Tot School (Thanksgiving Week)

**J is 30 months old**

I love doing Tot School with J! We are very laid back and so far I don't really plan anything. I keep a lot of things visible to J and let him lead when it's time to do some focused learning-play. Thanks for stopping by!

We haven't done Do A Dot Paints in a long time. L had a friend over to watch football and he brought his daughter who played with us. We all made our own pictures. J was really into making rainbows.




















This is another thing we haven't done in a while, play with J's instruments. The three of us played while I sang different songs like The Little Drummer Boy. My son LOVED the little drummer song. He said, "Mommy, sing the rum pum pum song again."





















We have been watching more of Mr. Roger's lately. We went to PBS online and saw a few of the videos they had posted like How They Make Crayons, Fire Truck and How People Make Balls.
































J got a tool puzzle that was made by his high-school aged cousin, Dylan. Dylan spent time at Grandpa Bernie's this summer learning to do woodworking and this was one of the things he made. J took out the puzzle and now he can pretty easily fit the pieces in. He played with this a couple times, but one of the times he was having trouble getting it in exactly and he started saying "Noooooooo! I can't do it!" and got a bit frustrated so I helped out.















































This week J was playing a lot with his Mr. Potato Head and Spud guy. He is getting better about putting the pieces in the right places. He wanted me to take the pieces out and after that he said, "Trace them mommy!" I have started teaching him about tracing his hand and so this was a new idea. I traced the arms, face, baseball hat, mustache and he had fun coloring them in with a pen. He wanted me to color them too.


















I finally found a way to interest J in eating hard boiled eggs. Helping me cut them with the egg slicer! He loves doing this. It is such a small thing, but once they are cut he just starts eating them.


















Daddy took a picture during one of our reading sessions of the weeks. I was able to get a lot of Thanksgiving books that were fun to read before going to our relatives for the holiday.
































I goofed up recently and bought crayon erasers thinking they were jumbo crayons. I'm glad J is putting them to good use. He spent a lot of time trying to balance them on the arm of the chair. He liked lining up the different colors and seeing how many he could get lined up in a row.

Books
Countdown to Thanksgiving, Jodi Huelin
Thanksgiving is for Giving Thanks, Margaret Sutherland
The Berenstain Bears' Big Bedtime Book
Yuck! That's Not a Monster! Angela McAllister
Humpty Dumpty and Other Nursery Rhymes

Movies
Berenstain Bears - Bears Mind Their Manners
Little People - Discovering Things That Go
Mr. Rogers - How Crayons are Made
The Land Before Time - Invasion of the Tinysauruses


Music
GiggleBellies on You Tube


Thanksgiving Fun (Chicago)

See the fun things other moms are doing at the Weekly Wrap Up, another place I link up.

Tot School (Before and During Vacation)

**J is 27 months old**

We started off our week with me teaching a little song with finger play called "Where is Thumbkin". This is one we used to do when I was a kid. Somehow it popped into my mind today. J really loved it. He kept saying, "Do again it?!" (do it again) so I'd do it over and over until he started joining me in singing and trying to use his fingers too.








































They had a 75% off sale at our grocery store and I got this book I Can Stencil My Numbers. They have numbers 1-10 with a little picture. I wasn't sure if J could do this one yet, but I started out and then he wanted to do it. I think he did pretty well. He enjoyed it too.















We had a play date with two other moms and the kids did a couple projects. One was ocean creature sponges that start out as a tiny little capsule that when put in water expand into a little sponge. J's was a lobster. We also did some Do-A-Dot painting of a dinosaur an elephant.

While making breakfast one morning, J wanted me to play our kids worship CD, Songs for Worship Volume 1. I hadn't played this in a while and it was nice to enjoy it again and see J enjoying it.





























J had a little book frenzy as I opened the cupboard with all our books and he "read" a bunch on his own. After he was done, I had to take a picture of them strewn all over floor. Then a picture once cleaned up ;)















We went to his play group called Pal Zone. We were excited to see my friend Eileen with her son Jackson. During circle time, Birch (the teacher) read a gorilla book that also had many other animals in it. For the craft, the kids got to make any animal. Not really sure what J's animal is, but he had a really fun time making it. He did really well with showing me where he wanted something (feathers, eyes, shapes), I'd put the glue in that spot and then he'd press it on.









































J found a box I had sitting off from our living room. In it was an elephant slide that goes with his little summer wading pool, but we never used it. I got the idea to blow it up and let J play with it inside. He had a ball! He would slide down it and then his spider man would slide down. He also had his dinosaurs and elephant figures walk through the little tunnel under the slide. We got out all of his balls and rolled them down the slide too. We'll have to do this one again!















We spent some time at the park on one of the beautiful afternoons we had. Here's J enjoying the swings. I did my good deed of the day with fixing the two adult swings. Someone had twisted them around the top of the swing set so they were stuck. I pulled over a picnic table and stood on top. Using a long stick, after several tries and lots of arm work I got the swings unraveled and then mommy got to swing too!




























