Planting Seeds of Thankfulness in Little Ones

In my few years as a teacher and short time as a mommy, I know for sure that kids understand and are capable of much more than we grownups typically give them credit for.  There is an ever-growing list of words we have to be careful speaking in our house (you know, dangerous ones like "cheese", "puffs", "outside", and "bye-bye") because Sophie definitely understands them and knows that she wants those things!   It almost always takes me by surprise to discover a new word or idea she understands.

She is listening to us and picking up on so much more than I realize.  This makes me want to be really intentional in the things we do together and really think about what we are teaching her through our daily life activities.  One thing I definitely want to help cultivate in her is thankfulness towards others, but especially towards God.

I've been working on her signing "thank you" after we give her something (often its more like blowing a kiss, but that works too!).  Sometimes she'll even mimic saying "thank you" - it's super precious.  I know she doesn't really understand what this means yet, but that understanding will come with time.

She just had her first birthday party a couple weeks ago (pictures to come eventually!) she was blessed with some wonderful gifts from family and friends!  I am working on her thank you notes and wanted to include her in them somehow in a way that would begin to plant the seeds of thankfulness her in tiny heart.  So I wrote the notes (obviously) and then we sat together and she colored on them (translation: stacked her crayons and moved them around on the desk, but it made a pretty picture nonetheless!).  It makes for a really sweet little note.

But more important than just having a pretty picture to send with the thank you notes, I talk about the gift the person gave,  how nice it was of them to give it, and how much fun we have playing with it or using it.  I tell her about how much the person loves her and how we were telling them thank you with this note.  At this point she usually signs thank you (because she's adorable...), and then, most importantly, I hold her tiny little hands together in mine and say a short prayer thanking God for the person who sent the gift. "Thank you God for Aunt Becca, Amen." Then she adds, "ah-ahh" - (you know, Amen).

Granted, it is taking exponentially longer to get her thank you notes in the mail as we pretty much only get to one per day this way, but I like to think that on some level this is sinking into her heart.  And if I'm wrong, we're certainly no worse off, and it's good for me to reminded of all these things as well.  Double win!

What ideas do you have to cultivate thankfulness in little ones?  I'd love to hear ways you work on this with your sweet littles.  :)

Tot School: Blue Week

Sophie is 12.5 months old.

Sophie continues to enjoy Tot School - sometimes we even do it more than once in a day if she crawls over and indicates she wants to play! This week was all about the color blue.  

Sensory Bin

Her sensory bin was filled with all sorts of blue toys and household items.  Some favorites included a hand broom, her blue cup, and a frozen ice pack.  She hardly explored this bin this week.  Her favorite thing was to take the little cup, put her paci in, shake it up until the paci flew out and then repeat. 

Tot Trays

The first Tot Tray was laminated family pictures.  We had just spent the week with my family (who lives in St. Louis) and I figured it was the best time to work on the family name vocabulary while they were fresh in her mind.  She really loved this tray - it was definitely her favorite all week.  She did a lot of pointing and saying "dat" (translation: who's that?) and I would tell her.  Sometimes she would mimic the name, sometimes not.  After she found Daddy's picture, though, she didn't really want anything to do with the others (unless she was looking for Daddy).  So the game quickly became "Is that Daddy?...."noooo"..."That's so and so".  I found it interesting that she would always turn the pictures the right way up (so no one was upside down) before she would ask.  She definitely knew which way the picture was supposed to go.

Her second tray was her shape sorter.  I removed the stars and the cross shapes, leaving only the circles, squares, and triangles.  She did a really great job getting them in when she felt like it.  As soon as she would get frustrated, we just turned it into a game of fill the bucket and dump the bucket.  She definitely improved with this during the week though.

Her final Tot Tray this week, and one I *thought* she would love, was blue post-it notes on blue paper.  (I've got to instill a love of brightly color coded office supplies early, you know).  She loved playing with my grocery list post-it note stuck in my notebook at the grocery store last week, so I thought for sure free reign to stick and unstick would be a hit.  But she really didn't care very much until Friday when she figured out they would stick to her as well.  After that she was very intent on getting one to stick to her leg. After a few minutes of readjusting she was finally victorious and we could move on to the fun game of sticking them to Daddy's picture.  Once again, Daddy's picture.  Not bitter or anything. ;)  (Disclaimer: I seriously LOVE that Sophie is a Daddy's girl! I just give him a hard time about the fact that I'm chopped liver as soon as she has the option to play with him instead!)

