Wilson Ramblings: 15 months

Friday, March 20, 2009

Tot School

This week was a great week in Tot School! Nathan was really into the different learning baskets and often would ask for them! It's so exciting to watch him be eager to learn. So what was he so eager to learn?

Fill and spill - loves it

This new book about trucks and you put wheels on each truck. Big hit! Great for making his wheels turn as he figured out how to attach the wheels.

He also loved pushing the trucks up and down the slide. We worked on the difference in "up" and "down".

Letter Recognition

This little boy LOVES the letter O.

More fill and spill with different balls and an old bottle.

Pop beads - this was quite challenging for him, but with some encouragement he stuck with it and finally made this...

with much help!!!

Shape sorter - a big favorite

He likes to take the top off and fill all the holes like this.

Stacking pegs and pegboard- a new favorite

Object identification - HE LOVES to do this and has for a very long time.

Stickers

This is an animal bowling pin set and although we're not bowling, he loves to pull out the animals, make their noises and put them back into the bag.

Gross motor - pushing and steering

Putting blocks on this wooden train.

Looking for Bailey, airplanes, and the occasional bird

Latches board

Learning more signs - "where?"

Putting pennies in the monkey bank

drawing on the aquadoodle...

for a very long time.

So long, he grew tired, and just laid down on it and almost...

went to sleep.

Tot School with Kristin and Zachary was also a huge success. Kristin planned some great activities like this one... pulling wooden squares with pictures on them out of this bag. The boys loved it and practiced their words as they named what they saw.

PomPoms in the egg sorter

Overall a great week with lots of experiences!!!

Friday, March 13, 2009

Tot School

Nathan is currently 15.5 months old

This week at Tot School was great, although it was less structured than I'd like, but we're still learning and going with the flow! Since the first half of the week was beautiful, we started our lessons outside and worked on...

gross motor - walking, throwing, and aiming... we have some work to do.

reading

sharing - I've realized that this is a concept that's way past a 15 month old's comprehension, and I think sometimes as parents we expect our kids to understand sharing too early. At this age they are so egocentric by nature. Instead of harping on sharing, we're working on waiting our turn and being kind to our friends, which hopefully will be some foundational skills for later when he's developmentally ready to "share".

fine motor and motor planning - buckles (an everyday favorite)

These Learning shoes on little feet... I thought they'd be a hit, but Nathan doesn't quite understand what to do with them yet. We'll keep working on it though as they have some great potential!

Awesome water play - he loved it. While we washed the cars, he played in this bucket pretending to wash too. Mainly he enjoyed putting all kinds of objects in the water and watching what happened.

Tot School with Kristin and Zachary was a big hit too! Kristin planned it this week and had some awesome ideas. She clipped pictures out of magazines and hid them in the Easter eggs. The boys opened the eggs and identified the pictures. Very fun!

The counting and sorting bears were also a hit. Nathan liked to chew on them which was not okay, but we also worked on putting them into containers, colors, and sorting by color. Both boys enjoyed shaking the containers with the bears in them and listening to the noises.

Stacking and nesting

Then, we moved on to objects in containers. The boys shook the containers and learned to take the lids off. This was a great activity because they could look in and see the socks or puppets and identify them and then work on pulling them out and opening the lids and replacing the lids.