There is a lot of milkweed there (at the park) so I was looking around and sure enough I found a nice, large monarch caterpillar! A friend of mine had raised one with her children and I thought this was a great idea so J and I took him home. I put him in an empty water bottle to take him home, then I used an old lunchables container. Here he is crawling on the top of the container and then below it is when he surprised us by starting to curl up into his pre-cocoon position. I am doing a separate blog entry about this so I'll post that soon.

BOOKS
Peek a Boo Elmo
Old McDonald Had a Farm
Grandma

VIDEOS
We watched part of a movie called Misty. This is based on a book I read as a child called Misty of Chincoteague. Chincoteague is an island in Virginia where wild ponies live and every year they have the herd swim into the town and auction off some of the foals. It was fun reminiscing while I saw this movie, as I loved the book as a child.

We watched the movie Stellaluna and it had the words from the book following right along on the screen. J loves this story yet this time he actually got sad because the owl chases Stellaluna's mom but he didn't want me to turn it off.

We watched some of the Leapfrog Storybook Factory.

We did a little from Sesame Street's 123 Count with Ernie.

We found the DVD Old Bear and Friends which had the story called Hoot. This is a book we read from the library. Hoot is a story about little stuffed animals who find a little owl friend. I think J loved seeing it even more on DVD. It is a sweet little story.

VACATION

These are some pictures from our trip up to the North Woods of Wisconsin. As I type, I'm sitting in a little restaurant called Sunrise Cafe that has WiFi. We have a cozy little cabin in the woods off a lake called St. Germain. Our friend Dave (my husband's old roommate of 11 years) traveled with us too.

For more fun with Tot School ideas, visit 1+1+1=1



Also, here's another Tot linky I joined that is fun to visit.

Tot School (More puzzles, Alphabet, Painting)

J is 27 months old

J started out the week being really into his puzzles again. I took a break from working on shape learning since he hadn't been taking a huge interest, but I was surprised that he has retained them fairly well. He did really well putting the shape in the correct spot on the first try and he would say the shape as he put it in its spot. He knew circle, square, triangle (which are the main ones I worked on before) and somehow he even knew diamond.





Here he was working on his new dinosaur puzzle. Daddy helped getting the first half done. I was amazed at how at times when I just let him work on it on his own, he would try-try-again and often find a fit! Then he had fun tearing the puzzle apart when it was only half done.



















Continuing on with the dinosaur theme....J also loved playing with his dinosaur figures. He's starting to have them talk to each other and is making up little stories. If I get to closer to hear what he's saying, he'll sometimes get shy and stop so I keep a little distance to capture these fun moments.




















I'd have to say J had the most fun this week with the new alphabet floor mat we got him off EBay. I looked at so many and paid $22 for this one yet found out Toys-R-Us has an alpha/numeric one for $25 (on sale). I still like this and it covers up our blotchy "no longer white" carpeting! I set it up at night so when we came down for breakfast he was taken aback. Once he realized it was the alphabet he started playing with it right away. He stepped on it and says "I'm walking on it" like he was really excited.


We did a lot of different activities like working on picking out certain letters and naming objects starting with it. He recognized a few like J and Q. I was totally surprised when he said "Q for Queen" and picked out the Q without me asking that one. We picked out J and I said "J for J___(his name)" and he picked up the K and said "K for mommy!" So I showed him the M for that. He also liked trying to find out where the letter fit to put it back. Of course, he also liked just playing with his toys on it. This one will be something we'll play with a lot.

This picture really shows his busy hands! We finally spent some time doing arts/crafts. It seems like a long time since we've done anything beyond coloring. We used shaving cream with food coloring for some finger painting. I got the idea from another Tot School mom (I don't remember where). This was our first time doing this so we played it by ear. I put some shaving cream on the paper and then asked him what color food coloring he wanted. Then I'd put a drop and then he'd smoosh it around. He did about 4 colors and then looking at his hands said, "My hands are dirty" and wanted them washed. So we switched to trying out dot paint!

I was so excited to get our Dot Paints as I've seen several tots using them at Tot School. They are great and so less messy than finger painting! (But the mess is its own type of fun too.) J and I both did a painting and after J was done with his he moved to mine and started tracing it. I didn't realize until later that he had gone over my picture tracing each one of my dots! So cute.







He also made some stuff up on his own and had so much fun lining up the bottles while saying its color, taking the lids off and then putting them back on the matching paint bottle and then he found out he could stack the lids. Loved this!

Just Having Fun

Enjoying some goofing around as we waited for daddy's food at Culver's. I love that J is starting to develop a sense of humor playing around like this.

























It's so hard to get pictures of J smiling. He never hams it up for the camera so I have to get him "live" just purely enjoying himself. (Usually by the time I get my camera ready, his expression has changed.) We were getting out of the car and he decided to crawl around and starting laughing when I was acting goofy as I was coming to get him.





We have a wonderful Farmer's Market and went for our second time this season. We stopped to listen to a couple musicians and just enjoyed a beautiful day (but really felt like fall).


















Daddy, J and I had some fun running around outside. J got this basketball "free" from Culver's (our pretty much favorite dining spot). We saved our coupons to get it. He loves playing basketball and had some special time playing with daddy but then ran over to me and said "mommy catch it". This photo was just before he passed it my way.

Favorites of the Week

For more Tot School ideas, visit 1+1+1=1


And here's another linky I joined