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

Wordless Wednesday

pushing her friend

running over Daddy

cozy coupe = pure joy!

I Love Thrift Stores!

Look what I scored on today at my thrift store! An awesome table and chair set for E!! I love that it is total old-school Fisher-Price.


E was so excited, she had to color at it right away as soon as we got home. I was debating between two table and chair sets and I'm so glad I got this one. It has the blue plastic edging all around the table - no crayons will fall off!! I will be so happy to add this to the basement decor once our remodeling down there is finished. It does look a little out of place in my front room. That should be finished in a month or so (once I finish painting so we can get the carpet laid). I can't wait to have a toy room down there!

What's on tap?

I've been spending a lot of time browsing ravelry recently, looking for new knitting projects. I spend a lot of my knitting time making longies for E, but I'm getting bored with them and want to try some new projects.

I started on this fairy from Knitty for E for Christmas. I have the body done, but I have to figure out how I want the hair. I think I want strands of hair rather than knitted hair. I'm just not sure exactly how one does that.

I'm also working on my first pair of socks! I picked an easy beginner pattern to start, the Super Simple Sock Pattern. I can't wait to have cozy knitted feet.

I found this Stripey Toddler Cardigan pattern for E, and this sweater pattern from drops for my husband. Now I need to find something suitable for myself!

As far as sewing, I'm working on some jumpers for E using McCall's M5416. I'm not sure I like the pattern yet or not, it has a lot of fabric. It should end up being pretty twirly. The current one is a super cute owl corduroy I got at JoAnn's. I'm also going to try a couple of other patterns - one has a couple of pleats in the front, and another has a tunic-style neckline and a tie back, but they're all pretty much the same, little A-line jumpers to wear over tshirts and jeans in the winter and by themselves as sundresses in the summer.

Other items on my to-sew list are pajamas for E, a skirt for myself (once I get brave enough to try zippers again), and the next round of felt foods. It's the breakfast round, and I think I'll be doing poptarts and maybe hardboiled eggs.

When I get some time, I'll be putting in a running list on my sidebar to help me remember what I'm working on, and so everyone else can see what I'm working on as well.

Now . . . . back to those socks!

Tot School: Oct. 26-30

E is 21 months

We had a busy week of Tot School! E and I continued with our pumpkin theme this week. I got to all of the activities I wanted to do with her, pretty much!

Learning Toys/Trays:
Transferring pom-poms to an ice cube tray, putting one pom-pom in each hole. Hopefully we can work up to using a spoon or tongs, but right now she gets mad if she can't "pet" them!
Pouring wooden beads. It was funny, she had to take one or two and transfer them by hand first, and then pour the rest. So she had something to aim for?
Puzzles. Mommy is trying SO HARD not to help! She needs to learn to do it on her own.
Sorting shapes in the Fisher Price box. E was being such a goof this day. She'd put the shape in a wrong hole and go "nope!" Then do it again and again to all the wrong holes. Then she finally would push it through the correct hole and say "there it goes!"
Reading Basket/Alphabet:
We kept our pumpkin books this week. We used the jack-o-lantern images in them to choose the faces for our pumpkins this year!

We also continued on with letter P this week, doing several more pumpkin activities.

Pumpkin Theme:
I made some pumpkin size cards, and we worked on sorting big, medium, and small. I also added dots to the cards so we could work on counting one, two, three; but we never got around to that part.

We read The Pumpkin Patch Parable by Liz Curtis Higgs and turned our pumpkin from last week into a jack-o-lantern.

We also played a game I have seen on several blogs, tossing balls or beanbags into a bucket. This week we used our Halloween pumpkin basket. E didn't really toss them in, more like dropped them. But she loved the game and we played it several times this week.
Arts and Crafts:
Well, of course we carved our pumpkins! I chose the scary face from the book Pumpkin Circle, E chose the happy face from Where is Baby's Pumpkin? And Daddy just wanted a silly face. Mommy had to carve them all, but everyone helped with scooping the goop out and sorting out the seeds to roast.
For open-ended art this week, the theme was pumpkins, so we did pumpkin painting and pumpkin prints. You can see more about this in my post here.
Photo of the Week:
Of course, my favorite photo this week is the picture of my absolute favorite little doctor and her Auntie, Elphaba, getting ready to go trick-or-treating!

Open-Ended Art: Pumpkins

The theme this week for open-ended art was pumpkins. Open-ended art means just what it says: Give the kiddos the supplies and let them go at it. It is purposefully unstructured.

We did two different pumpkin art projects this morning. (Yes we did both of them this morning, E just loves to paint!)

First, we painted a small pumpkin. We mixed our colors so we had a whole palate to choose from, and then I turned E loose with the paintbrush. Our pumpkin ended up seeming rather large to a 1 1/2 year old, so we compromised. Mommy painted one side of the pumpkin and E painted the other. I was trying to show her different ways to paint with her brush: spreading on the color, stripes, but once I got to the poka dots, it was all over. She LOVES to paint polka dots.

The second pumpkin art project we did was pumpkin prints. I guess they had leftover pumpkins from the Halloween festival at work, so I picked up a few. I cut one in half and showed E how to dip it in paint and make prints on the paper. We didn't get around to apple printing this fall, so it was something new for her.

And here are our finished projects! To see more open-ended art visit Mommies Wise Little Bookworms.