Tot School

Nathan is 26.5 months old

This might have been one of my favorite weeks of tot school! I know I always start by saying it was fun, but this week was incredibly fun! I love watching Nathan learn and I think that's why it always feels like such a joy to teach him! :)

I'll start and end with my favorite pics...

Playing with pull back cars is essential to a boy's life... playing with the cars while wearing a giraffe diaper just makes me smile!

Beads from a thrift store, 4 dowels and a flower arranging block and my kiddo was in heaven! I handed him a box of beads, empty dowels, and let him go. He immediately sorted them by color as he stacked them.

When he got to the purple ones, we talked about the difference in a circle and a half circle. He loved making the circles with the two halves and putting them on the dowel two at a time.

I first saw this idea last summer over at Chasing Cheerios and 8 months later, I finally get around to it! :) Procrastination at it's finest! Matching balloon textures was a huge hit with Nathan. The "fillers" I used were playdoh, baby powder (and boy was that a mess), dried beans, and beads.

Sequencing from little to big. He did much better with this than I'd even imagined!

Letters Letters everywhere! Nathan knows all of his letters but we're beginning to work on the sounds the letters make. This leap frog toy left our fridge long ago (thanks to the 26 pieces being strewn about my kitchen floor) but I recently brought it back out for the fun of learning the sounds.

painting an "L" which Nathan insisted be painted upside down... "that L is really a 7 mommy".

L is most definately for Linny from the Wonder Pets.

Of course, that means M is for Ming Ming. Next, Nathan astounded me by saying "where is T for Tuck?" Of course, Tuck had not yet been printed. Way to go mommy!

Making an M with tissue paper squares.

playing boggle jr... a little bit challenging for him but in a good way! fabulous for working on little letters and matching.

Building... what boys life is complete without this?

Numbers and counting...

Learning to order the letters in his name without a template

Play-doh - why didn't I think to invent this stuff?

Puzzles Puzzles everywhere!

I cut out pictures of thomas trains that Nathan has and then laid them out on the table and asked him to find the correct train and match to the picture... piece of cake, but so much fun!

Same concept here, only with his animals.

This was a huge art week for us!!! There was much painting and coloring in the Wilson household!!!

Nathan painting his first face... independently.

He made this snowman while Chad and I were doing dishes and proudly announced from the other side of the room that he'd painted a snowman. Sure enough there are three circles, each increasing in size! Can I tell you how proud I was... first a face, then a snowman!

Then he topped all that drawing off with 2 pictures of rainbows. I was astounded that he has this ability! Of course, it will go down in the baby book!

Practicing circles

Fingerprints and lessons of how special we are to God...

He loves to trace his hand... and have it traced (mommy's trace blue... naynay's trace red)

I haven't posted a "what's on your tot's plate" lately, but this is an example of an every day lunch when we're home...raw broccoli, raw bell peppers, celery, apples and blueberries, black olives, kids greek yogurt and hummus... complete with some wheat thins. He eats better than I do... way better.

I'll leave you with my two favorites from this week.

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Tot School

Nathan is 26.5 months old

We had another great week of tot school! Nathan was still not quite himself and recovering from being sick, and so I took the opportunity to soak up as many snuggles as I could! In between the snuggles, this little man was a busy boy!

We worked on identifying numbers, counting various amounts, and matching amounts to the number using these puzzles.

I saw this idea on Bear's blog and just had to try it! This activity also reinforces counting as well as fine motor. I gave Nathan the strips of playdoh with the beads already in place and asked him to count out the correct number of toothpicks and place them in the beads.

He was much more interested in playing with the playdoh and toothpicks and making an airplane, as shown below. :)

As always, Nathan did plenty of puzzles. he's able to do the 12 piece wooden puzzles quite well and when given encouragement from afar, is able to complete most of them without any help. We began to do more 24 piece puzzles this past week and he likes them a lot, but still needs quite a bit of help.

This week we talked about the letters J and K.

Quite a bit of painting happened at our house this week! Nathan used pink, white, and red paint to celebrate Valentines day!

