Ladybug Color Sort

The past two weeks we've been focusing on the four colors Sophie has been exploring so far: red, blue, yellow, and green.  When I stumbled across an adorable ladybug color activity by way of Pinterest, I had to try it out!

A Little Bit of Quiet has a fabulous tutorial of how she made her ladybug color sort game and shares her templates as well!  Her version is absolutely adorable!  (Note: when you click the download link it will have you request permission to view the documents.  She sent me an email quickly to access the documents.  I, however, had waited until the last minute and had been planning on using this activity the next day, so I ended up making my own templates.  Hers are way cuter - just plan ahead a little better than I did and she'll save you some work!)

I decided to put mine together a bit differently, because I didn't have a button maker and my goal was for it to be a flannel board activity, so I modified things slightly.

I printed off my ladybugs on white cardstock and cut them out. Then I laminated the circles, hot glued them onto my felt, and cut around them.  It took me maybe 30 minutes to get my ladybugs all ready to go.  It would have been faster if I'd had a circle punch the right size, but I didn't.

Then I freehanded my leaf pattern (I wanted all four leaves to fit across my flannel board so I went the long skinny route) and cut them out of my flannel.  I think the stitching on the leaves of the original project was what mostly sold me on the adorableness of this activity!  I enjoyed getting to pull my sewing machine out and do some really simple freehand stitches to embellish my leaves.  I know that Sophie totally won't care, but it made me really happy.  Lol.

This was my first project for Sophie's flannel board and I have learned (at least) one thing the hard way.  The 5 mil lamination I had at the time is too heavy for the felt to hold for toddler play.  I don't know if the 3 mil would do better, but I'm hoping so.  I'll let you know the next time I try it!  So this has ended up being a floor game as opposed to a board game. Oh well.

Sophie seems to enjoy it, even though the matching is still a bit advanced for her independently.  She really likes playing with the ladybugs and we'll be able to use this to review our colors for a long time! As A Little Bit of Quiet shares as well, they would be great for counting, simple addition and subtraction, and imaginative play down the road.

I started another flannel board project this week which I will share on the blog soon!

Tot School: Red, Blue, Yellow, and Green

Sophie is 14 months old.

I decided to spend a couple weeks just practicing with the colors we already had focused on and do some fun multicolor activities.  We had fun exploring red, blue, yellow, and green!

Sensory Play

The sensory bin this week was filled with colored poms and plastic ice cubes (red, blue, yellow, and green, of course).  I also threw in a couple of her colored koosh animals (which were her favorite part of the bin) and a scoop.  She discovered the fun of stirring this week between this bin and one of her Tot Trays and spent most of the week stirring the bin (or dumping and filling - which I could let her do this time since it was just poms and not something messier!).

We also played in ice cubes several times this week, which meant my kitchen got cleaned!

Book Basket

Our book basket was the same as last week since we didn't make it to the library, but the books are still well loved.  She really enjoyed Big Red Barn by Margaret Wise Brown.  I'm shocked at how long she sits through this book - we still don't quite finish it but she lets me read most this longer book.  She really likes all the animals.

She also specifically asked for Blue Hat, Green Hat by Sandra Boynton.  She couldn't find the book, so she had me read Doggies really quickly (she kept turning the pages without letting me make the dog noises - which never happens!) until we got to the back cover.  Images of several other books are on the back, including Blue Hat, Green Hat, so she pointed to that picture until I figured it out and went to find the book.  She squealed with delight when I pulled it out from the other room.  It was precious! :)

Tot Trays

She really loved her Tot Trays this week!  We seriously "played Tot School" at least three times per day this week.  

Her first tray was putting stickers on paper.  We had done this several weeks ago during our first Tot School session and it was amazing to see the improvement on this skill since then!  She was able to put the stickers on all by her self once I held it out for her to grab.  I would hold the sheet and ask her which sticker she wanted and she would point to the one she wanted.  So sweet!  She also really got a kick out of putting stickers on herself - her nose, her head, her toes.  It made her giggle when I put one on the bottom of her foot!

Her second tray was her new peg board.  She liked this but had trouble getting the pieces completely vertical to put on the board.  She was much more successful just connecting the pieces separately from the board.  This was probably the least loved tray of the week.