 Other Activities

She discovered a fun new gross motor activity this week - chair pushing!  She pushed our bar stool all the way across the room several times this week.  Way more fun than a musical toy purchased solely for the purpose of pushing around the room.  Toys are overrated. ;)  In related news, we are SO close to having a walker.  She's taking lots more independent steps these days, but crawling is still the way to go when efficiency is required.

She "read" her Bible to Grandma over Skype one morning.  Precious.  For real.

 And finally, we tried Do-a-Dot painting for the first time this week!  It was a big hit!  Her first piece of artwork was to paint on Daddy's Father's Day card.  We will definitely be bringing these back out soon!  (Check out that concentration!  Love it!)

Next week will be all about yellow! Perfect for summer!

Places I'm linking up:

Tot School Gathering Place at 1+1+1=1 

Tot School Tuesday at See Vanessa Craft
Tuesday Tots

Tot School at the Beach! (and Daily "Chores")

 Sophie is 12.5 months.

Tot School at the Beach

We spent the last week at the beach with my family, so we didn't have our standard Tot School.  But Sophie had lots of fun experiencing sand, the ocean, and the pool for the first time!  (Well, she had been in the pool as an infant, but totally different experience now!)

She was very curious about the ocean, but would get scared whenever we got too close.  She didn't even like it to touch my feet while I was holding her.  But everyday when we went out she wanted to go look at it. 

She absolutely loved playing in the sand though - a natural sensory bin!  She would sit on her little mat and play with her bucket and shovel for a good fifteen minutes, just scooping, transferring, raking, and ultimately throwing the sand.  She also explored the difference between wet and dry sand and felt sea shells.  She had a great time and would point to go outside with her bucket several times each day!

She loved the pool as well.  This girl has turned into a regular little fish in the past week!  By the end of the week she had learned to kick her legs and splash.  She was still timid when it came to sitting in her floaty and preferred to be in someone's arms instead.

 She got lots of quality time with my family (who is normally 14 hours away).  They taught her to make monkey noises and say "ewwww!" while scrunching up her face and shoulders, and she learned how to give her baby a bottle.  She also got lots of silly time with Grandpa, tea parties with Grandma, and lots of love and attention from Great Grandma and aunts and uncles.  Next week with just Mommy to play with is going to be boring! ;)

 Our Daily "Chores"

One of Sophie's favorite parts of our day is when it's time to do laundry.  Seriously.  In fact, I have to be careful not to say the word "laundry" or she gets disappointed if it's not time!  Whenever the buzzer for the dryer goes off, she points to the laundry room until we go get started.  I started having her help me do laundry when she was about 8 months old.  I would hold her by the washing machine and hand her one clothing item at a time to drop it. 

As she got older I would have her help me take the wet clothes and put them in the dryer the same way.  The she learned to take the clothes out of the dryer and put them in the laundry basket, which she pushes to our living room and pulls out the clothes for me to fold.  I joke that all I have left to get her excited about is putting them away for me! 

This daily activity is how she learned the concept of "in" and "out" and feels the differences between wet and dry.  If only I could keep her loving this as she gets older! :)

Places I'm linking up:
Tot School Gathering Place at 1+1+1=1 
Tot School Tuesday at See Vanessa Craft

First Offical Week of Tot School: Red

Sophie is 12.5 months old.

Well, I got my act together to try Tot School "officially" this past week.  I decided we would start with using the colors as a theme as a way to introduce them and make planning easier for me!  This week was all about red.

Sophie really seemed to enjoy "playing Tot School." When she went to bed the night before our first day, our little Tot School corner didn't even exist, so she noticed right away that something was different in the morning!  Her picture was the very first thing she noticed (no self-esteem issues in this house!).  Honestly, the tape on the back was way more exciting than the picture itself or the body parts I tried to point out.

