Tot School - Thanksgiving

Sophie is 18 months old.

This week and last week were all about Thanksgiving!  We had lots of fun with these activities.  Sophie is cracking me up with all of the turkeys we are seeing everywhere - she knows that turkeys say "gobble gobble gobble" and can say it when asked, but everytime she sees a turkey she gets really excited and points and says "bawk bawk" like a chicken.  I totally see how they look alike to her little brain, but it just tickles me every single time.

Sensory Play

File this week's sensory play into the "regrettable" category!  It consisted of feathers and sparkly foam leaves.  I had gotten some inexpensive colored feathers a while back, but had hesitated getting them out for her because they "shed" EVERYWHERE.  I decided to bite the bullet for Thanksgiving, but oh my goodness.  Sophie had a great time playing with them in the pool, and did a great job obeying my instructions to keep them inside the pool.  However, the lighter than air pieces of feathers flew absolutely everywhere.  No corner of my house was safe.  Sweeping didn't work because they just floated up into the air.  I finally got them all vacuumed up, but I learned an important lesson.  Feathers are worth paying a little extra for to get some that won't completely take over my house.  We'll do feathers again, but I'll splurge for a little higher quality - these are going far far away!

We also played playdoh with leaf cookie cutters.  This was her first time trying cookie cutters and she really liked it.  I think this girl needs a playdoh accessory set for Christmas!

Tot Trays

Her first tot tray was a printable I made for The Activity Mom.  It is a turkey feather matching game.  I used the version where Sophie had to match the colors and she did a great job.  Next time I may put some velcro or something on the feathers so that they stay when she puts them down.  Since I had laminated everything, they slid around a lot.  You can get your free printable here.

Her second tray was by far the favorite!  I got this idea from Stephanie at Twodaloo.  I cut a foam ball in half and painted it brown.  Then I painted some dowel sticks I had rainbow colors, and inserted them into the ball with hot glue.  I popped on a circle with some eyes, a nose, and a gobbler and we had ourselves a turkey!  Sophie would put her Melissa and Doug lacing beads onto the dowels.  I made it so she could color sort if she wanted, but she was much more content to make the turkey have bright colorful feathers instead, which is fine by me!  She loved this turkey, as evidenced by the fact that she had to give him kisses every time we played. :)

Her third tray was a one-to-one correspondence activity using a turkey do-a-dot printable I found at DLTK Kids.  Using foam cylinders, Sophie put one foam piece in each circles.  I found these stayed put better than pom balls.  She liked this one a good bit as well, although her favorite part was taking all the pieces in and out of the cup.

Her fourth tray was a Thanksgiving sorting activity I made for The Activity Mom.  This was a little difficult for her, but she could do it with help.  She was not incredibly interested in it, though.  I think I got a little carried away with the number of things to match (my OCD wanted to fill all the spots in my serving dish... :/), but I think it was too much for her.  Next time we'll try it with just two or three types of items.  You can download the free printable here.

Other Activities

Of course we had to do turkey handprints!  I had it in my mind to make cards to send to family using her sweet little handprint, but she was NOT a fan of her whole hand being covered in paint.  So, we basically just got a keepsake version for us!  I found this cute little poem at The Activity Mom.

She really enjoyed playing with foam stickers as well.  Stickers are always a hit, but these seemed to be extra exciting to her. 

We'll spend the next couple weeks doing some winter tot school activities (even though it's still technically fall...I know) before we move on to Christmas!  I can't wait!

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 

Teaching Tuesdays at Intentional Homeschool
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

Tender Moments with Toddlers and Preschoolers at The Chaos and the Clutter 
Sunday Showcase at Learn Play Imagine
TGIF at 123Homeschool4Me
For the Kids Fridays at Sun Scholars

Turkey Feather Matching Game - on Activity-Mom.com

I've got a free printable Thanksgiving matching game available at Activity Mom today!

Check it out here!

Tot School: Fall Theme

Sophie is 17.5 months old.

This week was all about introducing Sophie to my favorite season - Fall!  Living in Florida we don't get much of a real Fall, so we just had to pretend. :)

Sensory Play

Sophie loved the sensory bin this week!  It was filled with silk leaves, fake gourds, plastic apples, and some real twigs we found outside.  The silk leaves were by far her favorite component.  Her daddy (who always comes up with way more fun ways to play than Momma does!) showed her how to blow the leaves from her hand and she would just giggle and giggle!  I wish I could have captured how excited she got in a picture, but it just didn't happen.  

