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!!!