Tot School: 28 Months

Mr. Smiley, 28 months

I’m combining two weeks worth of highlights . . .

Tot Trays

Toys tray activities included:

1. putting spaghetti noodles in a jar (dog’s favorite)
2. board books,
3. Q-Tips through a hole in the paint container (Favorite!!!)
4. placing play food in the bucket to go shopping.

Another round of Tot Trays contained:

1. placing pretend diaper pins into a bag
2. Noah’s Animals File Folder Game
3. taking clothespins off chenille wire
4. Brown Bear, Brown Bear Eye Spy bottle

The third round of Tot Trays:

1. drop buttons through paper towel holder into bucket
2. match Noah’s ark animals or carry them around in a bucket
3. play with cotton balls and stacking cups

 (He got rather upset at the fluff from the cotton balls sticking to his sweaty fingers.)

We started learning about Little House on the Prairie.  They boys made log cabins from Valerie’s Lapbook Lessons website.  By the way, there are GREAT picture books out now of Little House on the Prairie.  We got ours through Paperback Swap. 

   

Mommy Favorites

 

• Doesn’t every child play with Magneatos in the dog crate?

• Drinking milk at Starbucks – normal behavior for a 3 year old!  (Happy Birthday, Nana!)

• Practicing for the pictures he will take for his own blog.

• Playing soccer with Mops (Mr. Smackdown gave my dad this name when he was learning how to say Grandpa.)

• Gotta find Coach Daddy!

   

  To link up or for more Tot School ideas, head on over to Carisa’s blog!

Tot School: 27 months

Mr. Smiley, 27 months

Tot Trays

Mr. Smiley jumped on board with his older brothers and earnestly wanted to play with our alphabet letters.  He screwed and unscrewed the lid.

The pegs made it into the stacking cups and out of the cups.  He even discovered that a stacking cup was missing.  Boy was he mad (according to my mom).

 

Colored popsicle sticks . . . they can go anywhere.  In a cup, dumped, slapped together.

Another day’s worth of Tot Trays . . . can you tell that stacking cups are a hit?

Smiley mailed a bunch of paint chips.

He also learned colors with Mama and cleaned up all of his paint chips.

Day three Tot Trays . .  .

The stacking cups with the colored links were a hit.  He didn’t touch the other two trays.  After dinner, I found him at his school desk with the mailbox on one side and his links before him with all of the stacking cups spread out.  He was one happy camper!

  

Life

Auntie always has a lap open for Mr. Smiley to read a book.  She is the ONLY person that he will sit through an entire book and ask for another book.

Smiley had fun trying out our new tea set we were sent to review from EcoMom.  Stay tuned for a giveaway!

For more Tot School posts and to learn about Tot School, head on over to Carisa’s blog at 1+1+1=1!  

Tot School

If you will remember, I recently took a trip to IKEA with a few of my girlfriends.

I have traveled to IKEA (twice in the past month) because we were the blessed recipients of Room on a Dime sponsored my very own Mom and Dad. (Sorry, this sponsorship is only for family members, more specifically my sister and I!)

This year we chose to work on our school room. Tot School and Kindergarten had been occurring in our dining room. However, it wasn't very efficient and the close proximity of the boys to each other caused . . . tension. At the suggestion of some friends and a little bit of blog hopping, we decided that we needed to move to individualized work spaces.


Wow! What a difference organization and space makes! So thanks Mom and Dad. We are loving our new school digs!



And the best part about it all? When I came home from my weekend away at the Hearts at Home conference, the Hottie Hubby utilized his small work force and put the whole room together! What a surprise!



Tot Trays here we come!



What I love about our new work space is that I can now have the boys work on separate school lessons at the same time! I don't know why this is working better, but I think it is because we have space, more specifically my brain and body have space to think and multitask.

This week I had Mr. Me-Too sort the animals in Noah's Ark. He had to work on finding pairs.


The Hottie Hubby and I are working on helping Mr. Me-Too express his feelings. Often he wants to cry or throw something. I understand that he is frustrated. So we are trying to be patient and creative, encouraging him to learn how to tell us what is wrong. Thankfully, Carisa at 1+1+1=1 posted a feelings lapbook that we have been using.

Mr. Me-Too is matching the feelings faces.


Then, he picked out a face to color.


And completed learning about that color by finding objects in our house that were yellow.



The boys always see me sew. So I decided to have them sew something or be involved in a sewing project. I stitched some pre-designed animal pillows together and they stuffed their pillows. This really worked their fine and gross motor skills. I think this will be a project that we repeat. They struggled with it at first. It was difficult because they couldn't visualize what they were really doing by stuffing the pillow. It just seems like an endless task! Mr. Me-Too made Lady the Cat, and Mr. Smackdown stuffed Matthew the Fire Dog.




Since we have a lot of energy in our house . . . my mom helped facilitate a creative outlet for all this manliness. When things get frustrating . . . go to the punching bag! This also works great for some hand/eye coordination!

(Oh, you can get a glimpse of the old school room!)

Mr. Me-Too learned how to sort and put away the silverware.


We made pumpkin muffins.



I had the boys help me fold all of the diapers!


And we went to our last gymnastics class for a few months. Sadness!




We are currently reading a GREAT book, which I will soon share . . . but not quite yet. To reinforce what we have learned in our book, the boys decorated a feelings bucket. This serves as a visual tool to remind us to always fill each others bucket with kindness.