We also explored the real leaves outside (the ones we could find) but the colors weren't anywhere near as pretty.  Our leaves pretty much just get brown and fall off. :(  But she did discover the joy of walking through crunchy leaves.  Chalk that up as one victory for Mom. 

Tot Trays

The first tray was a transferring activity using her red lacing beads and tweezers.  This was her first time exploring tweezers, and as I suspected, they were still too challenging for her.  However, she loved trying to use them and would lace the beads onto the tip of the tweezers and move them from bowl to bowl that way.  Creative problem solving at its finest! :)

Her second tray was placing red poms ("apples") onto a tree.  She did this easily, but didn't seem that interested in it.  I think she only played with it one time.  You can get the clip art I used here.

Her third tray was an apple sorting activity.  I cut out several apples in red, yellow, and green using my Cricut machine, and she would place them into the corresponding color cup.  She did pretty well with this activity with assistance.  This was a popular "on the lap" activity.  We may try this again at a later date having her "pick" the apples from around the room before she sorts them, but she wasn't quite ready for that extra step this time.

Her final tray was a colored leave matching game I made using my Cricut.  She has loved card matching games the past few times I've put them out, so I figured I would try one based solely on color.  She really didn't seem interested at all. We'll try again later!

Next week we'll have a Thanksgiving theme - I can't wait! :)

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 

Teaching Tuesdays at Intentional Homeschool
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

Tender Moments with Toddlers and Preschoolers at The Chaos and the Clutter 
Sunday Showcase at Learn Play Imagine
TGIF at 123Homeschool4Me
For the Kids Fridays at Sun Scholars

Vocabulary and Your Toddler - New Post at The Activity Mom

I am so excited to be a new contributor for The Activity Mom!  Be sure to check out my post over there today about a fun way to introduce vocabulary to your toddler.

Vocabulary and Your Toddler

My 17-month old, like most toddlers, I’m sure, is fascinated by “big kid” toys.  So when my in-laws walked in with a Princess Palace playset, I knew she would be very interested.  According to the ages listed, she is a little young for the toy, but since she saw it she was all ready to play.  I pulled out the pieces that were unsafe for her (too small) and figured we would play for a few minutes and then I would quietly sneak the palace to the closet until she was a little older...Continue reading here.

And be sure to check out the other great ideas for kids of all ages while you are visiting! 

Tot School - Pumpkins

Sophie is 17.5 months old.

Last week was all about pumpkins!  Sophie had been to a pumpkin patch in St. Louis several weeks ago and had seen lots of pumpkins then, as well as visiting a small pumpkin stand here. (Momentary side vent:  There is a serious lack of pumpkin patches in our neck of the woods.)  So she was familiar with pumpkins and was already pointing them out around town as she saw them!  

Sensory Play

Sensory play this week was some orange playdoh I shaped into a pumpkin (with a foam shape stem).  She enjoyed the playdoh much more this time than she had in the past!  (As evidenced by the condition of my kitchen after our play time.  Yikes!  Thinking next time we may try it in the plastic pool in the kitchen.  But seriously, look how much fun she was having in that second picture - I couldn't bring myself to make her stop!)  The very first time she saw my "pumpkin", she pulled out the stem and said "geen" (green).  Wow!  She still doesn't seem to really have a grasp on colors (totally okay at this point!) but every once and a while she surprises me like this.  

I considered opening up a pumpkin to let her play in the gooey insides as a sensory experience, but this pregnant momma just couldn't handle it at this point.  Next year! :)

Tot Trays

Her first tot tray was similar to one my sister made for Sophie's "Grandma Tot School" a few weeks ago.  I traced foam pumpkins that I picked up from the Dollar Tree and numbered them.  She's obviously not ready for numerals, but seeing them is just one more way to expose her to them.  She's loved "counting" things around the house, so this just provided opportunity to talk about the numbers as we put the foam pumpkins in place.  

Her second tray this week was a one-to-one correspondence activity with candy pumpkins and a paint palette.  She had no idea they were candy, so we didn't have an issue with her putting them into her mouth!  (I would be careful doing this activity if your child knows they are food!  I was careful to make sure Sophie never saw me eating the leftovers!) 

