Tot School

Nathan is 25.5 months old

We had a great week and used tons of ideas from our other tot school mommies this week! Before I get to those fabulous ideas... a swimming update. Our friends had a hot tub installed in their backyard... we have the privilege of getting in 2-4 days a week. Nathan hasn't been in a pool since October when we stopped swimming lessons, and all it took was one visit into the hot tub and he was back to his fearless water loving ways. He belly flops in the water, swims under from person to person, jumps, and is TOTALLY fearless (I know, we need to teach him a healthy respect for the water, we're working on that). In the mean time, we've been using bath time to refine some of those great swimming skills...

great bubbles Nathan! too bad our tub isn't deeper, he really wants to be swimming here!

Okay, on to tot school. This has been the week of lots of activities, but no real theme, rhyme or reason. I received a pottery barn kids catalogue in the mail. The pictures were irresistible, so we turned it into an activity! I cut out 8-15 giraffes, balls, and boats along with 10 other "distractor pictures" - ie pictures that weren't giraffes, balls, or boats. We started with the distractors and boats in a pile and I asked Nathan to glue all the boats onto the paper...

He did it perfectly! It was such a hit that we did the balls and giraffes later that day.

I introduced Nathan to the game "memory". Actually Moose and Zee from Noggin did, but this was the first time he'd ever played with me. He really enjoyed it and loved the concept of matches.

Nathan did tons of puzzles this week too. This was one shot of him working on the dolphins.

He loves all things related to tools and this is one of his fabulous Christmas presents from Nana and Papa. He can take out all the screws and take the airplane apart with minimal help. Great activity all around.

Usually Nathan loves all things related to tot school. Occasionally, I stumble on an activity that he doesn't like at all either because it's difficult, boring, or some other reason a 2 year old has. This happened to be one of those activities, as evidenced by his pouty face. Apparently, sequencing the numbers 1-5 is not a favorite activity!

We took this great idea from The Shafer Family and made a cool snowflake using painters tape, blue construction paper, a sponge, and white paint.

see how cool it turned out?

I finally took a pic of our snowman ornaments from Christmas. Didn't they turn out cute? I referenced them in this post and it was an idea from Confessions of a Homeschooler.

Nathan did 2 really cute crafts this past week in preschool... a glittery snowflake...

and this snowman made out of shaving cream. The teacher gave each child eyes, a nose and mouth and asked them to put them where they thought they belonged. This is Nathan's interpretation.

We worked on our shapes, counting, and following directions with this fabulous activity we'd tried before (thank you Shafer family and chasing cheerios again!). The rectangle was a piece of cake for him, so later we worked on learning the difference in a pentagon, hexagon and octagon. He loved counting the sides, but still has a hard time telling them apart unless they are shown as stop sign and school crossing. :)

My favorite project of the week came to me while cleaning up our table. I found some random left over tot school stuff from the week and thought, wouldn't it be fun to create a picture using these. Nathan loves puzzles and matching and shapes, so I set out to find more supplies and then created a scene with the supplies. I carefully traced around them to let Nathan know what they were and the template looked like this...

I gave him the picture and the basket of goodies, and he was off to work.

I was amazed at how well he did! He needed some help staying on task and not smearing the glue everywhere and also needed some help with the straws (the purple door). He did most of this by himself! I was super proud of him!

The finished product!

One day, we played a really cool listening game with his flashlight. I asked him to shine it on, under, above, around, (etc) different objects in his room. For example... on your nose...

on the ceiling above your head...

beside the blue car under your bed... It was tons of fun and a great learning activity!!!

Our letters of the week were G and H.

(cork painting is perfect for these bingo marker print outs from www.makinglearningfun.com)

(so are pompoms!)

Nathan got an awesome sticker book for Christmas called 1000 stickers. It has been a perfect addition to our letter of the week. We spent last week catching up a bit. HE LOVES THIS!

Mr Potato head is full of opportunities!!!

This week, we've spent a ton of time playing with blocks. Nathan has learned to build really tall towers, as well as the importance of asking permission before crashing them! He learned what it felt like when a few of his buddies crashed his prized tower and the lesson was solidified! :) Now he's very good at asking before crashing! :) Building towers is more fun with a friend for sure!

CRASH!!!

In the bath, we worked on pouring water from one orange cup to the next...

and pouring from up high and down low.

Look at this concentration!!!

We got this idea from Ashley who blogs here... I gave Nathan a bucket of cars of different colors and asked him to park them in the correct parking lot. He loved it! Thanks again Ashley!

I also noticed throughout the week, that he's learned to line things up. I've found little lines all over the place...

Even with the trains... often when we leave the trains, Nathan has to leave them lined up just right. It's so fun to watch him learn about "order" in his own world. :)

Nathan also made his own balance beam this week. I think this might have been inspired by the Domino Hill section of Ninja Warrior when he was watching it with daddy. It's crazy hard obstacle courses that hundreds of folks come out to compete in. The best part, it's filmed in Japan and most of the language is Japanese. :) Nathan's favorite part is when the people fall into the mud. :)

I forgot to post about group tot school last week at Bethany's in my last tot school post! I didn't take my camera but we did several great activities. Bethany had 3 matching cups and she put a ball under one and then moved them around and let the kids guess which cup the ball was under. They loved it and their concentrating faces were great. Another activity was putting their hand in a pillow case with familiar objects and guessing what they were. We finished up tot school with a dip in the hot tub! :)

This past week, we had tot school at Melissa's house and learned so much! She had a ton of activities set up all related to food and the kids loved it so much!

Tracing circles and counting pizzas, as well as coloring...

Using food cut out of magazines to let the kids glue their favorite foods on their "plate"...

Play-doh with forks and knives...Nathan's favorite part of this was poking tons of holes in the playdoh with his fork.

Scooping, pouring, sensory galore!

Shopping at the "store" complete with food in categories, a cash register, and money!

During play time, Alaina and Nathan wanted to do the letter puzzles. They had a great time and did well sharing this activity.

Speaking of sharing, Nathan learned a new shortened verse at Alaina's house...

This was essential when building towers from Duplo blocks with Colton. They shared beautifully!

For lunch, Melissa let the kids make their own pizzas. They loved picking out their own toppings and their own amount of toppings! :)

Thank you Melissa and Bethany for the last two weeks of tot school! I appreciate all the hard work you guys put into planning the activities! Ya'll rock!

Doesn't this look like fun? Join us for tot school! Check out Carissa's blog for more details!!