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!

We Love to Learn Through Play and Tot School

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 doing the same. We've been on the go during the months of May and June so it's been a while since I've posted something. I combined a lot of pictures from those weeks here. I love that we have so many fun things to do where J is learning too.

**J is 36 months old**

Piano Horn

I continue to introduce new musical experiences for J, and found this piano horn on Amazon. He loves it. I also have a little accordion that he usually asks me to play. He will get out the instruments when daddy gets home and tells me we're going to put on a concert for daddy. Something daddy enjoys.

Getting Outside

On this day, J wanted me to set up the bowling pins. His interest didn't last very long though, and we moved on to kicking around and chasing the ball.

Coloring is still a favorite

Coloring never fails to be something that J loves to do. I printed out a picture for God Made the Summer coloring page at Ministry to Children, a website I have been visiting a lot and J says, "You're going to love this one mommy." He told me he was going to use all kinds of colors. I have this one hanging up on our kitchen cupboard. Markers are his all-time favorite to use, but he just can't remember to put the lids back on and too many were drying out. We switched to colored pencils and now he loves those too.

Sorting with Tongs

I love these Triceratops tongs that we found at the Learning Express Toys store at our mall. He is getting really good at picking up things like these little pom poms and sorting them. He has also had fun trying to figure out what else he can pick up with them. He's learning that some things are heavy and some things are light, like his blankie.

Playing with beads, stones and colored stars

In the first picture, J took the little half moon stones and said he was making a moon tunnel. We had all the beads in a bowl and he was stirring them. I like how he then took the colored beads and put them around the wooden spoon. Then he was sorting them by color.

Eastern Tent Caterpillar

A caterpillar hitched a ride home one day. We found him on the hood while getting out of the car. I decided to keep him and after a little research discovered he was an Eastern Tent Caterpillar that will turn into a moth. We were feeding it buck thorn leaves which it seemed to like, but after several days of that he ended up dying. My son seemed to forget about our little experiment, so I haven't mentioned that our little caterpillar didn't make it. I'll be keeping my eye out for caterpillars this summer, since this is a fun project.

Doing Puzzles

This continues to be a good activity for J since it really challenges him, and challenges his patience. He sometimes needs a little help with this particular puzzle, but today for the first time he put it together completely on his own.

Discovering the Squirt Bottle

J discovered the squirt bottle! This has provided hours of endless fun. He loves toting it inside or outside and squirting things like the carpet or the wall. In the first two pictures, I let him squirt in the bathroom and nothing was really off limits since it was just water. He had the most fun watching himself and squirting the mirror. Now he will follow me out to the garden when I'm watering and always has to bring the squirt bottle. He tells me he's going to help make the plants grow by "watering" with me. It is so cute to see him out there with me squirting away at the plants as I water them with the hose. The picture above is the gear he puts on before we go watering. I just love it (Thomas boots, "Cars" gardening gloves, bug net, fire helmet).

Mr. Potato Head

He still enjoys playing with his Mr. Potato Head. This time he had fun putting his stickers all over it.

Fine Motor Play and Color Sorting

We found my old pillbox that I (thankfully) don't have any use for now after my depression. J just loves opening and closing the little boxes. It has several rows of varying colors with yellow, pink, blue and purple rows. He brought it out and asked me to get my colored beads so he could put them in the matching window. We also used colored pom poms and he has been doing this over and over again, sorting the beads/pom poms into the right colored box. He even took it with him in the car one day to play while we were on the road.

Finger Painting

We haven't done finger painting in a LONG time! I loved watching J's expressions as he started out the project and then saw his progress. He would select the color and show me where he wanted it and then he'd mush it around and have a ball.


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

Thanks so much for visiting!

On the Go - We Love to Learn Through Play and Tot School

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. J and I had a lot of away-from-home activity fun in March and April. I didn't include them in any of my Tot School/We Play posts so I decided to make a special "On the Go" post. I love that we have so many fun things to do where we are always learning too. We've been having LOTS of fun!

**J is 34 months old**

Come over to play at the Childhood 101 We Play link up:

Toddler Dance Party (March 8)




























Our local library had a dance party where they invited the little ones to come out and shake it all about. Three of my moms friends joined us and we had so much fun.


St. Patrick's Day Dinner (March 17)



















We've kept in touch with friends from China who never met J. We've had fun over the years introducing them to various cultural things and this time we introduced them to traditional St. Patrick's Day dinner (corned beef, cabbage, red potatoes).


Madison Metro Bus Tour (March 18)



















Our mom's group got to take the kids on a bus tour. We all went on a short bus ride and then stayed on the bus as we toured the city bus depot and enjoyed watching the bus get washed.


Visit to the Park (March 21)




























We took a walk to our local park for the first time this spring. Instead of J riding in his car, he had a ball just pushing it. It's definitely a sign of him growing up since last year he always went in the car. He also wanted to wear his fire hat and fire chief jacket too. We had the park all to ourselves.


Birthday Party Play Date (March 22)




























We have a regular play date with a couple mom's and their kids from my mom's group. One of the girls was having her first birthday and we were invited over to celebrate the fun.


Owen Conservation Park (March 30)



















One afternoon I stopped by a conservation park my husband and I used to visit. We used to go cross-country skiing in the winter and bird watching in the spring. This was J's first time there and he did great hiking with me while sitting in the backpack.


Titus Group Zoo Play Date (March 31)





































Our Titus mom's group had a play outing one day at the zoo. After going to all the exhibits, we had our first carousel ride of the season. This was by far J's favorite part. After that, we played for a bit in the zoo park and J enjoyed the dinosaur fossil area.


Life Group at the Fire House (April 4)




























We lead a life group which is a small group through our church where we talk about the sermon together, share about our lives and pray together. One night we all met at the fire house where one of the group members is an intern and had to be on call. J got a personal tour of the fire house and was in 7th heaven!


Hiking at Natural Bridge State Park (April 9)




























We had a beautiful Saturday with temps in the 60's and made a visit to the bluffs of Baraboo, WI. We had intended to go to a bird watching area but the road was closed, so we ended up at Natural Bridge. L and I had gone there before J was born, so it was so great introducing this to him. He had his little binoculars and insisted he could walk all by himself instead of being in the backpack. He did a GREAT job walking and hiking and only asked to be held once when we were going down a steep hill (and he was fine with me just holding his hand).


Devil's Lake State Park Visit (April 10)




























We had a Sunday with the temps reaching into the 80's (unbelievable for WI in April) so we made our first visit of the season to Devil's Lake in Baraboo, WI. The lake had broken chunks of ice floating in it and J had a great time stirring the "ice soup" with his stick.


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

Thanks so much for visiting!