Tot School (22 months)

 Another post! YAY!! I finally got organized and bought some boxes for tot school! These are the activities for the next couple of weeks. : )

 We have opening jars and using a screwdriver to screw screws, Prewriting skills, ABC box, blocks, and matching/cooking. We also have football, soccer and bubbles for outdoor play. Below are pictures of Bee using the boxes. : )

Pre-writing skills

Matching pictures to the kitchen objects.

Playing with felt food after his matching.

Placing pom-poms on the letters A B and C.

We've also done a lot of outdoor things in the last month... Below are some pictures. 

Setting up a tent with Daddy for backyard camping.

Kayaking with mommy.

Reading a book while at a baseball game.  Sorry the picture isn't rotated.

Walking with our family. Bee wasn't interested in a family picture.

Yum getting in his "school" time too with tummy time.

This last picture is my favorite from this week. I wanted a nice picture with Bee. He didn't.... : )





As always, Check out what other kiddos are doing around the world at...

Felt Fruit

I have fallen in love with making felt fruit for Bee and Yum.  In three days, working mainly during nap and an hour or two in the evening after bedtime for Bee I have created these!

There are 10 strawberries, 4 blueberries, 3 orange wedges, 2 tomato slices, half a lemon and a whole pineapple. Click the fruit to see my patterns/inspiration.

There are so many more to do.  I plan to continue with fruit for now then branch out into vegetables and try my luck shortly after with lunches, dinners, and other things of interest. Like muffins, pies, cakes, etc...

P.S: I'm having a ton of fun making these and looking forward to doing so many more. If you have any ideas, please share. : )

Look what Mommy Made

I love, LOVE, LOVE sewing and craft projects.  I really enjoys making things that my little guy can use to learn new skills.  Lately I've been working on some projects featured on other people's blogs and I'd like to share them and one other I made a while ago but Bee is finally old enough to really enjoy.

These are my latest project that I just finished TODAY! There is a tutorial for how to make these alphabet letters at Oh So Happy Together.  These Letters took a day and a half for me to make.  That included two nap times and working one evening after Bee went to bed. I should mention that I did have help cutting out the letters from my mother but it was still a very easy project and a great way to use up extra scraps that you and friends might have lying around!

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This I posted about in my latest Tot School Post but wanted to mention again just because it is so cool. Bee goes to the closet (it's home) and requests to play with this car mat everyday! I had initially intended it rarely to use at home and more for when we are on the run but he likes it so much that I just can't say NO!  The tutorial for this project is at Cook Clean Craft.  This project took a little longer to create. The most intensive part being all the cutting and gluing.  It is so worth the effort though if your child likes cars as much as mine!

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This is an activity book that I made for Bee several months ago. At the time he was not really old enough to thoroughly enjoy the book but now he IS! The book pattern for this came from Sew Baby. 

This is what all of the pages look like when completed.  This is a picture from the website that shows all of the pages in the book.

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. 

Tot School (18 months)

~ Bee is 18 months.

Hello again, and as usual I'm running a little on posting what we've done this past week with tot school. That said we has a very unstructured tot school week. With the first week of spring-like weather we've been spending a LOT of time outside and that means I've been slacking with tot school! We did still manage to get quite a bit done though and this is our week (including this morning!)

To start off, last week I finished making Bee's new wall display. It is a yard stick with clothespins glued on and each letter of his name on a clothespin.  This way he can show off the work we've been working on without it cluttering up my counters and tables!  This was the work from two weeks ago, letter B. And our old cake that we made for Dr. Seuss' Birthday. : )

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 Some more painting this week! We started with three squeezes and ended with color everywhere!

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 We've been working a lot with plants lately which you can see at my mid-week post for the HSV Garden Challenge. This idea for cleaning house plants with water and q-tips came from this great blog. I must say Bee was much more interested in putting the Q-tips in the water but did eventually get the hang of actually helping mommy clean/dust the dirty plant.

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 This is an alphabet worksheet created by 1+1+1=1.  Bee really enjoys these worksheets and does a great job making the sounds when he pushes the marker on the letters!

 Bee's weekly Alphabet craft is a crab for the letter C. We are very loosely working in the Alphabet. Bee is still not really understanding that each letter is different so we will just keep plugging on and when he starts understanding better go back over the beginning letters!

And finally our display wall for this week!

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 Our ocean felt board has evolved to become the Fidgety Fish felt board with our Ocean Friends. Fidgety Fish is one of Ben's favorite stories. It was written by Ruth Galloway and is really cute so when we read the story we move our ocean friends onto our felt board ocean.

 Bee's favorite way to play is to dump all our friends off and on the felt board! I need more felt board ideas too if anybody has any homemade stories or ideas I could use.

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 I've seen on several blogs in the past couple of weeks kiddos putting pipe cleaners into a colander. This was a first day doing this activity. Bee at first was a little confused by trying to get them in the little holes then after some demonstrations he went right on putting one in and pulling it out! He did have a great time working on his fine motor skills.

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 running to the swings

 being pushed on the swings

 practicing walking up the stairs!!! (rather than crawling)

 watching a friend's baseball practice.

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 We still work on practicing life skills. In this picture Bee is practicing setting his high chair tray! He put the tray, fork, and milk up all on his own! I'm so proud!! : )

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This is my favorite picture of the week! Bee and Mickey are picking up blocks from the floor. Mickey even helped to put them in the box! Mickey has become somewhat of a favorite this week. : )