Wordless Wednesday

An Afternoon Snowman

Tot School: Nov. 9-13

E is 22 months

I am a little late in getting this post up and running, oh, well. Last week was much better for Tot School than the previous week. E was willing to try and work on some things, and mommy seemed to have more patience. (Thank you, Lord!) So, here is what we did last week!

Learning Toys/Trays:

I found a set of lacing beads in the dollar section at Target, and had to pick them up. We haven't done this since our farm theme. I'm so glad I got them out. These were a little bit harder since they didn't have a good "needle." I will be remedying that as soon as I find my duct tape!

Sorting pom-poms by color. E went through this so fast with two colors, that I pulled out another bowl and added a third. Her favorite part was pouring them back into the big bowl, and squishing them before she put them in the sorting bowls.

Puzzles, of course. A different one this week, though. I need new puzzles!
We also worked with our toolbox shape sorter. She did really well with this. I find it interesting that she does so well with the shape sorters, but gets so frustrated with puzzles. They are pretty much the same thing!
And E requested the rainbow rice this week, so I pulled it out on Friday for some fun with pouring. Mostly in the box.

Alphabet/Reading Basket:

We learned about the letter T this week! We made a letter T for triangles to hang on our fridge. My post about it is here.
We also had some friends over for our letter playdate. We read the story Twas The Night Before Thanksgiving by Dav Pilkey and made hand and footprint turkeys. So cute! You can see that post here.
Our reading basket stayed the same with our counting books from last week.

Arts and Crafts:

We did our open-ended art project for the week, the theme was feathers. I just posted about that here.
We also did a lot of coloring this week. A LOT. I pulled out our big book coloring pages and left one out on her table for us to color on throughout the week.

Mommy's Favorite:

My little accessory queen

Open-Ended Art: Feathers

Last week's open ended art theme was feathers. We had so much fun with this one! E chose blue and yellow paint, which I also mixed to give her green as well. We chose some feathers and used them as paintbrushes!

First one feather brush:


Then two:

We decided to leave our "paintbrushes" with the painting for extra prettiness.
To see more open ended art, visit Mommies Wise Little Bookworms.

Letter T is for Turkeys!

We hosted our stories and crafts playgroup today and the project was a turkey for letter T. I saw this project around somewhere, I'm sure it's been done a million times, but it's sooooo cute!

First, I traced E's foot on a piece of brown paper - this will be the turkey's body.Then, I traced E's hand on another sheet of construction paper. I stacked up several colors and cut them all out - these will be the feathers.E colored her foot while I cut out the hands. Then she colored her hands while I cut out the foot. I love her look of concentration - she wanted to only color the fingers on some of them, and only red.I put down some glue on the turkey's back and E helped me glue on the hands.Then we turned him over and glued on a beak and wattle and of course, google eyes.

We read Twas The Night Before Thanksgiving by Dav Pilkey, and enjoyed some letter T snacks, like cheese toast triangles, tater tots, turkey and tomato crackers, and chai tea for the moms. The kiddos played so well together, we had a great time!

Letter T is for Triangles!

We've been a little remiss with our letter of the week activities the past few weeks! But we are back today with letter T. E already knew this letter when I showed it to her. I swear, Leap Frog Letter Factory is AWESOME! I was trying to think of something fun for our fridge letter all week, and I finally came up with triangles.

I drew a capital letter T on a piece of construction paper and let E color it. She was not interested in coloring very much - she was excited to get gluing!
Then I cut out the letter T. I had a bunch of foam triangles cut out. I put some glue on the letter T,
and let her start gluing her triangles down. She ran out of room and wanted to stack some, so I just put a little extra glue down to help her out.
The finished project!
Stay tuned, tomorrow we are hosting our craft and story playdate for letter T - we're making turkeys!

Tot School: Nov. 2-6

E is 22 months

And another week has gone by! This week was light on the Tot School. It seemed like every time I pulled something out for us to work on, E was not interested. Or she would decide that mommy's way of doing things was not how she wanted to do things. So, hmmm . . . what did we work on this week?

Learning Toys/Trays:
Pasta sorting was a hit for about 2 minutes this week. Then, apparently, it got very boring.
Sorting buttons by color was fun, too, but it was more fun to dump them all over the floor and refuse to help clean up!
Mommy thought E might have fun with her tower blocks. She did, when I built the tower so she could knock it down. Other than that, she had a good time picking each one up and placing them around the house in just the right places for me to step on or trip over.
Puzzles were the one thing she did well by herself this week. Look at all the pieces she put in! And no help from mommy, not even when she got frustrated!

Reading Basket:
There were counting books in our basket this week!

Olivia Counts by Ian Falconer
1, 2, 3, to the Zoo by Eric Carle
Counting Cockatoos by Stella Blackstone
Chicka Chicka 1 2 3 by Bill Martin, Jr.
The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
10 Little Rubber Ducks by Eric Carle

E's favorite this week was 10 Little Rubber Ducks, hands down. And entirely because of the sound button on the last page, she could really care less what the rest of the book was about! My favorite was Counting Cockatoos because on each page there are two cockatoos hidden for you to find! It was fun to see her try to figure out where they were. Some only had a tail showing and were more difficult to find.

Arts and Crafts:
We did a cut paper collage inspired by Henri Matisse for open ended art. You can see more pictures here.
Coloring at our new table!
We also had some fun playdough time, but I forgot to get pictures of that.

Photo of the Week:

my favorite little Husker!

Open-Ended Art: Matisse

This week's open-ended art theme was an artist! Henri Matisse lived in France in the early 20th century and is considered one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. After reading a couple of books about his life and paintings, E and I made some cut paper collages inspired by two of his pieces: The Snail and La Gerbe

I prepped this activity by cutting out lots of shapes out of construction paper. As we were making our collages, I reviewed E's colors with her, using the shapes as a guide.
First, I helped E put some glue on her paper. This excited her a lot - I haven't let her loose with the glue before.
Then we chose shapes and placed them on the glue. When E wanted to put a shape on top of another shape, I just put a dab of glue down for her.
And here are our finished products! E's is on top, and mine is on the bottom.
To see more open-ended art, visit Mommies Wise Little Bookworms