Miles' Tot School: Yellow

Miles is 16.5 months.

I don't have a picture of the shelf this week, but here are some of the activities he enjoyed!

Dropping buttons into a slot.  This simple game was a huge hit - probably because it made a really great noise when it hit the bottom of the container.  We used jumbo lacing buttons and an old sour cream container. 

Coloring. He loves being able to color when Sophie is doing other table work.  He gets this look like he is so proud of himself for being so big!

Yellow pom poms and paper tubes. He liked to stand the tube up and try to pour poms into the tube.  I think he just liked them going all over! :)

Clothespins on a cup. With a little assistance, he could get them on the cup.  But he mostly liked pulling them off and giving them to me to put them back on.

God Made Everything Color Book. We are in the "can't get a candid shot" phase.  He does this cheesy grin every he notices the camera.  I love it! So stinking adorable.  He used dot paints to paint his yellow sun for his God Made Everything Color Book. We also played more with the felt board, but I don't have any pictures.

Water Play.  Please ignore the toys all over the kitchen floor! He played with these sponges and little bit of water for almost thirty minutes.  By the end, all of us were soaked, but he had a blast!  And my kitchen floor was essentially mopped.  :)

Miles' Tot School: Blue Week

Miles is 16.5 months old.

Sensory Play

Miles was a HUGE fan of sensory play this week!  Beyond his color basket, which he mostly put a blue foam dice on a plate and gave it to me to "eat", he LOVED playing with the bin of pasta.  This kept his focus for almost 20 minutes at a time on several occasions.  He really surprised me with his lack of attempts to eat it, maybe I can allow him to have some more "big kid" sensory bins now.  

 Other Trays and Actvities

Coloring with "Big Kid" Crayons. Sophie was not satisfied to let him only color with blue and kept giving him more and more crayons to use. Pretty much he just enjoyed putting them back in the tin more than he did actually coloring.

Blue Stickers on Blue Paper. He is getting good at stickers, and really likes them.  

Blue Playdoh. He loved playdoh again this week.  (And every time I get the camera out, he wants to smile at me.  Gosh, he's adorable.) He started breaking the playdoh into little chunks this week, which I hadn't shown him at all. I love getting to see him figure out and try new things!

God Made Everything Color Book. I had planned for him to use do-a-dot paint on this page, but he saw glue on the table and let me know very clearly he wanted to glue.  So, I cut some construction paper squares and let him glue on the page.  He loved helping move the glue stick around on the paper square.

Shape Sorter. I took out the star and the cross shape, and only gave him the square, circle, and triangle to make it simpler.  This was his first time playing with this toy because it had been out of the rotation for a while.  After a few days he could get the circle every single time, and he could get the square and triangle about half of the time.  He would try and then just set it on the top of the sorter if it wouldn't go in, and just look at me, like "hey, I did it Mom! Aren't you going to clap and say yay?" 

I had also planned for a fun sponge and water play bin, but I didn't prepare it.  And I am learning very much, that if I don't have it prepped at the beginning of the week, it just isn't going to happen!  I will push it further and further back on our plans until we are just way past it.  I need to just take the three extra minutes on Sunday evenings when I'm pulling everything together to gather all of the materials I need for things like this.  Because I know he would love it.  Ah, oh well.  Who says the water has to be blue? Maybe we'll just save it for another color week. 

For more Blue Theme Tot School activities, see Sophie's Blue Week.

Miles' Tot School: Red Week

Miles is 16 months.

It is kind of fun to start Miles on some of the themes I've already done with Sophie - and it makes planning activities much easier! Miles is a few months older than Sophie was when I started color themes, and their strengths and interests are different.  Some of the activities will be the same, but others will be new for Miles. 

Sensory Play

The red sensory basket was a collection of red items from around the house including a baseball hat (GO CARDS!), some Hawaiian leis, oven mit, bean bag, shiny red gift wrap "grass", and a few other odds and ends. The gift grass was the favorite part, and he didn't even really bother with anything else. It was just too fun to pull out all the grass and make a mess. 

On the Shelf

Pool Noodle Stacker. This homemade ring stacker was definitely the favorite activity.  I used a pool noodle cut into slices.  It took him a few tries to hold the noodle just right so he could put it on the rod, but he ended up playing with this for 15 minutes at a time. Multiple times a day.  Big hit.

 Counting Bears 1-to-1 Correspondance. He really liked playing with these little counting bears. He would put them in and out of a cup and try to drop them onto the tray (something Sophie would have never come up with! I love seeing their differences like this!).

Red Duplos. Not even touched.  He was way too interested in the other trays to even bother with some old blocks.

Other Activities

Red Shape Stamping. Sophie was doing some shape stamping, so Miles joined in stamping some red hearts from a foam shape block. Not long after this picture it became finger painting, which was fine by me! But then he realized his hand was messy and he decided he was done. :)

Red Playdoh. He sees Sophie do this all the time, so he loves getting to do anything she does. He still wants to eat it, so playdoh time is usually short lived.

Coloring.