Her last tray was hands down the winner this week.  I put some counting bears in a little bowl with a spoon to work on our spoon skills.  We mostly ended up stirring instead of transferring with the spoon (which is fine with me - we just really started using a spoon and she gets so frustrated when she wants to do something and can't!)  She liked it when I sang a little stirring song we do every morning when I stir up her yogurt (don't worry...your not missing any spectacular music by not having this one in your repertoire).

Side note:  Okay Montessori Mommas....I started out with glass bowls and immediately knew that was not going to work for us at this point.  She only wanted to clack them together because they make a great noise.  And then she wants to throw them.  How on earth do you use glass with your young toddlers?  Help a sister out! :)

I also included her shape sorter with just the circle, square, and triangle on her shelf this week.  We played with it a bit and at one point I would ask her to "give momma a blue" and see which one she would hand me from the bucket.  She did better than I expected with this - better than the statistical chance of handing me the right one, but definitely not mastery.  She seemed pretty proud when I made a big deal about giving me the correct color.  I think she's starting to associate the names with the colors.  It's so neat to see her brain figuring all this stuff out!  

Trying to put everything in our shape sorter bucket.

Other Activities

I don't have any pictures of these things, but this week we also climbed mountains of pillows, went on a color scavenger hunt around the house (ex: looking for anything blue we could find), had some colorful snacks eating yummy fruit, went on a couple family bike rides and danced to lots of music.

I am loving the sweet memories we are making by trying to be intentional with our time with Sophie.  I never get to all the ideas I have listed for the week, but just the fact that I've made a list means I get to much more than I would have otherwise!

Next week we'll stick with these four colors and do more fun activities.  I have been working on a new project this weekend that I can't wait to start using with Sophie this coming week!

Want to see how other families do Tot School?  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

How to Occupy a Toddler and Get a Clean(er) Kitchen!

Anytime I'm trying to accomplish something in the kitchen Sophie wants to be right there under my feet.  She's so curious and most times I love that, but there are sometimes just things I need to do without her right at my feet (like opening the hot oven!).  She has a cabinet and a shelf full of things that are toddler-approved for play like tupperware, plastic lids, her bowls and plates, etc., but these lose their thrill after a while.

The other day I accidentally dropped a piece of ice while I was getting her a drink and she chased that little piece of ice around the kitchen for several minutes.  So when I needed a few minutes to prepare dinner later that evening, I got three ice cubes from the freezer and put them in one of her bowls.  

She worked at picking up the cubes and pushing them around on the floor. She loved it!  

She kept trying to get my attention about the water on the floor - it was really bothering her.  So I asked her if she wanted to "clean" and gave her a towel.  She loves moving a clean rag around when I am dusting or cleaning around the house, so she really loved having something to really clean.

My little Cinderella wasn't content to clean the floors - she noticed my cabinets needed some work done as well.  Such a sweet girl! 

Needless to say, this one is going in my bag of tricks for when I need to take care of something in the kitchen!  Sophie had a blast and my kitchen floors sure aren't gonna be harmed by the extra love and attention! :)

I have linked up at:
 Show and Share Saturday at I Can Teach My Child
Link and Learn at No Time for Flashcards
Tuesday Tots at Rainy Day Mum

Tuesday Baby Link Up at Growing Slower

Tot School: Green Week

Sophie is 13.5 months.

This week was all about the color green and we had lots of fun doing activities!  This week was the first week I've wondered if Sophie is actually starting to pick up on the whole color thing.  There have been several small hints that she's starting to recognize the differences between the colors we've been working on.  We'll see!  It's neat to see her little wheels turning with the activities.

Sensory Activities

I've decided to be more intentional about not limiting our sensory activities to just this bin every week.  Sophie is still very much in a "put everything in her mouth" phase, so it's difficult to balance my desire for her to get to experience these things with the fact that she just wants to put EVERYTHING in her mouth!

Anyway, this week's sensory bin was filled with split peas, plastic ice cubes, plastic lids from baby food pouches and green poms.  There was a green scoop, green bowl, and a green shark colander of sorts.  Once again we utilized the kiddie pool to help contain the mess (did I mention she's also hit the desire to throw phase? - we are deep in the throes of learning about gravity!)  She really liked feeling the peas in her hands and learning to stir with the scoop.

We also tried playing with shaving cream in a bag (I'm not quite brave enough to try outside of the bag yet!)  Sophie was pretty unimpressed.  We'll try it again in the future.

What's in our Book Basket?

We started our week with a trip to the library and most of the books we got were a HUGE hit with Sophie!

