Tot School

Nathan is 23 months old

We had a great week of tot school!!! We ended last week with a great group tot school time at Melissa and Alaina's house. Thank you Melissa for all the prep and planning you put into this time!

The kiddos used cookie cutters to paint with... and idea I've seen on several tot school websites, most recently here...

Next, the kids (with some help) spread peanut butter on dried bred and then dipped it in bird seed. It made a great bird feeder as the weather gets colder!

The most entertaining part for me was watching these three decorate turkey cookies. None of them eat much candy or sugar and the icing, gum drops, candy corn were all so delicious to these kiddos. They did manage to decorate their turkeys, but not without some snacking for sure!

Great sensory activity... catching feathers!

Life school... learning to put on warm clothes: hats, gloves, coats, scarfs, etc.

At home, we had great fun and jumped into some new activities as well as some old favorites... floam is hard to find these days, but such a great medium for strengthening the hands, great texture for sensory play, and it's not at all messy!

Open-ended art... this idea came from Rocker Tot's mom... here...

One day this past week, we went on a nature walk with Beesa and Izzy and Madison and Shelby and collected treasures.

Then, the kids put their treasures on contact paper, but not before we mommies took a group shot.

This is Nathan's collage. He did a great job putting them on. I love to watch him do open ended projects like this. Thanks Bethany for the idea!!!

This week's art... cookie cutter finger paint, gluing leafs on hats (did at group tot school at Melissa's), popcorn on corn and a cotton ball ghost (both at preschool), and the nature collage. Nathan likes the art on the fridge. He talks about it every day!

Starfall.com with daddy! This was so fun to stand back and watch.

Life skill/fine motor... plucking grapes of the stems. He loved it!

I made Nathan a tree out of felt and he loved putting the leaves on and taking them off.

More open ended art... lots of glue was used on this project!!!

Coloring is becoming one of Nathan's favorite things to do! He's getting so good at it too!

This particular day, we used all kinds of crayons (tadoodles, thin crayons, chunky ones, broken ones...) and he learned how to color using the side of the crayon.

When Lucy came to babysit one night, I left them some activities and like any fabulous babysitter, not only did she do the crafts with Nathan, she also photographed it for me! Love you Lucy!

Group tot school this past Friday was at Bethany and Izzy's house. This bug sorting game from Discovery Toys was a huge hit!

Nathan loved making these puppets, but they were certainly not toddler proof and putting the ears and eyes on was trumped by ripping them off!

Nathan learned to stand the crayons on end and spent quite a bit of time this week perfecting this balancing skill.

We drew the elements of itsy bitsy spider and then as a group we sang the song. SO much fun! This is Nathan singing "washed the spider out".

Helping mommy cook. He's turned into quite the helper! In the last week, he's helped make pancakes, eggs, bacon, quiche, coffee, and cereal!

My favorite moment of the week...

Chad and Nathan do so many musical things together. Chad does a remarkable job letting Nathan explore piano and guitar and exposing him to the different sounds and rhythms. They can be found playing piano or guitar together most evenings. PRECIOUS!

Link up your post and share your tot school ideas with us! Check out Carissa's blog here...

Tot School - the last two weeks

Nathan is currently 23 months old

These past two weeks have been crazy! We had so many Halloween/fall parties to go to and we had so much fun at each one! Nathan dressed up in his Fireman costume close to 10 times and got to spend a lot of time hanging out with lots of kiddos. He also had lots of opportunities to bounce in bounce houses, ride horses, play carnival games, climb, get candy for mommy, learn about people in costumes, meet new friends, and so much more! In the little bit of down time we had, here's what we've been up to during tot school...

Nathan has learned how to put these stretchy hats on all by himself and he insisted upon wearing it for the better part of a day. He walked around patting his hat and saying, "you're wearing a santa hat. Ho!Ho!Ho!" We also worked a few times on cutting these cool velcro fruits.

We did quite a bit of fine motor work this week... coloring...

first time painting with a paint set... (here we also worked on sequencing and left to right... dip the brush in the water, dip it in a color, then paint)

fun with pearler beads (I've been making ornaments all week for Jesse Tree with these beads and he's wanted to get in on the fun)...

putting pasta into really small holes on a lid...

putting pearler beads into a small hole punched in another lid...

lacing beads... So much fun fine motor stuff!

We also did a few file folder activities thanks to Carissa and www.filefolderfun.com. This name game below is from a Big Machines tot book by Carissa.

Matching the egg to the dino from www.filefolderfun.com.

This is a size sequencing activity from Carissa's 5 Little Monkeys tot book.

Also this week, we worked on sorting by color... with the added fun of stacking!

And of course, there are always towers to build and crash.

Nathan has really begun to enjoy building different things with his mega blocks. This was a great exercise in self control as the instructions were to keep the blocks on the high chair tray.

Just today, I found a new book by Roger Priddy called Magnetic Learning Colors. I LOVED IT! It comes with square magnets (and a case they fit nicely in which attaches to the book) and the child can find where the magnets go on each page!

I made these letters for Nathan out of Pearler beads and we had fun identifying them!

He gave knuckle touches (boooooyah!) to the picture I called out.

Lastly, Nathan wore at least 50 pairs of shoes in the last week. He loves to find shoes and put them on. Today, he told me he was going to wear Beesa's shoes to preschool, and out the door he walked... well shuffled. He wore his sneakers in, but during the ride to preschool, he wore them for part of the time. Silly boy!

Join other moms from all over as we teach our tots through fun learning adventures! Check out other blogs by visiting Carissa's blog. Have fun learning!