Showing posts with label 15 Months. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 15 Months. Show all posts

Monday, August 3, 2015

Tot School: Farm Theme

Miles is 15.5 months.


Honestly, Miles wasn't feeling his Tot School shelves this week, and neither was I.  I was establishing a new system for Sophie's preschool activities, so Miles' shelf was a bit of an afterthought. He still enjoyed playing, but the shelf mostly consisted of toys he already plays with regularly, so there was no really new excitement for him. 

Also, he's trying to drop his morning naps, so we just have a lot of the crabbies going on and not much interest in anything except for being held by Momma.

His favorite part was all the animal books (probably because it involved snuggles!).  He loves any books with flaps, and especially our Little Turkey finger puppet book. He is trying to mimic animal sounds, but everything comes out as a growl.  It's pretty adorable. :)

Farm Animal Sound Puzzle. He loves taking pieces off!  And he can usually get them matched up to the correct spot again, but isn't really able to get them back in without help.  But he enjoyed the animals noises on this one!

Farm Animal Puppets and Stuffed Animals. 

Melissa and Doug Hide-and-Seek Farm. This was one I had gotten for super cheap when our local teacher supply store went out of business, and I held it back for him. He loved opening and closing the doors.  Sophie also enjoyed this one, since it was a new toy she hadn't ever gotten to play with.

Farm Playset. This is a daily staple in our house.  The favorite game is dropping animals down the silo.

Sticky Sheep. The one activity we were both actually excited about was the Sticky Sheep idea I found at Two-Daloo.  This was a family affair, and it was so much fun to see them enjoying the same activity together.  I definitely need to work in some more activities that both of my sweeties can participate in together.




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

Monday, July 27, 2015

Tot School: Week 4 (Rainbow Colors)

Miles is 15 months.


Here's what was on Mile's Tot School shelf for rainbow week!

Shapes and Button Sensory Play. I added some colorful large shape buttons and some foam shapes to a tin and gave him a scoop and muffin tin.  (Big sister loved it just as much - maybe more!)


Rainbow Bell Shaker. He immediately started walking around the room shaking it, like we had done for our Fourth of July parade a few weeks ago!  I was surprised he seemed to remember that.


Colored Popsicle Stick Transfer. This was hands down the favorite.  These popsicle sticks went all over the house with him all week long.  I had a parmesan cheese container and an empty baby puff container and he loved playing with the lids and transferring the sticks back and forth.  He really impresses me with his fine motor skills and his persistence!  By the end of the week he was easily putting the sticks through the small holes of the parmesan cheese container. (Look at that concentration!)


Melissa and Doug Shape Stacker. He had really started to love his ring stacker the past couple weeks, so I thought this would be a hit.  He enjoyed doing it a few times, but really wasn't that into it after that.  I'll bring it back in a few weeks.


Playdoh and Stacking Pegs. That is a happy face in the picture, in case you can't tell!  He was seriously thrilled to gett to play with playdoh like big sister - most times he is so interested in what she is doing and I have to redirect him to something else. I wish I could have captured his face when I gave him a piece and told him he could play with some!  I gave him some pegs to put in the playdoh and make marks with.  Unfortunately, we had to call it quits because he just wouldn't quit trying to put it in his mouth!  Again, we'll try again in a few weeks.



Thursday, July 23, 2015

Tot School: Week 3

Miles is 15 months old.


I'm sort of attempting to have both of my kiddos using the same theme (for now anyway), so some of Miles' activities this week coordinate with Sophie's "All About Me" theme.  I figured this was a great way to focus on learning some body parts with Miles.

Here's what's on his shelf this week:

Dress Up Play.  I put some simple accessories in a basket for Miles to explore.  I included a couple hats, shoes, a slipper, some sunglasses, an oven mitt, a glove, and a mirror and then would encourage him to put the item on the correct body part.  He couldn't always get the item on independently, but he would attempt to put it in the right place.  We had fun with this one! 


Melissa and Doug Caterpillar Gear Toy.


Sticky Picture.  I shared more about this fun way to talk about body part vocabulary over at Activity Mom this week.  He liked sticking the balls on his picture, but he really enjoyed throwing the pom pom balls and letting them land there instead!


Paper Tearing. I loved his face whenever he realized that I was really letting him tear the construction paper!  

We also read lots of books about the parts of the body.  He's really proud of his new skill of identifying his eyes, ears, and nose!  And he points to his feet whenever we say its time to get shoes on, so I think this theme came at the perfect time for him!

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


Sunday, September 8, 2013

Tot School - Rainbows!

Sophie is 15.5 months old.

Sorry it has been so long between blog posts!  It has been a crazy few weeks around our house.  My mom (the best Skype Grandma in history) came to visit for a week and a half, Sophie and I got the black plague from the church nursery, and Clay's grandmother passed away.  I also started directing our children's choir at church and coordinating the crafts for MOPS.  There was a lot going on and blogging just didn't happen.  But I'm back! :)

The last two weeks, Tot School has been focused on rainbow colors.  Sophie did a large amount of her Tot School time with Grandma, because I ended up either being down sick or away with family during funeral arrangements, etc.  Grandma took some pictures and told me a lot about their adventures!