God Made Everything Color Book and Felt Ladybug.  I'm excited to get to start Miles on his very own God Made Everything Color book. We made it with Sophie and it is something she still enjoys looking at and playing with. He really enjoyed painting with the Do-a-Dots, but liked putting the cap on even more. Gosh, I love that sweet concentration face. 

For more Red Theme Tot School ideas, see Sophie's Red Week.  

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

Tot School: Transportation Theme

Miles is 16 months old.

On the Shelf

Cars.  I made a painter's tape road on the carpet for him to try to drive his cars along.  He wasn't too interested in the road, but the cars were played with constantly!

Spoon Transfer Vehicle Erasers. He loved these little erasers I picked up from the Dollar Tree.  Spooning was a little difficult for him, but it was great for him to practice.

Construction Vehicle Puzzle, Dump Truck with Blocks, and Vehicle Pop Beads.  No pictures, but he loved taking the puzzle pieces out of the puzzle - no real interest in putting them back in! The other toys were not so exciting because they had been out in our playroom for a while.

Activities With Sophie

Mosaic Traffic Lights.  I am really loving projects that they can do together, each on their own level. I'm definitely going to work to include more of these!

Stamp Painting Cars. They both sponge painted their cars using these templates. Miles was so proud to have something to hang up on the refrigerator next to Sophie's!

Next week I will start doing color themed weeks with Miles. Sophie's stuff will be getting less obviously "themey" as we start her Preschool stuff, and it will be difficult to keep their stuff coordinated.  I'm getting over the desire to have everything all matched to the theme...ain't nobody got time for that.  It's seriously hard for me to let go of that though. But if I don't, we would never actually do preschool and tot school, I would just plan for all of eternity.

So, next week - Red!

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

Grandma's Tot School

Allow me to just brag for a second.  I have the best mom ever.  We live 14 hours away from my family, but my mom goes out of her way to be a fabulous grandma despite the distance.  If she's not dressing up for a Skype tea party or singing countless verses of "Five Little Monkeys" through the computer screen, she's cutting out felt "paper" dolls for Sophie to play with.  (More on these later!)  She's seriously pretty fabulous.

Sophie and I just recently got to spend almost two weeks in St. Louis.  Knowing how much she likes her Tot School time, my mom set up a special "Grandma Tot School" just for her.  My awesome sister helped as well (sharing from her stash of kindergarten teacher stuff!).  Here are some of the fun activities they did!

Foam Mat Puzzle

My mom found this Disney princess foam mat puzzle at a garage sale (she's a pretty great garage saler too!) and Sophie had lots of fun playing with it!  She couldn't quite connect the pieces really well yet, but she enjoyed stacking the pieces and counting with Grandma.

One-to-One Correspondence with Foam Blocks

Sophie has taken off with the one-to-one correspondence concept lately, so my mom had a bucket of foam blocks (from the kindergarten teacher's stash!) and an ice cube tray for Sophie to play with.  Also, foam shapes are fun to throw. :)

Beanbags

Grandma included the constant favorite around here - beanbags!  We mostly threw them, but stacking is sometimes fun as well. (PS. Aren't the pumpkin bins she used as her "trays" the cutest?!)

Counting Pumpkins

This was a fabulous way to introduce Sophie to counting beyond our simply pointing and counting everything in sight (which is a current favorite activity).  My sister traced some foam pumpkins she found at the Dollar Tree on three different posters.  Sophie could then put the pumpkins on the outlines and we could count together.  It was kind of like a puzzle to her and she did a good job putting them on the posters.

Fall Tree

My mom drew an empty tree on a poster board and had a bucket full of foam fall leaves.  Sophie would put them on the tree to decorate it.  We choose not to attach them so that she could do it over and over again, but we will probably do this activity again and make some artwork with it!  She also liked putting them in the bucket as well as throwing the leaves (anybody catching a theme here?).

We also had lots of other fun times including the zoo and the pumpkin patch.  She loved the large dried corn bin at the pumpkin patch!  She probably spent twenty minutes playing (with her uncles burying her legs in the corn).

I'll post our regular, back-at-home Tot School week soon! :)

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

Tot School - Black and White

Sophie is 16.5 months old.

This was a really fun week!  I had debated over whether to do black and white separately or together and I am really glad I did them together.  

Sensory Bin

This week's sensory bin was a fun mix of different sizes and textures.  The base was white lima beans and black beans.  I found some smooth black river rocks at the Dollar Tree and added those along with some fluffy cotton balls.  Throw in a black spoon and some white pvc pipe pieces and you have a sensory bin!  She really enjoyed it, but was bothered that the pvc pieces were not cups and that the beans went all the way through.  She just kept looking, trying to figure out why her beans weren't staying in the tube!  Sweet girl. :)

Tot Trays

Her first tot tray was ping pong balls in a paint palette.  She really liked the rock one-to-one correspondence activity from brown week last week, so I thought I would include another one this week.  However, I didn't take into account that this would be pretty challenging, one, because ping pong balls are easily knocked from their spots, and two, because both the ball and the palette were white.  She did a great job, though.  She just needed some help keeping the balls in place once she got them there so she didn't get frustrated.  I don't have a picture of this one, because she liked to do it on my lap.

