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 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.
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.
We are still roughly following the themes of the Fruit of the Spirit Curriculum, but honestly, I am only doing a few of the activities. The curriculum is fabulous, and I highly recommend it, but I wish I had started it with Sophie a bit earlier. She's just ready for more! We'll finish out with a couple more of the themes I think she will enjoy and then we will move on. I'll share more about our plans for the fall soon!
This week was all about Rainbows and God's Faithfulness. Our story was Noah's Ark, and we basically just read it and talked about God's faithfulness to Noah and how the rainbow showed us his promise.
Memory Work
- Fruit of the Spirit, Galatians 5:22-23. She has this one nailed and gets excited to say it each morning during our morning board time!
- Ps. 56:3 (portion) was our new verse for the week. "...in God I trust; I shall not be afraid..."
- Colors of the Rainbow (ROYGBIV) - I found this great video and song to help teach the colors. We've been singing it all night! (She even requests it as her bedtime song).
Literacy Activities
Watercolor Letters and Circles. I made a page with her name in rainbow bubble letters for her to paint as well as a page with circles in rainbow colors to match. She loves tracing letters especially, so this was a hit.
Print Awareness Activity. I don't have any pictures of this great activity from This Reading Mama's Rainy Day PreK Pack, but it was really good (and simple!). Basically, she painted a rainbow (pretty much her favorite thing ever) and cut apart the words "I see a beautiful rainbow". Then I mixed them up and as I read them to her, she rearranged them back into the right sentence and glued it down as a caption for her picture. This was a really great listening exercise for her, as well as starting to see how words go together to make sentences.
Rainbow Rice Name Hunt. I shared about this great activity on Activity Mom. This was one Sophie pulled out every single day!
Syllable Count and Clip. Also from the Rainy Day PreK Pack, this was Sophie's first attempt at breaking words into syllables. I didn't know what to expect, but after a few examples she was doing well. It is definitely a skill we need to keep working on in the future, but she seemed to enjoy clapping to count the syllables in each word and then meticulously placing the clip perfectly on top of the correct number. This poor perfectionist comes by it honestly...
We also did several other printables from the Rainy Day PreK Pack, including rhyming, "spelling" words with do-a-dots, and pre-writing tracing sheets. Sophie really loves her activities, and so do I! (Not paid to say that or anything...just seriously like them!)
Math Activities
Rainbow Pom Pom Sorting/Fine Motor. Using a set of tweezers, she sorted the pom poms into the correct cup. The tweezers were just the right challenge for her!
Graphing with Skittles. Even though she really had no concept of graphing, she enjoyed this sorting and counting activity mostly because she got to eat the Skittles at the end! Get the printable here from Mom on the Move.
How Many Raindrops? This counting activity was from the Rainy Day PreK Pack. Sophie would choose a card and then place that many glass beads ("rain drops") onto the mat. Then, she would trace the number with a dry erase marker. She really enjoyed this one and wanted to play for a long time.
Other Activities
Fizzy Rainbows. This was, without a doubt, the star of the show this week. I gave her a pan of baking soda and cups with colored vinegar and she used an eye dropper to drop the vinegar on the baking soda, causing a fizzy reaction. She sat for almost 45 minutes doing this! This will definitely be a repeat activity! (And a great one to keep her occupied if I need to do something like make dinner!)
Sophie is wanting to do Tot School all day long at this point. This week, she worked through all of the activities I had for the week by Wednesday morning. I'm going to have to figure out a system that gives her plenty to do, but also doesn't require me to plan 800 things for the course of a week! I'm trying out something new this next week, so we'll see how it works!
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.
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!
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!
