Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Toddler Tuesday

 E is 27 months old

I thought I'd write a Toddler Tuesday post this week instead of Tot School.   E did a lot of fine motor practice this week.

She sorted buttons by heart and square shape using tongs.

Stacked towers of different colored pegs - then we counted them and she knocked them down!

Sorted some Noah's Ark beads into their different shapes.

Put ladybug push pins into a styrofoam ball.

Practiced her scissor skills by cutting straws.


We also did some letter and number work this week.  E did her number puzzle.  It was so cute to hear her work.  "Where's the 2?  There it is!  4 goes here."   And so on.

E did a new letter activity this week.  I took her magnetic wooden letters and had her match them to the ocean animal alphabet cards I printed out.  She did great with it, and wanted to do it several times in a row.

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Outdoor Challenge, Week 1


We have had so much fun participating in the Outdoor Challenge through 5 Orange Potatoes.  I decided to do a weekly post on our outdoor fun, rather than trying to get a post written each day.

Thursday was a day at the park.  E loves to run across the bridges and go down the slide.  And of course, swinging is always her favorite!

Friday was a super fun day!  We spent the day in the mountains, took a hike to a lake (sort of), and got to see a lot of birds.
Here's the lake we went to see - umm, yeah, it's that thing under all the snow!  Note to self, wait until May to go hiking in the higher elevations, please!  Trekking through snow with a toddler on your back is not really all that fun!


Saturday, E spent the morning with Grandma.  They went for a walk and found some "pretty yellow flowers!"  I didn't get any pictures of the walk, but I did take one of the flowers E brought home for me!


Sunday, we took a walk at a pond near our house.  We got to see horses and touch some really soft leaves.



























Monday was another Grandma day.  They had a lot of fun drawing with sidewalk chalk in the backyard and playing catch.

























Tuesday, we went and bought a new sandbox.  It was horribly windy - my neighbor's fence got knocked down, our gate broke, and you can see in the picture what it did to our patio furniture!!  Needless to say, we didn't stay out long.


I think I'll put today's pictures with next week's post.  Anyhow, to see what more kids are doing outside this month, visit 5 Orange Potatoes.

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Letter J for Jellybeans

I love these projects I've been seeing for using leftover Easter candy in crafts.  I'm all for cutting down on the sugar consumption of the tykes. (as well as myself!)  I love the marshmallow easter egg over at No Time For Flashcards, and this week E and I are planning on doing some peep bunny pantings a la A Mommy's Adventures.  She doesn't know they're for eating yet.  Thank goodness!  But she does know that jellybeans are for eating.  And she got some in the eggs the Easter bunny left her at Grandma's house.  So we had a few friends over for our stories and crafts playdate and made letter J's for Jellybeans!


To go along with our letter J day, we read Jump, Frog, Jump by Robert Kalan, and had yummy J snacks, like juice, jelly donuts, jelly sandwiches, and jicama (we got a little adventurous!).

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Tot School

Tot School
E is 27 months old

Since we have been on a bit of a break, we have 3 weeks of fun-filled learning activities to cover!!  I'll try to keep on track, so things don't get too out of hand . . . :)

I got a couple of new school toys right before Easter.  E loves to work with this peg set.  She builds towers, and then wants to leave them out the rest of the day.  We had to get out another rug the other day, so her towers could stay up to be admired and she would still have room to work!


Right now I am letting her work with them however she wants - pretty much just stacking them to build towers of different sizes.  In the future, I plan on having her sort by color, pattern, and count with these as well.  Oh, yes, in the second picture, she had to build towers for her mermaid.  I love this age!

The other new activity I purchased was the Melissa and Doug animal lacing cards.  I have put these away right now, because E is just not ready for them.  She begged for them the other day, so I let her try them.  I showed her how they worked and she tried for about 5 minutes before pronouncing them "too hard!"  So I hid them, that way she won't ask for them again!

We used our spring cards again, and this time I tried to teach E how to play concentration.  Or memory, or whatever you want to call it.  You know, that game where all the cards are face down and you try to find the matches by turning over one card at a time?  You know it.


She did ok with this, when I was playing with her.  Even when she was playing alone, she seemed to like the surprise of turning a card over and seeing what image was on it.  As you can see in the picture, she hasn't grasped the concept of only having two cards turned over at a time.  But she was finding matches and pulling them out of the mess of cards on the rug, so I'm going to call this one a success.

Another activity we worked on in several different forms was sorting buttons.  E did this with and without tongs, and sorting by several different shapes.  She's working hard on sorting the shapes, not the colors, right now.  I picked up a bag of Noah's Ark beads the other day, and I think she'll be sorting those this week.


