Family Christmas Picture, out takes

So yesterday we decided to take our family Christmas picture. The pictures below tell the story!

Painting with a Toddler

My darling Alligator loves to color/scribble. I guess it is scribbling since he doesn’t actually color in shapes, but makes designs on paper. In fact, most of the time if you give him a paper with a design on it (like a coloring page) he won’t color it. But he loves a crayon or marker or pencil, and some clean fresh paper.

Well, today he grabbed the paint and a paintbrush and brought it to me. So I figured he wanted to paint. (duh…right). Normally painting isn’t something he loves.; But I think I found the secret.

1. He has to have a brush. He WILL NOT finger paint! Better yet give him 2 brushes, one for each hand.

2. Squirt the paint directly onto the paper. If I try to squirt it into a bowl for him to dip, he will color the bowl. So I squirt directly on the paper.

3. I only squirt a little at a time. He will point at the paint and tell me when he is ready for more.

4. Offer fresh pieces of paper often. Who doesn’t love a fresh start?

 

Here are all of this mornings creations! We had fun!!!!!

The week thus far!

This week has been pretty active for us thus far because Alligator has had his nap in the morning on both days. So that makes the afternoons much more eventful.

We are doing a Itty Bitty Bookworm unit on “The Best Mouse Cookie Ever”. Below is our shelf for the books we will be reading over the next 2 weeks.

We started off by reading the book. Then Alligator and Monkey decorated chef’s hats. They used crayons and stamps. Alligator really got the idea of the stamps after a while. He seemed to love it.

 

Here they are. They wore them all afternoon.

Today we made gingerbread play dough. Monkey loves to make things in the kitchen. SO I let me do most of it. However, it was a cookied play dough recipe, and I did all the cooking, but he stood back and watched.

Here they are playing with it, and wow, did it smell good!

Letter and color play

Alligator is loving letters these days. So I have started some letter activities to play with him. Here is our letter Aa bin.

Included:: Alligator, airplane, 3 A’s, an ant, and an acorn.

Here is our Red bin:

It includes:

Red Wand, a red view finder from Time for Tots early toddler kit, a tomator, some red blocks, a strawberry, a big coin, a tractor and a red cup.

When we play with these I will give Alligator the bin and let him pull things out talking about how it starts with A or is red. As he plays I’ll continue to reinforce “that’s an airplane, it stars with the letter A “or that is a red block”.

I will surely have more picture later in the week.

December plans

I am so excited about the month of December. I finally have a plan in place that I am very excited about.

I am going to be doing toddler preschool with Alligator in the mornings while big brother is in preschool. You can find the website here. I am not sure if they are actually selling the lessons anymore. I used them when Monkey was 2. But lately I can’t get through to the site. Good thing I saved the lessons. They are VERY age appropriate. There is an LA lesson and a math lesson each day. This week we are working on the letter A, the color red, and building with blocks.

Then while Alligator naps, Monkey and I will work on our Time For Tots kits. We’ll do the Christmas kit, and the countdown to Christmas kit. I will do the count down to Christmas kit with both boys when appropriate, but will definitely do the crafts with both of them. And he also has a animal sticker book, that he enjoys working on (My mom bought it for him at Ross and he loves it).

Then once Alligator wakes up we will do Itty Bitty Bookworm. THe books featured this month are

The Best Mouse Cookie by Laura Numeroff
How Do Dinosaurs Play With Their Friends? by Jane Yolen

Preschool Corner and Tot-school

Monkey loves playing with the sensory tubs from Time for Tots.

 

Here he is playing with the Thanksgiving activities from TfT as well.

Here is Monkey and Alligator making a rooster mask and dancing with them on.

    

Here is Alligator playing with our piggy bank. He loves this toy.

Alligator will surprise me if he isn’t some form of a musician later in life. He played this drum for over 30 minutes straight.  He is always playing a drum. I hope Santa brings him a real drum and more musical instruments.

 

Here are the boys working on painting.

    

I will be linking to Totschool and Preschool corner. Please check out what others are doing.

Catch up Halloween

Yeah, yeah, I know. LATE…but even if ya’ll aren’t interested I thought I would share so that I have the post for next year.

Here is what we did for Halloween. And I promise, I will post more regularly after Thanksgiving.

Here is my little lion at his thanksgiving party. We go to a toddler class once a week. (he wouldn’t stay still to look at the camera.

 

Here is monkey and his good friend. She spent the afternoon with us one day, and so we had to make a craft. As she says “I wuv coming here and doin awt”. I love doing art with you too! This craft was inspired by a similiar craft on the “Amazing Mess”, I tried it with Alligator but he had no interest, which is odd because he is my art guy.

We went to play with play-dough and my home-made play-dough was gross and old. So we mixed up a new batch. They each got to make their own. I did a non-cooked recipe, I had to add tons more flour than it called for, but it worked out. Both kids didn’t want to get their hands messy, so I put it in a baggy for them to mix up themselves.

Here are my boys in halloween costume.

Daddy was an alien, but no one got it. LOL