Tot School: Week 2

Miles is 14.5 months.

I am having so much fun doing Tot School time with Miles!  He loves his special time and special toys that (in theory) are just for him.

Here's what was on his Tot Shelf this week:

Pound and Roll Tower.  He loves this toy!  It is relatively new, but our little "Bam Bam" (as he is affectionately called on occasion) revels in the opportunity to hit things without being told no.  He can put a hurting on those poor balls!  I love the glee in his face in this picture!  Later in the week, he started putting ping pong balls through the ball holes.  It was interesting to see him observe that they didn't stay put long enough to be pounded, but just fell right through the holes.

Family Member Photos.  I shared more about this on Activity Mom, but we used the photos to play a few games to work on identifying family members and say their names!  (Miles says "Momma" and "Dada", but doesn't have a name for Sophie yet.  He doesn't have to do much talking around here...he's got a big sister who is perfectly content to talk enough for both of them!) He really enjoyed playing with the pictures and could point to the correct picture easily.

 

Fish Stickers.  Since his sister was doing a Beach themed Tot School, I figured I would try to add a little ocean to his shelf as well!  This was his first time with stickers and he really got good with them by the end of the week.   

Ping Pong Ball Scoop and Transfer.  Super simple activity that even Sophie tried to hijack. Ping pong balls in a bowl with a scooper and a muffin tray.  Miles worked on scooping and stirring the balls, and then typically transferred with his hands to the muffin tins.  He did great with the one-to-one correspondence idea.  I was really impressed.  Sometimes he would drop the ping pong ball into a spot that already had one and he would deliberately move it to an empty compartment. 

 

Overall a fun week!

I'll leave you with one of my favorite pictures of the week.  Sophie started learning how to take pictures on our camera this week and took this great one of me and my sweet little man!  (Side note:  Oh my stars, those cheeks!  I just want to kiss them all day long!!)

 

Linking up at 1+1+1=1 Tot School Gathering Place and Teaching Mama's Everything Early Childhood.

Tot School: Fourth of July

Miles is 14 months old.

This past week was Miles' first Tot School shelf and he loved it!  I should go ahead and have the disclaimer that I have next to no completely clear pictures of my sweet son.  My sweet little tornado is constantly moving! :)

Fourth of July Parade.  This activity was actually for both Miles and Sophie.  I put on Stars and Stripes Forever by John Phillip Sousa and we shook our patriotic maracas and waved our American flags all throughout the house.  Sophie was into it right away.  Miles took a bit to warm up, but after a minute he decided to join in the fun!  (No...I did not dress him to match intentionally...but he looks adorable, doesn't he!)

Sensory Bottle.  I put some sparkly red "Easter grass", some pom poms, and star beads into a plastic jar for Miles to explore.  Pretty much anything that makes noise when he shakes it is a hit.

Patriotic Pom Pom Push.  Miles' favorite activity by far was the pom pom push.  I took a small snack cup I got from the Target Dollar section, cut a whole just a bit smaller than the pom poms, and showed him how to push them into the cup.  This was a great activity for him.  It was a bit of a challenge at first, but after a few tries he figured it out and probably played for ten minutes.  I was impressed by his perseverance!  This was really the first time I had seen him trying to really make something work the way he wanted it to.  It reminds me how much I love doing Tot School with my little ones to be able to witness all these learning moments!

Block Transfer.  Wooden blocks in colored cups.  Pretty self explanatory, but he enjoyed taking them in and out.  Sophie wanted to play with it too!  I had to laugh that she wanted HIS red and blue blocks when we had a whole basket of identical blocks in the playroom.

The last bag on the shelf was full of a few random red and blue odds and ends for Miles to explore. A sponge, a bean bag, a plastic star, and a squishy ball.  He never even touched it.  Hence, no pictures.

Overall, I think his first week of Tot School was a success!  It was nice to have some intentional play time with him.  I will need to figure out how to either involve Sophie productively, or find another way to occupy her so that Miles can have the focused time he deserves.  She would be playing well independently, but when we would start doing Tot School she would rush over to get all involved.  I did tell her that she could play with the items on his shelf, but if he got interested she had to give it to him right away. We'll figure it out, but Tot School for Miles is here to stay!

Linking up at 1+1+1=1 Tot School Gathering Place and Teaching Mama's Everything Early Childhood.

Tot School: Apples (Adam and Eve)

We are continuing to follow the basic structure of Intentional by Grace's Fruit of the Spirit Curriculum, so this week was all about Apples and Adam and Eve.