Sensory Bin

Our sensory bin this week was full of red items, some familiar and some brand new.  Her favorite items were my velcro hair rollers, a maraca, and tinsel.  She also liked the plastic ice cubes (frozen of course!), but they kept going to her mouth and were a really bad size, so I didn't put them in after the first day.  I was surprised that she was so timid about exploring the basket.  I expected her to dive in gung ho, but it took her a little bit to warm up to it.  By the end of the week she knew exactly which items she wanted to go for.

Tot Trays

Her first Tot Tray was putting stickers on red paper.  She liked playing with the stickers and by the end of the week was (mostly) able to put them on the paper if I handed them to her just right.  A big improvement from our first day attempt! :)  She seemed to enjoy it, though.  Definitely one we will repeat in the future.

 Her second tray was her stacking cups.  This is a toy that is typically in her toy basket, but she doesn't usually play with it.  She did a little bit of stacking with it, but mostly she "drank" from them and put her puff balls into the hole (a fun game Daddy taught her).

I love the concentration on her face!

Her third Tot Tray was red puff balls in a paint pallet.  She LOVED the puff balls.  She immediately started taking them from the pallet and putting them in the little cup.  She later found other fun things to do with them like putting them on the shelf or in her chair.  The only problem was that she constantly wanted to put them in her mouth.  She did alright if she had a paci in, but if it came out she could get one to her mouth crazy fast.  This is one determined little girl.  

Book Bin

She loved reading books in her rocking chair!  She actually learned how to climb up into the chair by herself this week and would then point to whichever book she wanted to look at.  Her favorite is still Ten Little Ladybugs, but she also really liked My First Body Book and The Little Red Hen.

Other Fun

We finally got the hang of coloring this week!  I made her some muffin tin crayons that were easier for her to work with, and for the first time she really seem to enjoy coloring.

We also had our first real week of water fun!  Her little friend next door has a water activity table and she loved splashing and playing.  She also got a kiddie pool for her birthday and got to play in it for the first time.  I think we have a long summer of being soaked ahead of us!

Our Tot School Space

Sophie is 12 months.

We had our first "official" week of Tot School last week, and it was a lot of fun!  Since we traveled this weekend and everything was so new, we're keeping the same activities this week.  I'll share my specific activities later this week.

I'm really excited about our Tot School space.  We didn't have a spot in a room where I could close it off from her when we weren't using it, so I had to improvise!  I turned the corner of our living room into her Tot School corner and it is working out much better than I anticipated.  I was worried about being able to leave my activities out in a way that she couldn't get into them without my help or supervision, but also didn't want to haul them out every morning and put them away when we were done.  (I know myself...we would be much less likely to do Tot School that way!)

I brought out an old bookshelf we had that was the perfect size and made a curtain that I attached with velcro.  That way I can keep it covered up from curious little fingers (and mouths!) when we're not using it and my living room doesn't look more cluttered! I added her little book basket and rocking chair and we were good to go!

 

When I move the curtain you can see her Tot Trays, our sensory bin, and her puzzle.  I can also store her little coloring desk on the shelf.  

The laminated picture of Sophie is an idea I got from The Kavanaugh Report.  We will use this to talk about body parts (nose, eyes, etc.)  She loves looking at pictures of herself!  (This was the very first thing she went to on our first day of Tot School!)

I'm really happy with how the space turned out.  So far, she hasn't ventured to the shelf on her own (except for the book basket), but she goes right for it when I point to it and ask if she wants to "play Tot School" with me.  We'll see how long it is before I have to put the small pieces up!

I'm linking up this post (for the first time!) at Tot School Gathering Place at 1+1+1=1.

Cheese, Cheerios, and Poisoned Apricots

Sophie has entered a picky stage of eating.  My once fabulous eater whose favorite foods included avocado and spinach now refuses to touch anything green.  She is much too mature for purees (unless they are straight out of a pouch), yet hates to have dirty hands so she doesn't like to pick up anything sticky.  It was just recently that her love of bananas triumphed over her unwillingness to pick up pieces of gooey banana by herself.  (Prior to that my little princess liked others to place them delicately in her open and waiting mouth.  Quickly, please.)

Some days it seems I am the world's best chef for the incredible way I slice blueberries, while other days she's appalled that I would serve her something so disgusting.

