Tot School (17 months)

~Bee is 17 months old.

Tot School:

This week we've had a wonderful time focusing on transportation. I made a tot pack that we worked with, we read a lot of books involving transportation and even played with Bee's vehicles all week!

Bee continues to be very interested in his transportation and animal beads.  These were scooped and poured between many containers and into egg cartons many times!

In this picture Bee is coloring his school bus yellow. We don't know our colors yet but with more work like this we'll know them soon, I'm sure!

Bee matching his transportation cars. We have a boat, helicopter, car, train, and airplane. At the beginning of the week he wouldn't do anything but throw them but by the end of the week he was matching the correct cards and handing me whichever cards I asked for. : )

This is a new activity I saw on The Adventures of Bear.  Bee did great at it and would pour them out and put them back in over and over again for about twenty minutes! Which in my book is a HIT! We have stated counting the toothpicks as he puts them in the container to try and work on our numbers as well as our fine motor. 

I also borrowed this idea from The Adventures of Bear.  The first time he did this all he really cared about was throwing the checkers. But since then Bee and Daddy have played a nice "game" of connect four and actually got most of the checkers in the board!!

Continuing with our transportation them this week we did a construction paper art project.  This was Bee's first experience with glue so I was pretty impressed.  A little hand over hand got the pieces in the right spot but this week we'll practice again when we make a construction paper cake for Dr. Seuss' birthday!

Bee admiring the final product. : )

During meal times we have been giving Bee a spoon or fork for each meal and encouraging him to use them as much as he can when eating! This morning in particular Bee scooped most of his pancakes into his mouth using his fork. I was so impressed!!

A first this week also was playing with stickers. I found some Tonka stickers at our local dollar store and we decorated our Transportation Tot Pack with them. Bee had a lot of fun.  Some of the stickers went on over others but no big deal right. 

Finally, this was my favorite picture this week. Bee loves playing with my oven mitts. Really doing anything cooking related. In this picture he was using the mitt to pick up toys and put them in an old mayo jar.

This Weeks Books:

Transportation Theme:

The Pigeon Loves Things that Go by Mo Willems

What am I by Little Scholastic

The Wheels on the Bus by Kate Toms

Alphabeep by Debora Pearson

Transportation Tot Pack

The last two weeks I have been working feverishly to complete Bee's first Tot Pack! And guess what... It's DONE! That's right I am proud to present Bee's very first Tot Pack and that we have been working with it starting this week. : )

This is Bee's Tot Pack all put together. (except the book pages will be attached to each other eventually)

Bee coloring his transportation.

He colored the green one well and lost interest with coloring the car blue, but hey... it gives us somewhere to pick up with tomorrow!

These are the pages from the story.  Like previously mentioned I intend on attaching them all but right now Bee enjoys them as flash cards and can name each vehicle so we're going to keep them this way for a while.

This is the Alphabet train.  We are currently pointing to the letters as we (correction: I) sing our Alphabet Song.  Eventually I hope Bee will be able to sing with me and put them in order (but that's a LONG way away!)

Finally, Bee playing with some of the matching and book cards.

My very first Tot Pack was inspired by the many available from this site! Thanks Carissa for all your inspiration!  I am working on making it available to others, I just don't know how to yet. :)

Tot School

~ Bee is 17 months old.

Tot School:

This week has been a little challenging in the realm of tot school. We have both had colds and early on in the week I lost my voice! The end of the week we were visited by my parents which was very helpful in terms of Bee but also a challenge to keep tot school going normal. We were however able to incorporate some tot school activities this week and several life learning activities.

We were hoping this week to start our transportation tot pack. This was the only time we were able to actually use it this week. Bee is matching vehicles. This is not an activity he can complete independently but with a lot of prompting we were able to match all our cards.

Bee is working on putting blocks and shapes back into it's container.  He is pretty good at getting the circles into the lid sorter but has a rough time with several of the other shapes.

Bee "reading" a book! He loves books and I am so thankful for this!!

This week we had a fair amount of snow in the area so Bee and I spent a lot of time staring out the window and saying his version of "snow".

Daddy and Bee had a great time this week cooking together.  They made Cheerio treats with M&Ms on top!  This recipe was inspired by Chasing Cheerios.

Out of the House:

This weekend we went to Gymboree with the grandparents. In this picture Mommy and Bee are climbing across the monkey bars.

This is Grandma Ellen and Bee at Gymboree. During Gymboree there is a part where the children play with maracas and bang them when the music plays and stop when the music stops.  Bee always gets really excited for this part of Gymboree and is starting to get really good at "freezing" during the non-music portion.

Finally, Bee's favorite part of Gymboree is the bubbles. He knows how to say bubbles and tries every time to grab them between his fingers. This is great for fine motor and so much fun for the tots!

This is by far my favorite picture from the week! Bee is walking away from the window where he was watching the snow and just looked so cute!

As always, we had an awesome week attempting tot school and hopefully will get more into this week!

Tot School while sick...

Any suggestions for tot school when you and your kiddo are sick? I can barely speak so I am wondering how best to do tot school this week???

First Week of Tot School! (17 months)

~Bee is 17 months old.