This past week, E did a lot of work with her stacking blocks.  I can't wait for her to get the real pink tower and work with it.  The hollow-ness of the blocks is making things difficult sometimes.  She looses blocks inside other blocks!

See, here the littlest block is hiding somewhere under one of the bigger ones!

After stacking them in a tower, she wanted to line them up.  This is what she came up with:
So we talked about big, small; biggest and smallest.  After a little prompting, we ended up with this:
which makes a great staircase for a little Easter chick to walk up and down on!

E got a tracing book for Easter and I pulled out a couple of pages for her to work on last week.  I've never tried this kind of work with her before, and I wasn't sure how she would do.  But she is getting very interested in trying to draw things, instead of just scribbling, so I thought we'd give it a go.
Not too bad for a first try!  We need to practice stopping, but she has starting down, and can figure out which direction the line should go.

The last school work I have pictures of is a new puzzle E has been working on.  She's getting better with these, but she's not ready for the multi-piece puzzles yet.  Does anyone know where I can get more of these puzzles without knobs and with no pictures printed on the board?  She is figuring out where things go pretty easily now.


Art these past few weeks included dying Easter eggs, a couple of letter of the week playdates, and painting.
I plan to post about the letters of the week: G for Grass, and J for Jelly Beans!  And I will share the Easter egg pictures, as they are super cute, but they are on my film camera.  Yes, I still shoot with film, and quite often!  I have a fancy SLR that I love, and haven't gotten the money saved up yet to get a digital SLR.  So, once I pick up the photos, I'll have some more things to show you!


Thursday, April 8, 2010

Hello again!

You may have noticed I took a bit of a blogging break over Easter.  I'm sure many of you understand how the computer can be a major distraction!!  So I thought some time apart during Holy Week would be a good thing.  And now I'm back and ready to get going! 

I have a large Tot School post coming up for the weekend.  It's, like, 3 weeks of tot school, so I want to make sure I get that posted!  I also will have some alphabet fun, Easter pictures, and a craft project or two ready to go soon as well.


Did you know that April is Children and Nature awareness month?  Neither did I!  But 5 Orange Potatoes did, and has put out a challenge for us all!  The challenge is to get outside EVERY DAY for the rest of April and document it with a photo.  Rain or shine, or in the case of us here in Colorado . . . snow!  I'll be participating in this challenge with E.  She has recently developed a paralyzing fear of  . . . ants . . . and so she doesn't like to go outside right now.  Maybe this challenge will help cure her.  One can only hope . . . Silly Girl!  Or, I may end up with a bunch of pictures with a crying girl begging to go back inside.  Ha!  I'll be sharing all my week's photos together over the weekend. 

I hope you will all join the challenge, too! 

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Some awards to share!

I have received two awards in the last couple of weeks and I'd love to share them with you! I am so happy to receive them.  I am such an itty-bitty blogger, and it is so nice to be recognized and realize that, yes, people are reading what I put out here. 




Our Country Road was so kind to give me the Sunshine Award.   The Sunshine Award is awarded to bloggers whose positivity and creativity inspires others in the blogworld!  If you haven't had a chance to check out Our Country Road, you need to!




Char from Fun Frugal Mommy passed on the Happy 101 award.  She always has such fun ideas on her blog!!  To accept this award, I get to write 10 things that make me happy!

  1. My little munchkin's grin
  2. Spending time with my husband
  3. Finishing a craft project
  4. Seeing the sun on the mountains
  5. A good cup of coffee
  6. My new pink bible, and time to read it every morning
  7. Spending time with friends and family
  8. Hiking
  9. Spring weather and flowers
  10. Reading a good book

Now I get to pass these awards on to some of my favorite bloggers! 

Receiving the Sunshine Award:

Montessori Beginnings
Counting Coconuts
Little Hands, Big Work
Raising Itty Bitty Bookworms
One Hook Wonder


Receiving the Happy 101 Award:

Our Cup of Tea
Pink and Green Mama
Home with the Boys
Montessori Spanish
Chasing Cheerios

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Butterflies for Spring

Well, technically, it is finally spring.  You wouldn't know it by the forcast, we're supposed to get about a foot or so of snow this evening.  E wanted to do a "craft project," and I've been wanting to give these a go with her.  I'm sure you've seen them all over blogland.


 Basically, you take a coffee filter and color it with a marker.  I had some pastel markers lying around so we used those.  Then you spritz it with water and let the colors run together.  We finished them by pinching their middles and securing them with a clothespin. 

Then, I clipped them to our Lenten centerpiece (sticks with purple tulle wrapped around them).  A bit of spring color for our kitchen!


This centerpiece will turn into an Easter tree for Easter Sunday morning, complete with sparkly eggs and E's Easter basket.