We Love to Learn Through Play and Tot School (August)

I love being a stay-at-home mom and feel really blessed spending my days with my son in this way. I also love taking pictures of all the things we are doing and sharing them with other moms who are doing the same. We've been on the go a lot this summer, so for this post I captured the highlights of the month of August. I love that we have so many fun things to do where J is learning too.

**J is 39 months old**

Favorite Activity; His Books

We spend lots of time at the library turning in the old books and getting the new ones. J spends hours each day "reading" them. His comprehension of these books is really good, and anything we read together he then spends his time "reading" aloud on his own. He has even started reading them back to me, which I love. He loves to take his books and line them up on this chair, his favorite reading spot.

PlayDoh Set

I finally found a good set of PlayDoh tools to purchase. There are so many fun things to do; using the scissors, using the shape outlines and rolling pins. This is an activity daddy and mommy enjoy too!

The Hungry Box Man

We got this activity idea from Stef Green's Refresh newsletter. My son loves playing with boxes, but this one was even harder to resist. I made a face and cut a hole for the mouth, then we got all his play food and he had fun "feeding" him. Then he would dump it out and start all over again.

Making a Library

J actually came up with this idea, taken from the back of a "Lego series" book! In the back of the book, it says "Make your own Lego library", so one day J decided to do that with his own books. He laid them all out on the floor and then took turns reading his favorites.

Tent Making

This has been a favorite activity of late; making tents. J can spend hours in here with his books, his "cuties" (stuffed animals) and anything else he can think to bring in there. It's a real bonus when he convinces mommy to squeeze in there too!

Learning Letters and Sounds with the Computer

We've had this toy computer for a while now, but J is taking much more interest in it of late, even asking to keep it in his bed when he sleeps. He can now play the games for real, instead of just pretending. He loves a phonetic game where it is "raining" letters and he needs to catch them in the bucket by pressing the matching letter. This has really helped with learning letter sounds!

Music and Marching

We always love things having to do with music, and J likes playing his piano horn. He had me play the little accordion while he danced and marched around with the horn. We had on a "Boz" music CD while we were marching and playing. (Boz is a green bear with a Christian message in his CDs and DVDs.)

Preschool Workbooks

We're preparing for starting home school in the fall starting with a preschool program, and I've found a few activity books to get us started. J couldn't wait to get started on them right away. One of his first activities (not pictured here) was drawing a line from a number and connecting it to the eggs in the nest that matched that number. In the picture above, he was doing a tracing activity, drawing different shapes like a circle for the sun and a square within the sand castle.

Enjoying Time at the Lake

One of our favorite places to go during the summer is Devil's Lake in Baraboo, WI. (Learn about the lake's name lore here.) My husband grew up in the area, worked here when he was in high school and even remembers when his mom carried him piggy back during times they visited when he was growing up. We enjoy swimming in the lake, playing on the beach, and just hanging out in our chairs reading books.


See what others are up to at The Play Academy on the Nurture Store blog.

Thanks so much for visiting!