Sensory Bin


Sophie loved her sensory bin this week!  She usually does love the colored rice, but these past few weeks she really started to get in to pouring and dumping from container to container.  It was neat to see her working so hard - she obviously had a plan of what she was doing!

Tot Trays

Her first tray was definitely her favorite.  I put several different types of ribbon into a bottle for her to pull out and put back in.  Her favorites were the more structured ribbons that could be kind of rolled into a ball.  She would put them in and take them out and walk them all around the living room.  Later in the week, she eventually figured out how to put the regular ribbons in as well (out is easy!), but still preferred her structured ribbons.


The second tray was an attempt at exposing Sophie to color sorting.  We still aren't quite ready to do that independently, but she enjoys putting them in the tube I told her to.  This was made from toilet paper tubes and an egg carton.  I just covered the tubes in cardstock and hot glued the tubes into the egg carton.  It looked pretty, and Sophie enjoyed it, but I should warn that it is not structurally sound enough to endure a toddler tantrum!  All of the tubes had been removed by the end of the two weeks, but she still enjoyed dropping the sticks in the tubes and watching them fall out!   (As well as the cotton balls I had stuffed in the bottom so the sticks were visible when she put them in the tubes!)


Her final tray was pretty much a dud.  She had no interest in playing with her stacking cups this week, but they sure looked good for rainbow week!  Lol.  They are usually in her toy basket and I guess they just weren't special enough to warrant attention during Tot School time!

Other Activities

One of Sophie's favorite things both weeks was the basket of bean bags!  My mom helped me make these bean bags in rainbow colors and Sophie really enjoyed playing with them.  The plan is that eventually we will be able to do all kinds of matching and color identification as well as gross motor activities with them, but for now it is just super fun to throw them in the basket!  She would sit on someone's lap and throw bean bags into the basket for up to 30 minutes at a time on occasion.  As soon as they were all in the basket, she would dump them in her lap and start again.  She got really good and making them in!  Thank goodness this girl doesn't have her mother's throwing capabilities! :)


She also painted a rainbow for her God Made Everything Color Book.  We played our usual matching game matching the pages of her book with the felt board pieces.  She's getting pretty good at doing the first few completely independently!



She also got to have a real life tea party with Grandma (instead of just over Skype) as well as lots of good stories and snuggle times!


Also, my little fashionista found these sunglasses in her drawer and decided she needed to wear them to church on Sunday.  Just had to share! :)


Next week:  Pink! :)

For tons more ideas be sure to visit these sites I'm linking to this week!
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
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

Saturday, August 17, 2013

Tot School: Purple

Sophie is 15 months old.

This week was all about the color purple.  It was SO much easier for me to find purple things around here than orange - my sweet little one is ALL girl and we have pink and purple everywhere! Despite all of my purple items, this week was not a huge hit.  She loved her sensory bin, but everything else was barely touched.

Sensory Bin


Her sensory bin this week consisted of purple rice (man...mixing food coloring for purple is HARD!), purple cups and spoon, purple counting bears, and her favorite - purple Mardi Gras beads.  She loved playing with the beads especially, but also stirring with the spoon and cup.  I think her love for the sensory bin was a big factor in her not touching the other items.  It was always the first thing she wanted and she'd play for a good 20 minutes.  By the time she was done with the purple bin, she was ready to move on from Tot School altogether.


We also played with purple playdoh and foam shapes!  She's started saying her version of "playdoh" when she wants to play with it.


Tot Trays

Her first tray, which she hardly touched, was purple pom balls on a paint palette.  She played with this one time, pretty much to hide the poms under her leg.  It was a fun game, though!  She's really been in to hiding things and then pulling them out to surprise me.  It will continue to be fun until she hides my keys or something important! ;)

Her second tray was a purple cup with straight clothespins around the outside.  I was really worried this would be too difficult for her, so I put some counting bears inside as another way to play.  She was able to pull the clothespins off and put them back on with a little help, and enjoyed putting them in the cup.  We also spent time counting them, and pretending they were five little monkeys jumping on the bed (her favorite song right now).

Too excited about Tot School to change out of our jammies!
Her last tray was one Melissa shared at Eyes of a Boy.  I cut two hands out of cardstock, laminated them, and glued them to popsicle sticks so I could stick them into floral foam.  Then I made a few matching "rings" from pipe cleaners.  Sophie loves the book Hand, Hand, Finger, Thumb, so I thought this would be a good tie in to that!  She did enjoy this one better than her other trays this week, and was able to do it relatively easily.  She still isn't color matching independently (which is fine!), but she does it with help.  Even more than putting the rings on the colored hands, she enjoyed putting them on my fingers.  We had some sweet playtime with this one and it will definitely make a reappearance in the future!


I also included her Magna Doodle on the shelf this week.


Other Activities

We continued our God Made Everything book and board this week, adding purple flowers.  Sophie painted her picture with Do-A-Dot paint.  When we were reading a story this week, I asked her if she could find the yellow sun (talking about the page in the book).  She nodded yes, then got up and walked to her God Made Everything board and pulled off the yellow sun piece!  Too cute.



Up next week:  Rainbows! Should be lots of fun!


For tons more ideas be sure to visit these sites I'm linking to this week!
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
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