During our Bible and Tot School Board time, we read the story of Adam and Eve and the Fall of Man from a couple of our toddler Bibles, including the Jesus Storybook Bible. We also worked on our memory verse for the week Psalm 34:8a, and continued to recite the Fruit of the Spirit.

Literacy Activities 

Apple "a". We used a Do-a-Dot marker to make "apples" on our lowercase a.  Sophie made the apples and then added stems with a marker.  This was great prewriting practice! (Don't worry, we adjusted pencil grip!) Oh, and for the record, we most certainly have a left-handed little lady.  

Apple Tree Uppercase/Lowercase Matching.  I drew a tree and wrote the uppercase letters all over it.  Then on red dot stickers, I wrote the lowercase letters.  Sophie matched up the lowercase "apples" to the correct spot on the tree.  She is getting really good at this!  (She had a few issues because the stickers were circles and would get turned around...note to anyone who might try this activity!)

Uppercase/Lowercase Letter Matching Puzzles.  Sophie matched the letters we have done so far using these cards from Homeschool Creations.  They match our letter cards from our Tot School Board.  I keep thinking I need to put magnets on the back of these or something because Sophie gets really bothered when they don't line up just right.  We have a serious perfectionist on our hands...

Apple Picking Game.  We did a simpler version of this game back when we did the Letter A when she was two, and I shared about it over at the Activity Mom.  This time, I wrote lowercase letters on the apples and placed them around the room.  She would find all the apples and put them in her basket after telling me the letter and the letter sound.  We played this game almost every day, multiple times.  Definitely her favorite activity.

Sophie loves writing in her book with dry-erase markers.  I used the Prewriting Practice pages and just for kicks threw in the Aa and Ee writing pages as well, both from the 3 Dinosaurs Romping and Roaring A Pack.  She was SO proud of writing her letters!

Math Activities

 Apple Patterns.  We did simple AB patterns with our apples.  This was our first real try at patterning, and she eventually got the hang of it.  We definitely will need to continue to work on this skill.

Apple Number Sequencing Puzzle from Amy Lattin on Teachers Pay Teachers (free!). This was also played with almost every day.  

Other Activities

Coffee Filter Apples.  We did this fun craft from Gift of Curiosity.  In this picture, she has "written" the names of everyone in our family around the outside of her coffee filter.  :)  Her favorite part, though, was definitely spraying it with the water bottle!  This activity will be a repeat for sure.

Miles (14 Months)

Starting next week, I think Mr. Miles is going to get his own Tot School post because he will be getting his very own Tot Trays!  He is getting so curious about everything and I am really seeing he get interested in figuring things out and repeating what he sees his sister do.  

This week, he tried coloring for the first time!  He was so happy of himself. (Don't know that reference? Do yourself a favor and check out this video - the adorableness will make your day!)

He also really enjoyed playing with Sophie's apples.  He would put them in the basket and dump them out over and over again.  Forgive the diaper picture - it's already full-blown hot here!

Up next: Our Fourth of July Tot School Activities!

Linking up at 1+1+1=1 Tot School Gathering Place and Teaching Mama's Everything Early Childhood.

Tot School: Orange

Sophie is 14.5 months.

This week we picked back up with Tot School with the color orange!  I know some people change their shelves every two weeks instead of every week, but I would have to add more to keep Sophie interested at this point.  By about Tuesday of the second week she was no longer interested in the activities on her shelf!  But fortunately she was interested when I showed her the new activities for orange!

Sensory Bin

I was going to try water beads with Sophie this week, but decided against it as she has taken to biting EVERYTHING lately (I'm hoping she has some more teeth coming in - poor girl only has four, all on the bottom!).  So instead I tried some homemade playdough and added some orange foam blocks and orange flower beads.  

She really liked pulling the foam blocks out and putting them back in the indention they had left.  She also really liked licking her fingers after playing in the dough.  Gross.  But I guess it just tasted a little salty to her (benefit of making my own!)

We also explored really simple water play outside this week - she wanted to go out anytime she saw the bowl we used! 

Tot Trays

Her first tray was tearing orange paper.  She overlooked it for the first day, because it didn't look very exciting.  But after I showed her how to tear on the second day, this quickly became her favorite.  Later in the week we glued the torn pieces onto a picture of an orange.  (I put glue on and handed them to her like stickers - she really seemed to enjoy it!)

Her second tray was this velcro block idea I found at Memorizing the Moments.  I was super impressed at how quickly she caught on.  She liked this pretty well, but lost interest in it after a couple of days.  We'll try it again later.

Her third tray was putting orange pipe cleaners into a parmesan cheese container.  We had done this activity before pretty early in our Tot School journey, and she really liked it.  This time I opened the side with the three small holes and she was able to do it without a problem.  But overall, she just wasn't that interested in this one.   (Pretty much after discovering tearing paper, she lost interest in everything else!)

