Tot School: Red, Blue, Yellow and Green Week 2

Sophie is 14 months old.

Sophie is absolutely loving Tot School.  She pretty much wants to play with the trays all day long (and most days I mostly let her - I love that she loves it!)

We didn't introduce any new colors this week but just kept enjoying red, blue, yellow, and green with a few new activities.

Sensory Bin

I tried my hand at dying rice for this week's sensory bin and was surprised and just how quick and easy it really was!  I used these instructions with slight modification (I doubled the amount of rice and food coloring, but not vinegar - it worked perfectly!).  It dried much quicker than I thought it would, even in the rainy Florida humidity.

Sophie really liked the rice, and this was the first week she seemed to be more intentional with her sensory bin.  She would grab a handful of rice and slowly sprinkle it into the yellow pitcher.  Then she would grab a handful and sprinkle it into one of her shapes.  She went back and forth between the two for long periods of time and started to explore pouring from the pitcher.  She still doesn't have much interest in using the scoop, but I'll keep including it for whenever she gets curious!

Tot Trays

Once again, Sophie loved her Tot Trays this week (I think this has less to do with the quality of the trays and more to do with the fact that they are hidden behind a curtain and therefore seem super special, but I'll take it!)

Her first tray was this really neat Busy Farm Duplo (affiliate link) set she got for her birthday.  My super sweet early childhood educator sister took me shopping to get Tot School stuff for Sophie's birthday and this was one of the treasures we found!

It goes through this cute story about the farmer doing his daily chores starting with the rooster waking everyone up.  Then it shows you how to build the rooster using the blocks that come with the set.  There are just enough blocks to build four little animals.  Sophie can't do this by herself yet, obviously, but she likes playing with the animals and helping me build and take them apart.

Her second tray was playing with laminated family pictures.  I had done this activity before with my side of the family and this week we played with pictures of Clay's side of the family.  We play all kinds of little games with these pictures:  "Can you find Papa?", "Is that Dada?", or "Give kisses to Aunt Kristen" type games were her favorite.

Her third tray this week was the Ladybug Color Sort activity I shared earlier this week.  Sophie seemed to enjoy this activity even though sorting by color is still too difficult for her.  But we would talk about the colors and I would encourage her to "put the blue ladybug on this blue leaf" while pointing to the correct leaf and she would place it there.  She also enjoyed just putting ladybugs on the leaves and on the little plate, so she spent lots of time just playing with them as well.  (She also discovered that it was pretty funny to put herself on a leaf.)

Slow and Steady

Sophie's activity from Slow and Steady, Get Me Ready this week was exploring sound containers.  I put a marble in a metal water bottle, water in a clear plastic bottle, and glass beads in a jar.  She played with these a lot, especially the one with water in it.  We played with the bead shaker when I put on music.  The book suggested trying to get her to guess which one made the sound when I played it behind my back, but Sophie had zero interest in that.  I wasn't surprised. ;)  But my little music-loving diva loves anything that makes a good instrument, so these bottles were a hit.  I may try to look around to find some other unique sound bottles she can explore another week.

Other Activities

Sophie's favorite game lately has been to pull the pillows off the couch, lay them all out on the floor and fall/roll/crawl into them.  She giggles and flops herself around for a good twenty minutes, especially if we start adding tickles, chases, or (very gentle!) pillow fights into the mix.

She also really started enjoying her I-Spy quilt my mom made her for Christmas.  It has images of all kinds of animals, shapes, and colors for Sophie to explore.  She likes to point at a picture and have me tell her what it is.  She also points to an animal and makes the animal sound.  She did pretty well playing I-Spy when I would ask her where a certain item was (as long as she was already pretty close to it).  We will have lots of fun with this quilt as she gets older!

I just had to include this picture of our little fashionista.  She has decided that she really likes wearing Daddy's shirts anytime we are folding laundry.  Of course they are HUGE on her, so I have to tie them up, but she went around wearing this one all morning long.  Silly girl. :)

We won't have any new trays next week for Tot School, because I'm teaching a Fine Arts Camp at church and we'll be gone all morning.  But I will share several fun activities we are working on in the next few days!

Want to see how other families do Tot School?  For tons more ideas be sure to visit these sites I'm linking to this week!

Tot School Gathering Place at 1+1+1=1 

Tot School Tuesday at See Vanessa Craft
Tuesday Tots at Rainy Day Mum
Link and Learn at No Time for Flashcards
Show and Share Saturday Link Up at I Can Teach My Child