Tot School 9-26-10

Alligator is 19 months old.

This week Alligator and I had so much fun! We really got busy during our morning play times!

Mother Goose Time

Reading the interactive story…. He really liked the story, and he had fun with the animal pictures and the blocks.

We were supposed to tear the paper to give him spikey hair, but he had no interest. He did however practice finding the parts of the face.

He stacked 3 blocks on top of each other for the first time! It was so cool to watch him try. Doesn’t he look proud????? NOT!

He enjoyed putting the foam shapes onto the circles on the math mat. I was very impressed that he totally got the idea!

Here he is working on decorating the faces spinner thingy (don’t you love my technical terms….

Here is the finished product ( I used the gliiter, he had no interest…but I had fun!)

Time for Tots Kits.

Putting in and pulling out with the Jacks.

Very very beginning of sorting by color

Thinking about putting the puff balls into the ice tray.

Willing to put a few in…

Immediately dumping them out…

Trying to figure out the tongs…

Toys

Shape sorter. He really was able to get them in the correct holes occasionally. It was really neat to see!

Putting the pegs in the holes.

As you can see we had a fabulous week. To see what other are doing, click the button at the top.

Too much stuff!!!

Does this ever happen to you?

I am at the store find something I think the boys will absolutely love. We take it home play with it, and they do love.

But now it is time to put it away. I look around our playroom….Nope no empty spots here. I look in their rooms… Nope no empty spots here either.

So I head to my all time favorite spot, the closet under the stairs. I push and pull to get the doors open, which are jammed. I finally get it open and as soon as I do….WHAM! my tower of STUFF falls over. So I quickly stack it all back up, add the new toy to the top and quickly shut the doors.

 

Oh my intentions have been good. I have cleaned out and “organized” that closet before. I have multiple organiztional systems in place.

I have 2 of these:

I have one of these:

 

I have 4 of these:

All of this in one closet. No wonder I can’t get in the closet. No wonder the vast majority of the stuff never gets used.

So today I started cleaning it out. Which means that I got rid of the stack of stuff, that continually falls when I open the doors. So the 4 of these  now have their tops on, and 3 of them are in the garage. The 2 that were on the bottom of the stack are exactly as I left them a year ago when I “organized”. Because, they were on the bottom of the stack, and I couldn’t get to them. Now to decide what to do with them. I mean we haven’t used the stuff in a year right, so I should probably sell it or give it away…. we’ll see!

That is about as much as I got done. I will keep chugging away at this problem.

Preschool Corner- 9/18/10

This week has been a bit short. Due to my family visiting, which was wonderful. Monkey loves them so much, and enjoys every minute that they are here.

We did get a couple of things in though on Friday and Saturday. I recently found Time for Tots Etsy shop, and immediately fell in love. I have decided to use many of their games for Monkey. Although Monkey goes to preschool every morning, in the afternoon while Alligator naps, Monkey and I have some special time. Monkey loves to play learning games and that is what Time for Tots is all about.

Two of the kits that I bought were their Autumn kit and their Construction kit.

I pulled out the entire Autumn kit on Friday and here are some of the pictures.

Fall Leaf Number Count with Pebbles:

Create a Fall Tree with Leaves and Dice

What's Different Picture Cards—he really surprised me he not only could find what was different. But without prompting, he would explain to me why. I was very impressed.

 

What's Different Picture Cards

We had so much fun with this kit. It is so special to be able to spend this time with him!

Today we worked on the Construction themed kit.

 

Also today we went to the fall festival place near our house. We had a blast.

 

To find out what others are doing this week. Click the button at the top!

Tot School 9-19-10

Alligator is 19 months.

This week was crazy, I spent Monday getting ready for my family to visit, and then they were here till Thursday. So not a lot of Tot School this week.

We did get some things in on Friday.

We played with flour and cinnamon (read about it here).

We played with our new sensory tub from Time for Tots (read about it here). The scratch on his head was from falling outside, he tends to scratch up his head about once a month.

He also colored a cat from Mother Goose Time. It had circles on it to trace. And it was interesting, because he seemed to really want to trace them. We worked on speech while we did it, saying dot as we made dots and circle as we made circles. Alligator even said “Circ” for circles as he made them, without prompting. So I am excited!!!!

There he is making a circle, see how focused he is.

I have gotten into a good routine now. Alligator and I will be doing MTG while Monkey is in school. I am really feeling good about our new schedule. Read about it here.