(this boy is efficient)

Bethany had a great idea for making valentines for friends and family... after painting paper (tons of paper)...

she showed me how to cut the kiddos hand print out of a folded piece of paper and their hands make a heart. Nathan and I made this special Valentine for daddy... of course mommy forgot to turn it the other way when I wrote on it, so technically the hands are upside down. :)

Nathan also got a chore chart this week which he LOVES!!!!! We started out with things he enjoys and have not yet told him he'd get a prize for completing the chores. Right now there is enough reward in getting to put a sticker on the chart!
Speaking of stickers, they are a great fine motor tool! We printed this from www.makinglearningfun.com and instead of using do-a-dot markers, we used stickers to fill in this panda bear!
This came from the same website. Nathan and I talked about the world, what it was, the colors of the earth, that God created the world, and about God's love for us. He matched heart stickers to the hearts on the page and then colored the world.

Stickers and the letters J and K

Fine motor stuff is so much fun!!! We got this idea from several blogs, but I first saw it on the Shafer family blog here... Nathan challenged himself by scooping up a jewel in each end of the spoon and dumping them out one at a time. I was super impressed with his focus and balance!
Using tongs and jingle bells! So much fun!
This is another idea from the Jill's blog... using a pill box and pony beads, I asked Nathan to open each "door" and put a bead in. Of course he then wanted to shut the doors, and then open them and dump out the beads and start over! :)

I found this set of puzzles at Costco and we started focusing a bit more attention on the little letters. Many of them are so similar to their "big" counterparts that there's no need to teach, but a few of them are quite different. Using these puzzles, we worked on identifying the letters, their sounds, how to spell different words, and puzzle skills. :)

To further reinforce the concept of big and little letters, we read this alphabet wheel book.

One of Nathan's favorite things to do in his room is read. He loves book and always has. I found him reading to Bailey while seated atop an ottoman this past week. It was so cute hearing him read and animate all the verses to the Itsy Bitsy Spider as he read the book.

When baby Piper was born, I thought Nathan would be interested in her, but certainly not enamored... boy was I wrong. He's down right smitten with her! He and Izzy get lots of practice being gentle and taking care of her. This is a cute pic of them talking to her, brushing her hair and patting her. :) (And the "w-sit" Nathan is proudly displaying... we're working on correcting that... any suggestions?).

Group tot school!!!

We had a make up day on Monday and our regular group tot school on Friday and it was so fun to see these kiddos learning and the fun they were having. At Kristin/Colton's house on Monday, the kids did an ABC hunt, they made instruments out of beads and foil cupcake tins, they danced and sang, and my favorite??? Kristin dumped at least 50 little pompoms, bears, buttons, beads, etc all over the playroom and the kids as a group had to pick them all up and sort them by color into bowls. I loved it! Great ideas Kristin!

These two pictures crack me up... the top one the kids are listening to the instructions about the color sort activity. They are watching in horror/shock/amazement as Kristin dumps the huge bowl out all over the floor... the bottom picture is when Kristin told them they got to pick up all the little pieces!
I neglected to take my camera to Friday's tot school! Colton and Kristin were absent because Kristin was having baby Kaylie at the very time we were having tot school!!! Alaina, Nathan and Izzy all 3 asked where Colton was, but they enjoyed Bethany's tot school activities without their buddy. Bethany lead great activities too! The theme was listening to instructions and following directions. She has a parachute and that was a huge hit! The kids were asked to jump, go under, shake, lift their hands up, wait, turn to the left, right, etc. Then she taped footprints all over the floor and asked the kids to step only on the footprints as they followed a path. We ended by putting objects in a pillow case and asking the kids to reach in and pull out certain items. Great ideas Bethany!!!

I'll leave you with my two favorite photos from this last week... Nathan and his beloved automoblox. He has 5 cars now and loves to interchange all the parts. Chad and I both love these cars too and we all 3 play with them almost daily! :) I love to see Nathan's creativity as he builds all kinds of cars. His favorite to build is a limo. :)

Please join the fun and start doing tot school with your tot! For more info, check out Carissa's blog here! You'll be so glad you did!!