Her second tray was by far the favorite of the week.  I printed these black and white three part cards from Memorizing the Moments (although I just made two copies of the second page - we're not quite ready for the full blown three part cards yet) and made a matching game.  She did such a great job!  Like I said last week, this skill has just really taken off in the last couple weeks and she couldn't get enough of it.  I would lay out one set of the cards and hand her one card at a time to match up.  So proud of her!  (Unfortunately, no pictures of this one either.  We had lots of lap snuggles this week!)

The third tray only lasted a day or so before it just got integrated with the sensory bin.  I made a rectangle out of painters tape on the tray and filled it with black beans.  I placed her mini broom there with the intention that she would sweep the beans into the rectangle.  Should have thought this one through better.  It was more like slapshots in hockey than a gentle sweeping motion.  Pretty soon the beans just got put in the sensory bin (by her) and I didn't fight it.  She sweeps up the other beans in her pool so we still get practice sweeping.

Other Activities

We had a yummy black and white snack this week that was a huge hit.  She tried chocolate chips and marshmallows for the first time and really enjoyed it.  We were able to talk about the colors and the different textures while she ate.

We also painted her pictures for her God Made Everything Color Book.  She dot painted a black sheep and finger painted a white cloud.  She is getting much more interested in this activity every time we do it!

Soon I'll post some catch-up posts - there has been a lot going on in our house lately, including a two week trip to St. Louis to visit family (which is why this post is two weeks late!).  Our next tot school week at home is the color gray - our last color theme! :)

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

Tot School - Brown

Sophie is 16 months old.

Sorry this week is so late in posting!  Our days have been shifted around here a little bit and I've just been thrown off my groove. :)  Last week we focused on the color brown.  I had many more ideas to go with this week that just didn't happen - we may have to revisit with a teddy bear theme or something down the road.

I didn't have a sensory bin this week because I was a slacker.  And the brilliant idea I thought I had ended up being black instead of  brown, so maybe it will make an appearance next week instead.  We'll see. 

Tot Trays

This week's tot trays were a bit challenging in the sense that Sophie found lots of ways to make mischief with them, so we could only play a bit before they had to be put "bye bye" for a few minutes.  But she really enjoyed all of them, which I was glad about.  She's also really started to like to sit on my lap to do her activities, which is super sweet and I enjoy.  However, it makes it difficult to get pictures!  :)  So I don't have as many pics to choose from this week.

Her first tray was brown river rocks in an ice cube tray.  This was by far the early favorite and the first time she was successful with one-to-one correspondence (putting one rock in each empty cube compartment).  She was really proud of herself.  This was something that kind of just clicked in the last couple weeks, along with matching and puzzles, I think she's had a little developmental growth spurt.  It's been so fun to see her figure out all these new things!  

Oh my goodness...who is that big girl?  She looks SO grown up in this picture!

Her second tray was several wooden balls and brown paper tubes.  The idea was for her to drop and roll the balls through the tubes.  She had fun with that sometimes, but had more fun stirring or throwing the balls.  This was probably not one of my better-thought-through tot trays - those wooden balls hurt to get hit by!  And usually the rule is we only throw balls, so I had a tough time trying to tell her not to throw them.

Her final tray was not very popular at the beginning, but she figured it out by the end of the week and it became the favorite.  I put a thin dowel rod into a small coffee canister and painted some wooden spools.  She enjoyed stacking and unstacking the spools onto the dowel as well as counting them.  (This one was pretty much exclusively enjoyed from my lap - sorry for the terrible picture, but not sorry for the snuggles!)

Other Activities

We made brownies early in the week and ate some chocolate pudding.  We also explored the brown dirt outside (not too much - she hates getting her hands dirty!).  

She also did her page for her God Made Everything color book.  This week we glued tissue paper squares onto the bear.  We've only really tried glueing one other time (both times I put a dot of glue where she wanted the paper and she put the paper), but she really seemed to enjoy it.  It also kept her occupied much longer than painting usually does. (PS.  Please notice the spot between the bear's eyes.  She wanted a piece there until she noticed that it covered his eyes.  Then she said "Uh oh. Eyes." and wanted it off.  Seriously. I love this girl!)

She really got the gist of her God Made Everything book and feltboard pieces this week.  We played over and over matching the pieces with the pages.  Sometimes she would deliberately choose the wrong piece and say "nooo" when she put it on the page.  Such a silly girl! :)

One of these days I'll get back to doing the Slow and Steady, Get Me Ready activities with her.  Things have just been crazy lately.  We'll be traveling to visit my family in Missouri next week and I'm hoping I can spend some time planning out some tot school stuff.  I really enjoy both planning and implementing these ideas, but it has just fallen by the wayside with other commitments I've got right now.  I really want to get back in a good groove with it, because I think it is great for both Sophie and me!

Next week is black and white week!  

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