Some of Sophie's favorite books this week were Where's Spot?, Green, and Big Red Barn.  Here are the books that got pulled out of our book basket over and over!

Tot Trays

This weeks Tot Trays were also a big hit with the little lady!  We probably spent more time at Tot School this week than we ever have before.

Her first tray was floral foam and golf tees.  She absolutely LOVED this activity!  She would put them in and take them out of the holes I had created over and over.  She also enjoyed the sound that the tees made when she put them in the little cup.  She did not, however, like the residue the foam left on her hands.  She kept sticking them out for me to wipe off.

Her tongue has started to make an appearance whenever she's concentrating - I can't get enough! :)

Her second Tot Tray was her new Melissa and Doug Geometric Stacker.  I knew she was going to like this one - I bought it specifically after trying to find something that would mimic playing with Clay's headphone jack.  Near the end of the week she seemed to more naturally place the shapes on the correct colored post - one of my hints that she may be starting to pick up on these colors.  It was not all the time, but it certainly happened more frequently than it did at the beginning of the week.

 Her third tray was putting baby food pouch lids into a parmesan cheese container (an idea I got from Nicole at The Kavanaugh Report)  She moderately enjoyed it at the beginning of the week but this was the favorite by Thursday!  I bet she spent ten minutes putting them in and shaking them out.  She really liked me counting each lid as she put it in.

Gross Motor Activities

We had lots of fun playing with my big green exercise ball this week!  It was big enough that she had to roll it instead of throw it which finally helped her learn the concept of rolling.  She chased this thing around the house for a good long while.  It was one of the first things she wanted to do each morning when she woke up (probably because she couldn't miss spotting it from across the room!).

I found a copy of Slow and Steady, Get Me Ready at Goodwill for $3 and couldn't pass it up after seeing positive reviews online.  It gives an activity for each week from birth to age 5 to work up to kindergarten readiness.  Most of the activities are things we do naturally in Tot School, but some are things I would never think to include.  The recommended activity for this week was the "imaginary bridge" - having your toddler walk on a tape line.  I have to admit I thought this was a little advanced for my just walking toddler, but Sophie had a lot of fun trying!  I would show her how I put my feet on the tape and walked to the end.  She tried so hard - it was pretty precious.  We ended up doing it together (me holding her hands) while she worked diligently to put her feet on the tape.  It was definitely good exercise for her and she had a lot of fun with it.  (Note: she also recommended trying to walk backwards on the tape line...we passed on that one for the time being! ;))

 Other Tot School Activities

We painted a green leaves on a tree with Do-A-Dot paint markers and ate kiwi for a snack
(still not impressed). 

Toddler Life

We FINALLY were able to take Sophie out on her first bike ride this week!  She absolutely LOVED it!  She doesn't look so sure in this picture because it was taken before we really got started (and she wasn't keen on the helmet), but once she started going she was sold.  We ended up riding for about a half an hour because she was enjoying it so much.  By the end she was wanting to help Daddy with the handle bars.  I see many bike rides in our future! :)

She also demonstrated her new skill and a new word this week.  She learned to stand on her chair and say "no"...two toddler rites of passage that I wouldn't have minded coming a bit later! :)

Does it make me a terrible mother that I took 5 seconds to snap a picture before making her get down?? :/ 

What's Next?

I've decided to wait a couple weeks before introducing a new color.  I feel like she's starting to grasp these four (red, blue, yellow, and green) and I want to spend a few weeks just focusing on these before I confuse her with more.  We'll do some fun multi-color activities to enjoy these colors a bit before moving on!

Want to see how other families do Tot School?  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

Encouraging a Love of Reading: Honey for a Child's Heart Book Review

Thinking about reading during my childhood always brings up nostalgic feelings of warmth and begging for "just one more page!"  I have fond memories of reading the Little House on the Prairie series with my mom.  When she had to travel for work, she would record a chapter for each night for me to listen to while she was gone.  I remember diving into a more challenging book, Heidi, (the original, unabridged version) and sharing laughs over the longest sentences I had ever seen and discovering exciting new words I didn't know.  (Mom, one day we will finish that book!)

I joke (only partially) that reading was the source of most of my scoldings as a child.  I was the type who would get permission to "finish the chapter" before setting the table and find that thirty minutes later I had read three more chapters and the table still wasn't set!