I also included her new Melissa and Doug Caterpillar Gear Toy (affiliate link).  She really enjoyed this toy and actually picked up the yellow gear and said "yellow" (in 14 month old language...but I recognized it because she had been repeating if after me for a while).  Then I asked her to put it on the yellow spot on the board and she did it!  Proud momma moment! :)  She was ready to play something else when I tried to see if she could show me the blue. :)

I got new trays from Oriental Trading this week, and once I switched them out Sophie preferred playing with the trays themselves over anything I tried to put on them!

Other Activities

This week we added an orange fish to our God Made Everything Book and flannel board.  

I started a fun activity using our book and the flannel board pieces that Sophie did really well with.  We would read the book and have the pieces nearby.  As we read each page, I would point to the pieces and ask if she could find the one that matched the page, like the red ladybug, and place it on the page.  She did really well with the red ladybug and the yellow sun.  We will definitely keep doing this activity as we add more colors to her book.

We also worked on eating with a spoon and fork this week!  Is it normal for a fork to be easier to use than a spoon?  Sophie has very little success (or interest, for that matter) with a spoon but has figured out the fork pretty well!  

She saw my camera and wanted to play with it, so I took some pictures of us playing.  Please ignore all the toys spread out in the background!  ;)  She learned to say "cheese!"  Ooh I love that sweet girl!  (And one more picture because I can't get enough of those cheeks!  Forgive me!)

Up next week: Purple! :)

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

Titus 2sday at Time Warp Wife

Trivium Tuesday at Living and Learning at Home

Tender Moments with Toddlers and Preschoolers at The Chaos and the Clutter 
Sunday Showcase at Learn Play Imagine
Top Ten Tuesday at Many Little Blessings
TGIF at 123 Homeschool 4 Me

(Ridiculously) Simple Water Play

Sophie woke up almost an hour early yesterday morning.  With still an hour to go before naptime, I had pretty much used up all my tricks.  (She's been sick and had to take steroids for a croupy cough...she's had a little bit of 'roid rage going on.  Fortunately, it's on the decline now that we took our last dose!)

She kept wanting to go "bye bye," so I decided to take her outside (despite 90+ degree weather and 100% humidity already) for some simple water play.

I grabbed a bowl, filled it with water, got the orange basting brush from her Tot School shelf - it's orange week - and headed out to the back porch.

I showed her how to dip the brush and paint the cement with water and she caught on really quick!  If you don't have a basting brush you are willing to let be used for outdoor play, you could use a paintbrush, or even a cleaning rag.

She probably "painted" for ten minutes before she started to discover the other things she could do with the water.

She washed her hands - this is her saying "rub, rub, rub".

Then she figured out the really fun part - dumping out the water.  I was amazed that it took that long for her to try it!  She started by dumping just a little bit out and splashing in it.  Then the whole bowl was dumped and she splashed around a bit more.

Honestly, this play couldn't have been any simpler.  It occupied her for a good 20 minutes and totally turned her mood around.  I'll definitely be adding this to my go-to distraction list!

Staying Connected with a Toddler Long-Distance

My family lives 13 hours away from us in St. Louis.  It has always been hard to be so far away, but it has been especially difficult since Sophie was born.  I grew up within an hour of all my grandparents, so I couldn't even imagine Sophie not being able to see my parents often.  We travel as much as is possible, but I'm incredibly thankful for the technology that helps the miles seem so much closer.

Sophie and I Skype with my mom almost every morning.  We finish our breakfast, get dressed and then talk to Grandma.  She is always excited to see Grandma's face pop up on the screen (I think Grandma is usually pretty excited to see Sophie too).

I have always admired my mom's creativity, but being a Skype Grandma has taken it to a whole new level!  Sophie definitely knows who her grandma is and has a special relationship with her.  Obviously deep conversations are a little bit challenging at this phase in Sophie's life, but my mom manages to develop a relationship with her by playing via webcam.  Here are some of the ways my mom works to stay connected with a toddler over Skype.

Tea Parties

Skype tea parties are the most recent way Sophie plays with her grandma over Skype (and is also the inspiration for this post).  Sophie gets out her Laugh and Learn Tea Set while my mom busts out her real china set and they pour each other imaginary tea.  Sophie will offer her cup to my mom, who graciously pretends to take a sip and then ask for more, please.  They have even dressed up for the tea party!  My amazing mom pulled out a floppy beach hat and a boa and Sophie wore her own hat for the occasion.  I managed to snap this picture, which will probably be one of my favorites for a long time to come.  (Props to my dad who also modeled the floppy hat and boa in order to get a giggle out of a certain little lady!).

