Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Tot School - Late

TOT SCHOOL
Turbo is 33 months & Sweet Pea is 8 months

Ok, so this is totally late! I didn't have internet since over the weekend. Sheesh! What did people do before computers, the net and blogs! Thank goodness for my iPhone or I would have been so sad!

Rick had to leave on Easter for a business trip and was gone until the following Monday.  While we really missed him, the days went quickly and we had a great time on all of our activities.  I had a full schedule to ensure we didn't go stir crazy!

I totally thought I took more pictures!  It seems I spend a lot of time holding something - a baby, a hand, a bag. The camera is an oft forgotten bystander. 

Here's some Tot School Activities:


Cutting: He's getting SOO much better! We haven't cut for awhile and he surprised me by doing a great job! I had been a little discouraged that he wasn't able to do a great job a couple months ago. Patience was the key here. His coordination, muscles and such just needed a bit more time. 

Letter of the Week activities:  Our letter this week was A for animals, ants etc.  I used Confessions of a Homeschooler's printables for our activities. For some reason I only took this one picture of all the letter activities!! So here's Turbo tracing. He's doing such a great job. We're working on holding the pen - I find that the taller the pen the more space he uses for his hand. I might try putting black electrical tape in two places so he knows where I want him to keep his hand. 

We also did our art from last weeks' letter of the week. Z for Zoo/Zebra.  We had such a great week last week - I wanted to use our pictures as a part of our letter. So we made a Zebra Z then used mini pictures of him at the zoo with his friends, the animals and such to glue around the paper. Voila!

Word Building: We love these Melissa & Doug See & Spell boards. There's 10 or so boards and tons of letters for them to use.  Each board is double sided too! It's all wood pieces and very sturdy. To set things up, I find the right letters for the boards I'm giving him and put them all on his tray along with the boards. At first I let him find and place the letters in the order he wants. Then we do it together placing the letters one at a time in the correct order - Sounding out the word as we go. He LOVES it.  
 
Sensory Tub:  As we're focusing on Animals our sensory table this week is DIRT.  Oh what fun was had with this one. Thankfully the weather cooperated!  We brought out our barn & farm animals (target dollar spot) and created our own farm, pens and lots of other farm pretend activities.  We had been to Little Farm just that morning so it was fresh in his mind.


Still, we continue to play with the Rainbow Rice. Its hard to put that away after just a week or two!! Check out my Rainbow Rice Tutorial  to make your very own!

Art: Our friend's babyshower was this weekend, so we painted her wrapping paper. I buy nice white wrapping paper as our base, then let Turbo paint all over it. I really love this personal touch. It also makes him feel like he was part of the gift too.  He surprised me with wanting to finger/hand paint!! Normally, messy hands are not to his liking!





Outings:
In addition to playdates and other friend activities, we went to the Zoo again and also to Little Farm.  Little Farm seemed to be a large petting zoo. So there wasn't much 'farm' learning. However it was a great place to see farm animals up close and personal! Next week we're going to a real working farm! I'm really looking forward to that! 







Here's my favorite picture of the two kids this week.  Sweet Pea has such a look of happiness, awe and love for her brother. Melts my heart!


A few other things we did:
I posted some cute pictures of Turbo 'nursing' his baby doll.  Seriously sweet!!
Also in my Zoo week post, you can see the Zoo Animals Ring Book I made for Turbo and download a copy for yourself!

5 comments:

Susan said...

Testing

donettebell said...

I love the Dirt table - great idea, i must just add that in today!
The farm looks great fun, i love Melissa and doug but they are very pricey over here.

Best tip from your blog as the wrapping paper. What a wonderful personal touch!

Susan said...

It was - especially this week when it rained and someone (mommy) forgot to
cover it. LOL!!

tbl43pls said...

I am so excited to find your blog! I have two kids the same ages as your two!! So fun to see what you are doing and use you as a resource. We are headed to the zoo tomorrow and I can't wait to show Addie her zoo animals ring!! thanks so much!

Susan said...

Thank you! I hope you had fun at the zoo! Next week I'll be posting about our Bird week and a link to some bird cards I created.