This warmth and love for books is something we strive to develop in our daughter.  Already she loves books (There's a Woset in My Closet anyone?) and will spend a good portion of the day pulling books from her basket or the pile on her floor (which never seem to make it to the shelf!) and climbing on my lap to read together.  On one occasion, when Clay got home from work, Sophie squealed with delight and immediately crawled away from him without greeting him (very uncommon).  She crawled over to her basket, pulled out a book and held it up for him to read it to her - like she had been waiting all day to share it with him!

Book Review: Honey for A Child's Heart

After seeing it recommended many times (including when I was compiling a booklist for the Classical Christian School where I used to teach), I finally checked out Gladys Hunt's Honey for A Child's Heart (affiliate link).  This book lived up to every recommendation it had received.

Gladys Hunt does a fabulous job of describing the joy, warmth, and closeness that comes from sharing quality literature as a family.  It made me want to read more with Sophie and we already spend a good bit of time sharing books together!

The book is divided into two main sections: "Using Books to Help Children Grow" and "Best Loved Books for Children".  "Using Books to Help Children Grow" shares the "why" of reading as a family and the importance of exposing children to great quality literature from an early age.  It focuses much more on the character developed during this process rather than the academic benefits, but those are certainly not dismissed.

Good literature teaches more than we know.  Example always speaks louder than precept, and books can do more to inspire honor and tenacity of purpose than all the chiding and exhortations in the world.

Also in this section, Hunt details what makes one book superior over another as far as quality of literature.  She argues that it is difficult to pin down a specific definition of quality literature, but that one certainly knows it when they see it.  Excellent literature leaves its mark on the reader.

That which is excellent has a certain spirit of literature present.  The sensitivity of the reader says, "This is true." "This is real." And it sets in action something in the reader that has profound effects.  It has been an experience - spiritual, imaginative, intellectual, or social.  A sense of permanent worthwhileness surrounds really great literature.  Laughter, pain, hunger, satisfaction, love, and joy - the ingredients of human life are found in depth and leave a residue of mental and spiritual richness in the reader.

In the second section, ""Best Loved Books for Children," Hunt provides 13 different annotated book lists.  Some of them are broken down by age level, while the older age groups are further divided by genre.  She also includes a multi-age list for Nourishing Your Children's Spiritual Lives and Books for Special Occasions.

In all honesty, this book made me want to get in the car and go straight to the library!  I want to raid the library shelves and read all of these books for myself even though Sophie is still way too young for many of the lists.

She has a very good list for 0-3 year olds and I am excited to begin reading these books with Sophie!  I sat down with the list while logged onto my local library website and searched to determine which of her recommendations our branch carried.  Fortunately, the majority of the list is available at our library! Our library's site has the ability to log in and create a book list, so I added each of these recommended books for her age onto a list so that I can have a list of suggestions when we go to the library.  Because, let's be honest, when Sophie and I go to the library together, I do not have much time to peruse the shelves looking for a good book!  I've found that our trips are much more successful when I know the majority of the books I want to check out ahead of time.

The first book we read from her list was "Where's Spot?" by Eric Hill.  Sophie has given it her stamp of approval as we have had it for less than 12 hours and have read it at least ten times.  She adores this book!  I look forward to sharing many many more of Hunt's recommendations with our young, excited reader!

What's your little one's favorite book right now?

I'm linking this post up at Trivium Tuesdays at Living and Learning at Home.

Tot School: Independence Day

Sophie is 13.5 months.

If you read about our Fourth of July, you know that we had plenty of indoor play time this week for Tot School!  We had the exciting privilege of having Daddy home with us on Thursday and Friday, so he got some Tot School time in with Sophie as well.  I love seeing Clay interact with her in this way - and she loves it!  He always comes up with different ways to engage her than I did and his ways become the favorites (we all know who the favorite parent is! ;))

All of our activities were Red, White, and Blue themed, which provided a good way to talk about the holiday as well as good review of red and blue!

Sensory Bin

I took the plunge into giving her a more genuine sensory bin this week.  I have never been afraid of messy, just the fact that she still loves putting things in her mouth.  Our bin was full of white rice, red beans, blue and red pom poms and white ping pong balls.  She had two different kinds of scoops and some cups and bowls.  She had a fabulous time trying to scoop the rice (and improved greatly in this skill as the week progressed - still one we need to keep practicing though!).