As soon as the Tot School linky gets going on 1+1+1=1, I will set it up. You can use the button at the top to see what others were up to this week!

Flour and Cinnamon fun!

Alligator had a great time with the flour and cinnamon provided in the MGT kit. We decided to play with it out on our front porch. I added scoops, a funnel, and giant popcicle sticks (Alligator added the empty stapler, which he just adores). To avoid ruined clothes he played in his diaper.

 

The mixture had a wonderful smell.

He played very calmly at first without making much mess at all.

Then he really got into it!

As you can see we had fun, and we are glad we did it outside!

Daily Schedule----Finally!

So I have a new daytime schedule. Most days our day will look like this:
take Monkey to school
play with Alligator (doing MGT and other activities)
snack (while I do my morning clean up)
run errands or do something for me while Alligator has juice and watches TV
Pick up Monkey
Have lunch
have 1 hour of rest time for me (alligator naps, and monkey plays in his room)
Do activities with Monkey (while Alligator sleeps)
Feed Alligator and snack time
Go to the park or outside, go to library, barnes and noble, or children's museum, or swim at the gym
Go to the gym (at 4ish)
Come home and be get ready for dinner.

I am so happy to finally have a good routine!

I am feeling happy to finally

Time for Tots---sensory tub

I just have to write this post about a fabulous Etsy shop. It is called Time for Tots. Here is the link.

The site offers game packs and sensory tub fillers. They are fabulous!

Over the last several years I have spent time researching, creating, collecting and making games for my boys. It is a lot of work, and it takes a lot of time. Well, now you can go to Time for Tots and they have done all the work for you. Not only that, but each activity comes with suggestions to use these materials in other ways. The other positive is that it saves you money. The materials that you would have to buy to create these games and tubs would cost you more than they charge, because of the nice variety.

The first item I will post about is the autumn sensory tub. It comes with fillers which are yellow and green beans (I have no idea what kind but they are cool and colorful). You also get a bag of autumn themed things to put in it. Some leaves, a few fruit and pumpkins, some fuzzy balls and much more.

Here is an upclose shot.

I put mine in a tuperwear bin. You supply the bin, the rest is supplied by Time for Tots. It even comes with a tweezer.

I had really bought this for Monkey who is 4.5. But Alligator saw me putting it together and kept yelling “DAT, DAT” and pointing. So I watched him closely and played with him and let him go at it. As you can see, he was so pleased to get it placed on his tray.

He very carefully started picking at the items. 

Alligator isn’t one to put a lot of things in his mouth, so I wasn’t too concerned with him. But I did watch him closely. He was having so much fun, picking up things and laughing.

He also enjoyed pulling thing out and throwing them in the floor. After the second time, I gave him a bowl, and he had fun putting things in there. It seemed he just wanted a place to put them.

As you can see he had a great time.

Again, I am so thrilled with this purchase. I will be featuring the other items I bought as we get them out and play with them.

I purchased the items on my own, and loved them so much that I chose to post about it. I did not receive any reimbursement.

Tot-School September 12

Alligator is 19 months.

To see what others are doing to Tot School this week, click the button above. Also please check out "best post of the week" at "No time for Flash Cards."

This week we got a little more into the groove of things, although we are still not in a good schedule. We spent a lot of time outside, as we have had some wonderfully mild weather. This is such a blessing.

Here is Alligator feeding ducks at the park with Daddy.

We also spent a lot of time at our park. Alex and I are going almost every morning after we take Monkey to school. It is great fun, but definitely feels weird to go without Monkey.

Here he is showing off his new Halloween pjs. He really looks good in black!

MOTHER GOOSE TIME

We continued with our MTG this week. Alligator made a puppet of Johnny Appleseed. I helped him put the pieces together, and he took care of the coloring. He really colors with great intent.

He thought it was fantastic. He couldn’t stop laughing when it was all put together. He also would turn it around for the camera, so this is the best we got.

We worked with the letter M this week. I thought MGT does a neat job of introducing the children at this age to the letter. We taped the “hands-on M” to the back of the paper, so he could color over it to make the impression. I helped a little, so you could see the letter.

Alligator explored the words moon and mouse and pointed to all the pictures on the alphabet cards. He now points and says “look” or “that”. So that was exciting.

He liked playing with Monkey’s weather sticks as well. He thought they were great fun.

Thanks for reading. The coming week will be a bit slower as my parent's are in town. So as Carissa from 1+1+1=1 says we’ll get in a lot of “life school”.