Tot School Week 1 - Farm Theme

E is 21 months old

For our first week of Tot School, I chose to do a farm theme. I am planning on continuing this for a couple of weeks, and culminating it with a playdate a friend is giving letting the kids pretend to run a farm stand. I am so excited for that playdate! What a wonderful idea!!

Learning Toys:
E has been working hard on her puzzles. E loves puzzles, she's just not very good at them yet! She is getting better at getting the pieces to fit, but still gets bored or frustrated after only a couple of pieces. This shape puzzle seems to be easier for her than some of the cute animal puzzles.

We got a new game at a garage sale last week, a set of Leapfrog card games. This week we have been working on finding the animal matches with the memory cards. This is a challenging game for E, but she is starting to understand what I want her to do. I put all the cards out face up and have her stack the matches. Look, she found a rabbit match!

She gets bored with this game easily, though, and thinks it is much more fun to mix the cards up and carry them around the house!

Alphabet:
We've been working on letter B since last week. Here is our Letter B Bumblebee fridge art from last week, inspired by No Time For Flashcards:

In addition to the cute bat we made last week, we did a Letter B butterfly craft this week! Check back next week to see a post all about it. :)

Theme - Farm:
This was the first time E had worked with lacing beads. She did a great job! They held her attention for a good 20 minutes the first time I pulled them out. Here she is concentrating on threading another animal on. Look how many she did!

Once she had a few strung, she said, "come on, horsey, let's go!" and took them all for a walk around the kitchen.

Along with our shape puzzles this week, E wanted to work on her new farm puzzle. This involved her taking all the pieces off and making them walk around the living room floor, making their animal sounds. So, not much puzzle learning, but good for recognizing the animals and their sounds and being creative!

We made our own barn picture out of red foam sheets. I cut out a barn shape and cut doors in it. Then I got out some old farm animal stickers, and had E put the animals inside the doors of the barn. She loves to stick stickers!

Reading Basket:
E is definitely a little bookworm. I decided to put together books for our theme in a basket in the living room. She can pick stories to read centered around our theme and they are within easy reach when it's time to relate them to other activites.

Books in our reading basket:

• The Little Rabbit Who Liked to Say MOO by Jonathan Allen
• Big Red Barn by Margaret Wise Brown
• Dora's Eggs by Julie Sykes
• Chuck's Truck by Peggy Perry Anderson
• Hello, Day! by Anita Lobel
• The Rickety Barn Show by Jemma Beeke
• The Rusty, Trusty Tractor by Joy Cowley
• Barnyard Dance by Sandra Boynton
• Little Red Hen by Byron Barton
• Old Macdonald by Pam Adams

Favorite Photo of the Week:

"camera!"

Wordless Wednesday

Too cute for words. Good thing it's a wordless Wednesday!

It's a FABULOUS Muffin Tin Monday!

E and I are so excited to finally participate in Muffin Tin Monday, through Her Cup Overfloweth. I work a few hours on Monday mornings, so I don't always get something put together in time. We're usually racing home and throwing something in the microwave! But today, we got off work a little early, and there was no theme for this week. So our Muffin Tin Monday was E's request for lunch: chicken nuggets, ranch to dunk them in, "grapers," carrot sticks (just vehicles to eat more ranch), water, and a jello jiggler for dessert. Please excuse the sad, sad state of my muffin tin. My nice one is too large for E for lunch. I think this one came from a grandmother or something.

Anyhow, here it is!

Tot School day 1 is going well! We ran to Target on our way home and I found a cute lacing bead set in a farm theme! E has been working hard on it, and then pulling it all around the house once she gets a few animals strung on the lace.

Happy Monday, get outside and enjoy the beautiful weather while it lasts!!!

In His Hands,
Nicole.

We're starting Tot School!

Hello again, everyone!

Next week we are starting . . . .

I am very excited to be starting some early learning activities with E. The Catholic school in our area does not have a preschool, and all the early learning schools in our area just cost too darn much! I know E is little, but she already knows all of her basic colors, can count to three (and understand what she's doing), and can recognize the letters A, B, and E. So, we are going to take some of the ideas from Carisa at 1+1+1=1 and run with them!

We went to some garage sales on Friday, and I scored on a Melissa and Doug castle set for E. I was going to put it away for Christmas or her birthday, but after I saw her playing with it, I had to keep it out. We'll see about putting it away later for her.

First, she made the king walk "up the stairs,"

And then the king and his knight had a conversation:

Our castle even has it's own dragon!!

Next week I hope to blog about the tot school activities we have been working on throughout the week. We have also been doing a bi-weekly playdate with our friends centered around a letter of the week. This week was the letter B! E and I made a letter B bumblebee to put on our fridge inspired by this post at No Time For Flashcards. Then, when our friends came over we made bats out of feather boas, cardstock, and google eyes. I would post a picture of it, as it was super cute, but it has since been destroyed by too much love.

In His Hands,
Nicole.