Her last tray was a pumpkin face activity.  I printed out a pumpkin shape on orange construction paper, cut out some happy pumpkin features, and added googley eyes.  This was a big hit!  I would ask her where the different parts of the face should go and she would put them on.  It was a great vocabulary builder as well as helping her understand the face better.  You could modify this for an older child by adding more options for the face as well as more body parts!  This will definitely be something we repeat in other ways.

Other Activities

The other big hit of the week was a set of pumpkin window clings (also from the Dollar Tree).  Our front window is the perfect height for Sophie to look out and is one of her favorite places.  She played with the "window stickers" all week long.  In fact, since they are more fall than Halloween, they are still up on our window and she is still playing with them!   (PS. The hat was all her!)

We did two different painting activities this week.  The first was "pumpkin" stamping with a friend.  I took slices of a pool noodle and they dipped them in orange paint to create pumpkins.  So, they were pretty much just circles on the page, but with older kids you could totally do more with this.  These little ones were just already done by the time they had finished the stamping part.  No worries! 

The other painting activity was finger painting on a paper plate to make a pumpkin face.  By the end of the week she was so good with her pumpkin face tot tray activity that I decided to make a "permanent" pumpkin face with her.  She painted the paper plate and then added on the eyes, nose and mouth I cut out for her.  I was so impressed with how well she did placing the parts of the face!  (And confession, honestly I was pretty proud of myself for controlling my urge to move the eyes just a *little bit* higher. Terrible, I know, but I resisted the urge!)

The next week will be spent doing some general fall activities!  I'll leave you with these sweet pictures of my sweet little Halloween peacock! :)

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

Tender Moments with Toddlers and Preschoolers at The Chaos and the Clutter 
Sunday Showcase at Learn Play Imagine
TGIF at 123Homeschool4Me
For the Kids Fridays at Sun Scholars

Tot School - Gray Week

Sophie is 17 months old.

This was the last of our color themed weeks!  I can't believe how far she has come since we first started doing Tot School back in June.  She has grown up so much just in that short time.  I am so thankful for the fun time we've had together doing Tot School.  

We had been traveling for two weeks right before this, so admittedly, gray week is a little less involved than our previous color weeks.  And even though I personally love the color gray, for a toddler, well, gray is just a little blah.

Sensory Bin

For her sensory bin this week, I just pulled out an old favorite.  We had been out of town and I couldn't come up with anything gray (and quick and on-hand) for her to explore, so I got out her rainbow rice and some tools we had around.  I added a funnel as a new way for her to play.  

Tot Trays

Her first tot tray was a button snake that I made her.  She loves buttons, snaps, or zippers of any kind right now, so I thought this would be a hit.  It wasn't.  She could do it with help, but just wasn't that interested in it.  I may try again doing a button "board" instead - sewing a bunch of buttons on a piece of felt-wrapped foam core - so that at least one side is stable.  It was difficult with both the button and the felt shape moveable.  We'll put it away and try later. (No pictures of her trying it, because it took my hands to help her!)

Her second tot tray was super simple and she loved it!  I took my silver colander (not gray, I know, but close enough!) and some silver pipe cleaners and just let her go at putting them in the holes.  This was such a hit, that all the next week, long after this tray was put away, she would get the colander out of my cabinet, walk to her tot school shelf and said "play tot school."  So I ended up pulling it out again the following week because she specifically asked for it! :)  I wish I had a picture of her face when I "figured out" what she was wanting to do.  It was priceless!

Her final tot tray was a repeat of the black and white week.  She enjoyed the matching cards so much that I left them out for this week.  And besides, black and white make gray, right?  I like to think of this less as lazy and more as presenting her with an advanced color mixing lesson at an early age. ;)

Honestly, that's pretty much all we did last week (as far as planned Tot School activities) - it was just so crazy getting back into "real life." 

Our next several weeks (through the end of the year, actually) will be holiday and seasonally themed weeks.  There are just so many exciting things this time of year that I want to share with Sophie! :)  Next week will be all about pumpkins! 

I'm Guest Posting on The Activity Mom Today! :)

Hey guys!  I'm excited to share that I am guest posting on Activity MomThe Activity Mom today!

Be sure to stop by and check out my Toddler Thankfulness Tree!

While you are there, be sure to explore the TONS of other great ideas for toddlers, preschoolers, and kids of all ages!