpicks into a cylindrical piece of playdoh and started exclaiming, "nay nay made a airpane. you see it fiiii (fly)? fiiii up high in da sky? you see dat mommy?" I was so proud of his creation, as was he. He made several other creations from play doh and tooth picks and played happily in his high chair for a good 45 minutes with this can of white play doh and 20 toothpicks... amazing.

It changed shape again as I added these foam shapes. He stuck them on the toothpicks, pressed them into the dough, sat the shapes on top of mountains, all kinds of things. This activity will be common place in our house for a while! It was so much fun!

Catching water in the tub was another big hit. While Chad poured the water from up high, Nathan tried to catch it in this plastic bottle. Great for hand and eye coordination!!

Poker chips belong in sippy cups don't they? Well when your tot thinks this is a bank and you like that it won't break... they sure do belong! :) Our monkey bank broke so we've created our own piggy bank. Nathan talked about the colors of the chips, that they were circles, and loved the sound they make when they hit the others in the cup.

Stir sticks into holes in a box. A variation of pasta through holes in a cereal box.

Gluing blue and red rectangles onto paper. I squirted out the glue and asked him to cover it with rectangles. He did a great job but freaked out whenever he got glue on his fingers. That's a mommy trait!

This was the first sorting activity we've done with categories of sorting instead of identical item sorting. I asked him to stick the ball stickers on the right side of the paper and the animal stickers on the left side. He did great with the balls, but I realized we've not talked about a pig is also an animal, yet he knows there are animals at the zoo, farm, etc. Once he got the hang of what I was asking he did great, but he kept wanting to put the animals on the ball side so the animals could play with the balls. Funny kiddo!

After sorting the stickers, he wanted to color on his paper... of course I happily provided him with a pen and walked away to clean up something. He discovered that pens color on your hands and I wish I'd gotten a picture of that! He didn't like that the ink didn't come off for more than a day and won't do it again for a while I hope.

This week, we've worked a lot on spoon feeding. He mastered the fork so early and has been working on not dumping the spoon before it gets to his mouth. He does well with things like hummus, peanut butter, and some yogurts, but this week we tried runnier yogurt and meals. He likes to turn the spoon upside down in his mouth... any suggestions for correcting that?

This week, Chad helped me "refelt" our consignment find felt board. With a fresh coat of felt it was as good as new and Nathan LOVES playing with the people. He likes to put different colors of shirts/pants on the people and arrange them in different ways. Today, we talked about bigger and smaller, the colors of the clothes, and where you put them on the people.

I upped the challenge with the word boards and gave him three boards and 9 letters all at the same time and he did great! Instead of turning the "d" upside down to use as a "p" he turned the whole board around. I thought that was funny. The shoes were worn for over an hour this morning although we didn't get to their main purpose... buckling, zipping, buttoning... he just walked around in them!

This week, I brought out these puzzles, another consignment find, and I realized how much more of a challenge they are. We started talking about the corners and how to match the piece with the shape instead of the pictures. I like that these challenge him more and I look forward to doing more of these together in the weeks to come!

We had a great week and hope you did too!!! To check out what other moms are doing with their tots, visit Carissa's website by clicking here. Join us!!!

Tot School

Nathan is 22 months old

With this being our first week of preschool, we made sure to take a tiny break from 5 days of tot school and spent 1 day laying on the couch recovering from being sick, and 1 day at the fair!!!!! Actually, we spent Wednesday celebrating Bethany's birthday, and her request was to celebrate by going to the fair. So, tot school traveled to the fair. My little guy learned all about roasted corn, fudge, gyros, funnel cakes, rides, tickets, chickens, sheep shaving, all sorts of things!!! We also learned that Ethan was the most daring of the bunch! Look at him and his mommy Lauren riding these swings!

Nathan loved riding the pony, once he got used to the idea of mommy not riding with him.

At the end, he gave freckles a pat and said , "tank you horse for da ride"

Sadly, this is the only picture I have of the birthday girl (while she's taking a picture of her little one on the pony). We were more into having fun than complete photo documentation on this particular day. :)

Nathan wasn't a huge fan of the rides, but this one was an exception. All kinds of construction vehicles and steering wheels. He and Izzy and I crammed in a dump truck and had a great spin on the "construction zone".

Now for more "structured" tot school... remember this game? I played it as a kid and Bethany found it at a consignment sale and thought Nathan would love it. For now, we're not timing him, that would be cruel and unusual at 22 months, but he does LOVE to put the pieces in and on the first try put every single piece in the correct hold the first try. It amazes me how good he is at this kind of activity.

Then we worked on fine motor and story telling with stickers... do you see how he put the dog "in" the dog house? He said that one needed to sleep and the one above it needed a bath and some water. So cute to see him tell these stories about the puppies.

Next was some free form play with the colored bears.

Before I knew it, he was arranging them like this with their hands and feet touching. I asked him what they were doing and he said, "da bears holdin hands. dey bein' kind. be kind to izzy and hold her hand." I think he was reenacting some of the character lessons we've been learning this week while playing with Izzy. Lots of talking about how to be kind with our words and hands.

These puzzles are new and Nathan loved them. You match the hands with the gloves, feet with socks, etc. He really enjoyed putting them together.

When I put them in a big pile for him to sort, he had no trouble finding the matches a second time.

Another day we worked on counting. he really liked the pumpkin erasers and held one for the better part of 2 hours one afternoon.

This week for our group tot school, we worked on the pumpkin counting as well as the first letter of every one's name. I regret that I didn't get a group shot this week, but I did get some pictures of the trays prior to tot school. We used "do a dot" markers to put dots inside the N. While it dried, we talked about the letter "N" and Nathan identified the pictures in the "N" book, put together the N puzzles and the nest puzzle. Once the markers dried, we took stickers of objects starting with "N" as well as letter N stickers and he stuck them to the page.

More accurately, he crashed the stickers onto the page. :)

He also worked on more letter recognition and name recognition by putting the foam letter stickers in the appropriate spots on his name card. He was much better at this than I expected!

He's done more art work this week than in the last 6 months! Take a look at our fridge! The plastic baggie is Jonah in the whale, his letter N, a fire hydrant from school (amazingly the teacher put on the glue and Nathan put on the pasta and tissue paper. I was amazed at his straight line of "water"), foam name, and gluing leaves from group tot school!

How do you guys display your child's art work? I'm in need of suggestions!!! Check out what others are doing for their tot schools here. Join us!!!