So I know it's hard to see, but Sophie is pouring some tea for Grandma, who is holding out her tea cup...seriously precious.

Peekaboo!

Peekaboo was probably one of the first games they played together over Skype, but it continues to be a favorite.  It has now advanced to Sophie closing and opening the iPad case to hide from Grandma, but this was one they were able to play the old-fashioned way even when Sophie was much younger.

Read a Story

Sophie loves books.  Some mornings we get on Skype and Sophie goes straight for her book bin.  She sits on my lap and we read the book, being sure Grandma gets to see the good parts! (Mostly Sophie's face - but my mom will sit and listen to the story as many times as Sophie wants to read it!)  Other times Sophie has sat looking through the books, "reading" them to Grandma.  As Sophie gets a little older, I'm sure we will be able to extend this to Grandma reading Sophie picture books over Skype, but we haven't tried it yet. 

Visit the Pets

My parents' dogs start barking every single time my mom starts talking with us over Skype.  Sophie hears them barking and loves when my mom turns the camera so she can see the "Dogs, woof woof".  She gets very excited to see them, and knows that they are part of the family, too.

Show and Tell

Sophie loves to show off her toys and seems to know just what she wants to show Grandma when we Skype.  We laugh because it seems like most days she says her hellos to grandma and then immediately crawls away to find something to show her.  Of course my mom acts like whatever it may be is the most amazing object she's ever seen, which just delights Sophie and makes her proud to show off.  Lately, Sophie really wants to "play Tot School" when we are talking with my mom.  So we toddle over to the Tot School shelf and bring Grandma right along with us!

Narrate her Play

Whenever Sophie shows my mom a toy, my mom acts like she's been just dying to see that toy - "A red block!  My favorite!"  She will narrate Sophie's play, much like I do when we are playing one-on-one.  She'll count blocks as Sophie builds a tower, talk about the color of the shapes Sophie's holding up, taste imaginary soup, or ask about the items she's pulling out of her play purse.  

Sing Together

Sophie LOVES music.  She loves when Grandma sings with her, because she knows all of her favorites.  They sing "I'm a Little Teapot", "Itsy Bitsy Spider", and "Baa Baa Black Sheep".  Now that she's older, Sophie will do the motions independently while Grandma sings, but when she was younger, I would help her out and sing on our end as well.  Usually Sophie prefers to conduct the music while my Mom sings.  My mom is such a good sport, because when Sophie sings a song once, she wants to sing it at least three times.  

One-on-One Time

Usually, when we talk in the mornings, I haven't had my breakfast yet.  Once I get Sophie playing with my mom, most mornings I go to the kitchen and fix my toast while my mom "watches" Sophie.  (I can see the living room where she's playing from the kitchen - no worries).  This really started when Sophie was first starting to have separation anxiety and would get upset if she couldn't see me.  We found that if she was talking to Grandma (or rather, Grandma was talking to her), she wouldn't get upset, and I could have two minutes to put butter on my toast without help!  This gave them some special one-on-one time without me interfering and gave me a much needed momma moment.  It still works even now, when Sophie is very mobile and likes to follow me wherever I go.  

Virtual Tickles

One of the sweetest little games they've come up with is for my mom to "tickle" Sophie.  This one requires a little bit of assistance from me.  My mom will move her hand toward the webcam with "tickle fingers" and talk about how she's gonna get Sophie's toes, and then I'll do the actual tickling.  Sophie thinks it's hilarious (as all tickling is) and Grandma gets to experience her sweet giggles.  For a while we would play this game any time Sophie's toes came into view on the camera.  She doesn't usually sit still long enough for that to happen anymore! 

Consistency

One of the most important things my mom does to maintain her relationship with Sophie is the fact that she is willing and makes herself available to Skype with her so often.  Grandma is a special part of our morning routine.  As I said earlier, we are fortunate enough to be able to chat almost every week day.  Usually once a week, the other family members are around to say hello as well.  Sophie knows my family because of this incredible technology and their willingness to act silly into a webcam.  She doesn't have any issues when we do finally get to see them in person, because they are already familiar to her.  

How about you?  What ideas do you have to maintain a relationship between your little one and a far away relative?  

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

Titus 2sday at Time Warp Wife

Trivium Tuesday at Living and Learning at Home

Tender Moments with Toddlers and Preschoolers at The Chaos and the Clutter 
Sunday Showcase at Learn Play Imagine
Top Ten Tuesday at Many Little Blessings
TGIF at 123 Homeschool 4 Me