The first day I was a little naive and put too much trust in the ability of my vacuum cleaner to suck up lots of rice, but I wised up by the second day!  We brought in her kiddie pool (we weren't getting any swimming time in this week anyway!) and put the sensory bin inside of it.  She could play to her heart's content and scoop from the bin to other containers without rice going everywhere.  But she did a really good job and had a great time.  She even got to play this with her little cousin who was in town and they both had a great time!

I also made her a sensory bottle with blue food coloring and patriotic colored beads and glitter.  She really liked it once she found it on the second day!  I made the mistake of putting two drops of food coloring in - next time I will only do one so that the beads are easier to see.  She still enjoyed shaking it (and I am really thankful I decided to super glue the lid on because this thing took a beating!).

Puzzle

Sophie got a new table last week!  I got it from Ikea for only $20!  SO worth it!

She really loves it and because of this, I am going to leave a puzzle out at all times instead of tying it to Tot School.  I may save some puzzles for our Tot School time, and I will still rotate them out, but I think it will be easier to just leave one out to play with as she wishes.

Tot Trays

The first Tot Tray was definitely the least interesting to her.  I had a red star-shaped ice cube tray with  blue pom poms for one-to-one correspondence (or just filling and emptying!) and she really didn't want to bother with it.  I don't know if it was because she got to explore the pom poms in the sensory bin or what, but this tray was only touched a couple of times and then only for a few seconds.

The second Tot Tray included red and blue counting bears for sorting.  I know that sorting is still beyond her, but I figured it at least provided good opportunity to talk about the colors.  And moving items in and out of cups is one of her favorite ways to play, so I knew she would enjoy it.  She scared me a bit when she first started playing, because the first three or four bears were put in the correct colored cups!  But I soon realized it was just a coincidence and we just enjoyed talking about the colors and shaking up cups full of bears. :)

The last Tot Tray was foam "beads" (slices from a red pool noodle) and a strand of blue beads.  Actually threading the beads was difficult for her, but she definitely tried to put the bead strand through the larger beads.  She really like playing with the foam and stacking the foam beads.  When she did Tot School with Daddy, he discovered that the maraca from the music bin made a perfect rod to stack the beads on.  This was how we played with this tray for the rest of the week.  Stacking onto a rod is her new favorite activity!  (Her ring stacker she got for Christmas got new love and appreciation this week after discovering this game with Daddy!)

Music Bin

I added a new bin to our shelf this week!  Sophie LOVES music.  She comes by it honestly as both Clay and I are very musical (and Clay teaches guitar out of our house).  Between guitar lessons and practicing singing and play for church, she is exposed to music all the time and naturally explores it with her play instruments and Daddy's real instruments.  But I wanted to create some intentional time to enjoy music together, especially when our theme provided such a great opportunity!

I put her red and blue maracas, a set of bells, and several American flags in the music bin this week.  When she wanted to explore it, I would put on a patriotic march and we would play our instruments or wave our flags to the music.  I didn't get any pictures of her in action, because, well, I was too busy playing the maracas or waving my own American flag!  We loved this time together and she wanted me to play the marches over and over again.  We'll definitely be doing more intentional music time together!

Other Activities

We also celebrated by eating a red and blue snack of blueberries and strawberries and painting an American Flag with our red and blue Do A Dots.

Next week we'll do the color green, and I am super excited about the fun things we have planned! :)

Want to see how other families do Tot School?  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

A (VERY) Rainy Independence Day!

Our local meteorologists gave a 100% chance of rain for the 4th of July.  Unfortunately, they were correct:  100% of our 4th of July was filled with rain!  There was some pretty serious flooding around our town and all of the city's celebrations were cancelled.  I was pretty bummed because I was definitely looking forward to taking Sophie to the parade.  She would have loved it.

Not the best picture of Sophie, lol, but the cutest one of her little 4th of July outfit!

We spent a little bit of time with family, but once we heard roads were closing we decided to head home for a quiet evening in.

We grilled some hotdogs in the George Foreman and had a living room picnic - nothing says freedom quite like that. :)  Sophie thought it was pretty fun to eat on the floor right next to Mommy and Daddy instead of in her chair.  We also watched Finding Nemo (the first time for both Sophie and Clay), which seemed highly appropriate considering the ridiculous amount of water we'd been seeing and hearing all day!

She looks like such a big girl!

All in all, it was a good day, and thankfully the rain slowed down by late evening.  Although as I type this, another system of rain has made its way here and it is once again pouring!  What happened to our Florida sun?  As one optimistic friend suggested, though, at least there weren't firework bans due to dry conditions.... :)