Tot School in August!

Nathan is 33 months old now and what a wonderful August it has been!  We’ve taken a break from formal tot school, but the learning has still continued!  We’ve had many trips and vacations as well as some extra time with Daddy home!  Our theme for August has been good clean fun… or so it seems from the pictures!
Nathan found a roll of toilet paper in the living room which had been hiding behind the couch for a while (it was left after a bridal shower game).  He asked if he could play with it and of course, me being the practical, mess hating, rule oriented one would have said no.  Daddy, who answered first said, SURE and the fun began!  They must have TP’d our entire downstairs and oh did they have fun!  Bailey even joined in on the unrolling.  The best part?  Nathan was just as excited to clean it all up!

Nathan has been really into pretending lately and it’s been fun to watch him recreate different stories.  One morning whilc at the park, he tried to recreate “the grumpy old troll who lives under the bridge”.  He was the troll and Izzy was trying to cross the bridge.  Too funny to hear their conversation!

Nathan has spent quite a bit of time “fishing” this summer as well.  He catches all kinds of different sea creatures and colorful fish with each cast.  More pretend play, but also some good water safety (wearing a life jacket on the dock, paying attention to the edge, not casting the line toward people, etc).  Also while at YaYa and PaPa’s house, he learned the fun of playing in a cooler filled with water.  We talked about the water level when he was in vs. out of the cooler as well as which toys would sink or float.
  
We have done a few formal tot school sessions in preparation for preschool which starts in just a few days!  Nathan loves to cut with his tiger scissors and is growing quite proficient with them.
 
He still has an intense love for reading and letters and we’ve been working on sounding out words all summer.  During this activity, I placed two cards in front on him and asked him to do different things using his trains to show me he could find the right word.  For example, “place Toby on “dog” and Percy on “go”.”  “Drive Percy and Toby over the word “cat.”  “ Place Percy on the word “exit.”  It was a challenge as sometimes the words were very similar and he couldn’t rely just on memory or the first letters. 

We also continued to work on letters and beginning word sounds with this animal mat.  It has 16 different animals and they start with various letters, but not all different sounds.  Given the pile of letters that corresponded with the beginning sound, I asked Nathan to match the correct letter to the correct animal.  He really enjoyed doing this, and of course Percy and Toby had to watch.

Along with some preschool readiness things, we’ve been doing more life skill types of things like sorting laundry, setting the table, putting the dishes away, putting clothes away, washing dishes, etc.  Nathan loves to play in this sink and “wash” his toys.  He also discovered he could use the tongs to pick up the toys out of the soapy water.  This is a new favorite activity at our house these days and it keeps him occupied for 30 minutes or more.  And don’t worry, for those of you out there (like me) who find kitchen sinks disgusting… I clorox it before his little hands get anywhere near it!

We’ve spent much time at playgrounds of all sorts this summer and Nathan has really turned into a skilled climber.  His gross motor skills and motor planning skills are certainly put to the test during these kinds of climbing.

Keeping up with the gross motor development… We’ve been practicing balancing on one foot from the floor, the top of the bilibo, on flat foot, tippy toe, etc.  We’ve also been talking about how to get from one place to another – galloping, slithering, crawling, rolling, etc.  These are really fun to act out and it’s a great way to incorporate which animals crawl or run or slither!  FYI: It is not a good idea for a pregnant woman (28 weeks at the time) to try and demonstrate “slithering”.  :)

 
Nathan continues swim lessons a couple times a week (either with a teacher or with us).  He’s able to swim close to 30 feet completely on his own without coming up for air.  He can dog paddle and has a pretty good freestyle stoke as well (“big arms”).  He can back and front flip underwater (with a little push from mom and dad), log roll through the water without help, belly flop, he’s learning to dive in frontwards, he can back dive (his version – stand backwards on the ladder and fall into the water and do a flip underwater and come back to the ladder"), jump in and retrieve something and swim back to the side, and he’s learning to get his head above water all by himself to get a breath.  We know he can but he doesn’t do it nearly enough.

Chad found a “science experiment” in our backyard.  We have a baby pool on the side of the house that had filled with rain while we were out of town.  A frog, well more like lots of frogs, jumped in a laid eggs.  Chad found HUNDREDS of tadpoles in there.  We brought some in on 8/20 and have been watching them turn into frogs.  They are simple to care for, and just require a little lettuce and water changes.  We’ll keep you posted on the process of their metamorphosis!
  
That’s our month in a nutshell!  Have you been doing tot school too?  Please link up your post to Carissa’s host post! 
Interested in finding out more?  Click here!! www.1plus1plus1equals1.blogspot.com

Puddles are one of the great joys of childhood

  

Nathan-isms from today

Both of these conversations happened at bedtime tonight...

Me: "Nathan, what would you like to pray about tonight?"

N: thinks for a second... "the BIIIIIG poopie I put in the potty lasterday" (aka - in the past, in this case a few hours back)

M: "you want to pray for your poopie?"

N: "well, yes!"

M: "okay... Lord Jesus, thank you for this beautiful day and for teaching Nathan to poopie on the potty, and for giving him the ability to put BIIIG poopies in the potty..."

- you know you're a parent when you thank Jesus for BIIIIIG poopies.

About 3 minutes later... apparently poopie was still in his mind.

M: "Night night little man, I love you."

N: "Mommy wait, I've got another poopie to put in the potty."

M: "are you telling the truth or just trying to get out of bed?"

(you see this happens every single night and often at nap time, and usually he really does have to go, but still, when will the kiddo learn to go 15 minutes earlier when we're already on the potty?)

N: "I really am telling the truth. I have to put the poopie in the potty."

M: "okay, let's go... thank you for telling the truth."

after about a minute of straining (both to see out the window and in attempt to convince me that he really did have to go poopie) there is no production. He simply declares...

N: "Mommy, I think the poopie must have gone to sleep. It's time to go back to my bed and go to sleep."

I just had to share!

Sneak Peak

 

WordlessWednesday

  

the possibilities are endless…

Bilibo play on a sick day!

When Nathan is sick, you rarely know it.  He has the best spirit and it’s hard to determine if he’s sick sometimes.  Well Tuesday night when he woke up puking out his brains, we knew he was sick.  The fever of almost 103 also tipped us off.  Wednesday was a snuggle on the sofa day.  Thursday, though the fever still remained, Nathan got a little burst of energy and this is what we spent it on.  These Bilibo’s are awesome!  http://www.bilibo.com  Check them out!

 

Sitting in it while I try to spin him, he tries to keep his core stable and not fall out… the second picture shows how it usually happens. :)

 

Standing on the bilibo on one foot, your right foot, your left foot, on your toes, jumping off… great tot school, great practice in following directions and an awesome core workout!

 

Of course there was plenty of time for kiddo directed play… like rolling on the billibo, flying to the moon, and riding a wakeboard like daddy.   Love the imagination!!!

 

We both got to giggling about something and I couldn’t resist these pictures! I love the one in the middle with Nathan’s legs drawn up… he was laughing so hard!  You can kinda see in the last picture that he was loosing steam and starting to feel puny again…. but he had one more adventure in his pocket…

 

Scary eyes!  He found this hysterical and we both did it many many times much to the delight of the other.  This morning, Nathan brought the bilibo into the bathroom where Chad was getting ready for work.  I’m not sure if Chad was more startled or cracked up but the reaction was exactly what Nathan had hoped for! :)