Tot School (18 months)

~ 18 months

Some weeks having "structured" Tot School where I make and completely plan out what we're doing just doesn't happen. This week was one of them. We do have active play everyday though and I incorporate as much talking and learning as I can into it. As you will see this week was very minimal on structure and more Bee playing with whatever we had lying around.

 This week we took a walk with Daddy to the duck pond in our neighborhood.  We fed the geese, ducks, and coots.  Bee loves feeding the birds and learned a lot of new vocabulary. It was a pretty challenging day because Bee wanted to push his wagon but then didn't, wanted to walk but then didn't, and wanted to ride in the wagon but then didn't. (He loves the word "No" now...)  We were even asked by a lady as we walked if we were pinching him! Bee just couldn't make up his mind what he wanted to do. 

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 Another day we decided to take a walk to the park and attempt to fly our kite. (isn't the desert BEAUTIFUL!) Anyway, flying our kite was a little challenging as there was not steady wind. But Bee had a great time chasing it just off the ground and learned even more great vocabulary!

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 This week we had to try out our playdough. I attempted making my own at first and that molded so we bought some instead. Bee had to taste it. YUCK!

 We tried pushing out circles and stars

 We also used our ABC cookie cutters to reinforce learning the letters AB and C.  These he still gets confused with so we will be spending the next week or so continuing our review then will continue on with the other letters. : )

We just had to attempt hammering out the playdough!

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 This is a car floor mat I made of of felt for Bee. He loves it. He'll go to the closet saying "truck" (there is one in the kit) and requesting I let him take it out to play with. We are slowly learning all the places on our make like the zoo, hospital, and park.  This was made by following a tutorial posted on Cook Craft Clean. It's a lot of fun to make and play with although there are a couple things I would do different if I made it again. : )

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 Another activity we attempted this week in review. These printables were made by Carissa as part of her tot school alphabet set.  These are the lacing cards and puzzles printed out and laminated. For Bee I think we will just turn them into a matching activity rather than a puzzle activity. He does however enjoy lacing but the puzzles not so much (see below!).

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 Bee working very hard to get a pipe cleaner in the colander. I love this picture!

As always here is the tot school link, go ahead and check out what other toddlers are doing around the world. 

Dr. Seuss Tot School (17 months)

~Bee is 17 months old in his Dr. Seuss Pajamas!

Tot School:

This week in Tot School we tried to focus on Dr. Seuss books and as activities as much as is possible with our little tot. We didn't do too much but I have found a lot of great activities to do with Bee as he gets older, more capable and more interested!

First things first, this week I made a Dr. Seuss Tot Pack. This is what it looks like. There is counting your eggs 1-10, matching Dr. Seuss shapes, coloring your Sam-I-Am with his eggs and ham, and matching Dr. Seuss characters. I had every intention of making the tot packs I make available for download, but I am having difficulties converting the documents to PDFs. When converted the formatting goes wacky, I loose pictures, and fonts! All of my images were received from google images or Seussville.  When I can figure out the formatting issues I will post all Tot Packs that I have made.

In this picture Bee is matching his fish. He now knows that to match all six Seuss characters (Cat in the Hat, Sam I am, the fish, Horton, Yertle, and Thing 1&2.) H usually needs a little help in the middle but with some verbal prompting gets them all right in the end!

Bee working on coloring his"eggs and ham" brown. He was not very interested in coloring this week. I'm not sure if the picture just wasn't to his liking or he had other ideas of fun games. But we will try again with coloring other things next week!

I thought I would try making green eggs and ham this week. Bee doesn't usually eat eggs but I thought I would try it. We also ended up not having any ham so Bee got green eggs and over cooked toast! It was not one of my better morning meals, but Bee didn't seem to notice he liked the eggs and toast. All of it was gone and it took him a long time, so breakfast this day lasted about an hour! Which is a miracle with a one-year old!

These pictures display Bee and I working hard to make Dr. Seuss his cake birthday card! It was a combined effort of me gluing and showing him where to stick the pieces! He had a great time and really enjoys pushing the pieces onto the paper. : )

We also decided to make cup cakes this week in honor of Dr. Seuss. This is by far Bee's favorite activity because it involves cakes (which he loves). It also made this week rather difficult in the food area because all Bee wanted to do was eat cake. : / But he had fun making food none the less.

 In line with more traditional tot school activities this week we introduced Bee to Connect Four. An idea we saw on The Adventures of Bear. The first time Bee only wanted to throw the checkers but then as the week progressed he is "playing" a nice game with daddy.

 Bee continues to love his beads and moving them from container to container. This time he was using some large dinner spoons. I've tried to show him the fun of putting beads on a pipe cleaner but he is as of yet uninterested.

This is an old stacking toy we've had put away in the closet for some time now and Bee decided he wanted to pull it out and play with it so we did that for tot school this week also. :)

Books:

We choose to read a variety of books by Dr. Seuss. The favorites were The Cat in the Hat, Fox in Socks, and Mr, Brown can Moo! Can You?

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

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!