Today's dining fit protested the fact that I tried to serve her apricots and mandarin oranges.  When we had a picnic lunch last week, Sophie was very interested in her friend's lunch which included these fruits.  He kindly shared a piece and Sophie would have been content to pilfer the rest of this poor boy's lunch.  So, being the kind, caring (read: desperate to get my daughter to eat fruits or veggies) mother that I am, I picked her some of these new-to-her fruits up at the store today.  As I cut them up I thought that surely I was about to be named "Top Chef" for this culinary masterpiece.

Little did I know that I had apparently purchased the poisoned variety of these orange fruits, something I had no idea Publix even carried.  They were obviously the most disgusting thing I had ever put in front of her.  Shame on me.  After several minutes of attempting to demonstrate just how delicious her lunch was, I threw in the towel and broke out the cheese and crackers.

I sent Clay a text asking if it was possible to raise a healthy child whose diet consists solely of cheese, cheerios, and wheat crackers.  Especially since she was sick last week, I've allowed her to eat pretty much whatever she will eat these last few days because she had eaten so little before.  But now I'm starting to wonder if I've doomed myself to a toddler who refuses to eat anything but cheese and crackers.

The story doesn't end there.  Approximately thirty minutes later, she saw the plate of apricots and oranges still on the table.  Her points and adorable little grunts indicated that she really wanted that food, as soon as possible.  How could I have been so flighty as to not have offered these to her at lunch time?  Silly mommy! So, I give her a piece of apricot.  She looks at me with her adorable surprise face (my new favorite), grunts, and nods yes (Sophie speak for "yes, more!")  She proceeds to eat the whole apricot I've cut up for her.  So I figure, what the heck, let's try the orange.  She scarfs it all the way down as well.  Score one for Mom, even if it was a delayed reaction.

I know this is (*hopefully*?) just a phase she will one day outgrow.  It's easy to get frustrated when something she loved yesterday is world's nastiest food today.  But I'll just hold on tight and keep putting new things in front of her, hoping that one day soon I'll receive the much coveted "more" grunt!

First Birthday Week!

Sophie turned one this week, and as it is with all of our milestones, it wasn't without it's own kind of excitement!

We started our week rather uneventfully, as I didn't do much in the way of deliberate activities with her this week.  I've been pulling things together for the "official" launch of our Tot School, but was bad about setting anything up for her.

She got a new puzzle in the mail from a good friend, and she really enjoyed playing with that.  It was the first thing she went to from her toy basket every morning!  Each piece has some kind of rattle, squeak, etc.  Her favorite piece (of course) is the heart with the mirror.  She did a cute little double take the first time she noticed herself in it!

On Wednesday, we went to the Strawberry Farm with a couple of Sophie's little friends.  We didn't actually pick strawberries, but they had a picnic area and a little "petting" zoo barnyard.  Sophie LOVED seeing the animals!  I wasn't able to get very many good pictures of her looking at the animals since there were two of us watching three one-year-olds, but you can see her sweet face.  She would point and "talk," wanting to make sure I saw all of the animals.  She even mimicked "cock-a-doodle-doo!" :)

She ended up getting a fever the day before her birthday, and by the big day, it was up to almost 103.  The poor baby was pitiful.  You could just tell she didn't feel good, but she was trying so hard to be happy.  We read her new book, Ten Little Ladybugs, from her "Aunt" Valerie at least twelve times.  No exaggeration.  She was loving her some ladybugs. (And momma didn't mind the cuddling...)

Friday was full of meltdowns.  She still didn't feel good and just couldn't figure out what to do about it.  I was out of ideas so we packed up and went to play with water on the back porch.  She loved me pouring water from the cup into her hand - she kept trying to grab at it. This killed a good twenty minutes to get us to naptime for a sleepy, sick girl.

We got her a swing for her birthday, and today her daddy spent all afternoon and evening making her a frame so we could hang the swing for her.  She absolutely loved it!  She only pitched a minor fit when we had to get her out of it to get ready for bedtime.  I imagine there will be many hours spent giggling in this swing!  (This pic was taken before we moved the frame to the backyard...it won't stay in our driveway! ;))