Tot School:

This was our first week attempting to do Tot School. I was very excited to start and as the week progressed Bee was more and more interested everyday. Day 1 we couldn't make it through the whole hour without getting sidetracked A LOT!

This week we introduced Bee too animal and transportation beads. I was hoping we could start learning our colors and that he would be interested in sorting them. I believe this is too advanced for our little Bee right now so instead this week we worked on naming and scooping our beads. He is very good at naming airplanes, helicopters, cars, and boats. We are still working on the naming the animals and the remaining vehicle shapes, like boat.

We have also been working on counting, throwing and naming colors using our multi-color balls.  Bee is mostly interested in using them in our laundry basket or our ball pit.

Bee has been very interested lately on riding his lion toy around the house. He also enjoys using this toy to practice his concepts of push and pull.

We have also been introducing aspects of Valentine's Day into our play this week. In this activity we painted with colored glue and then stuck sweethearts onto our Valentines.

Another new activity that we introduced this week is playing with our felt board.  In this specific picture we were reciting Humpty Dumpty.  We've also started sorting shapes using our felt board. The Humpty Dumpty template was downloaded from http://kizclub.com/nursery.htm.

This week we also introduced Bee to his "first word" flash cards. He wasn't really interested in them this week but he did enjoy looking at the pictures and pushing them around briefly.

During the week Bee and I go to Gymboree. While at Gymboree, Bee has difficulty with the parachute activity.  So far Bee is uncomfortable with parachute time so this week we started parachuting our teddy bear to help him become more comfortable at Gymboree! Working like this was a SUCCESS and this week Bee was excellent at Gymboree!

Out of the House learning:

Bowling at a friend's birthday party.

Trip to the park. working on concept of over and under. Bee was over the slide and went under daddy's legs.

Our final activity this week was at a local business called Bouncerz where we worked on sliding, jumping and balance in bounce houses. : )

This weeks books:
VALENTINE THEME:

Snuggle Puppy by Sandra Boynton
How Do I Love You by Marion Dane Bauer
Happy Valentine's Day, Little Critter by Mercer Mayer
Love is a Handful of Honey by Giles Andreae and Vanessa Cabban
Kisses by Nanda Roep and Marijke ten Cate

OTHER:
Fidgety Fish and Friends by Paul Bright

16 month milestones...

~ I received this idea from a fellow blogger (http://growingagodlygirl.blogspot.com/) and am going to do it for Bee at the end of each month. I am getting the developmental milestone lists from http://www.thenewparentsguide.com/ . Green is great at it. Yellow is sort of/he can but needs to perfect it. Red is not at all.

Most toddlers should be able to . . .

• Turn pages of a book when you read= Ben is able to turn pages when asked but doesn't typically initiate turning a page on his own.
• Gets attached to stuffed animal or other object= Bee has not become attached to any specific item.
• Walk well= Bee is able to walk very well.
• Sing and like to sing= I'm not sure that Bee actually tries singing but he enjoys listening to music.
• Get upset when frustrated= definitely gets frustrated when someone doesn't go according to HIS plan. : )

Some toddlers will probably be able to . . .

• Walk backwards= Bee walks backwards all the time and looks adorable doing so.
• Start to climb and explore= Bee is definitely climbing on chairs, couches, toy boxes, and climbing toys.
• Help around the house= Bee enjoys helping and this is definitely something that I should encourage more often.  He tries to help dust and wipe up spills if I let him.
• Say up to 10 or 15 words= Bee can say 30+ words! He is definitely doing well on the language front. Granted he doesn't use the words all the time but when asked he can say it or repeat it.

Some toddlers could possibly be able to . . .

• Become picky about certain foods= Bee hasn't become picky about foods. He is only "picky" when he's really not hungry and just wants his "favorites".
• Take off an article of clothing without help= Bee has been able to take his sock and shoes off for quite some time now and has just started taking off his jacket after it's unzipped for him. He can also remove his shirt if his arms are already out of the sleeves.
• Separation anxiety lessens= He is okay with separation when in a comfortable area, but if in an unknown place he is very unwilling to be separated.
• Dance to music= Bee loves dancing to music. He will dance to songs and commercials! It looks like he's bouncing. Pretty funny!
• Trot and prance around= Bee does not trot or prance. We have never worked on these skills.

New to blogging

Hello. I'm new to the world of blogs. I've looked and admired several blogs ranging in topics from crafts to homeschooling. I would like to start one so that maybe someday, someone will learn something new from me. I love learning new things and sharing knowledge with others so I hope this will be helpful.

First, some things about our family. I am a stay-at-home mom of one with another on the way. My first son is a loving toddler and we are very interested in exploring our world and learning about everything.  I hope to use this blog to organize and archive activities we do with our son.  My husband works for the Nevada Air National Guard. We love to do things in our community and believe learning is as easy as doing.  That is the approach we take with our son. We get out there in the community, doing stuff, to see what we can learn.

 This is Bee, our pride and joy.  This picture was taken after our first snow in our area.

 Bee "reading" a book.

 Bee playing the piano at a near by Children's Museum.

 Bee "shopping" at a near by Children's Museum.

Sledding with our little man.

We are hoping to continue with Tot School in the coming months. Hopefully our next blog will be more detailed about Tot School activities we do in our home and community.