Tot School – I Am an Artist

- Adam is 33 months old -

For Tot School the past week (well, 2 weeks) we read “I Am an Artist” by Pat Lowery Collins using Before Five in a Row as an activity guide. We reviewed and relearned the ASL signs for tree, leaf, flower, stars, apple, water, and rainbow. This book was actually more of a nature book than an art book, but it’s focus was on how everything around us is art.

For Family Home Evening on Monday night we briefly told Adam the story of the creation and how Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ were ‘artists’ when they created this beautiful earth and all the things that live here. I don’t know how much he understood, but we feel it’s never too early to begin teaching about God and the gospel of Jesus Christ!

The highlight of our week was taking a nature walk at the park. I had to show Adam how to find “treasures” and place them in his pail. I thought all kids instinctively collected things but I guess not! I made sure to be really excited and in awe of everything we found and soon Adam was also really excited about it.

After gathering some items, we played on the playground, which for Adam usually means just playing in the sand.

He eventually decided he wanted to swing and I thought it would fun to have Abby sit in there with him. She loved it! Adam, on the other hand, quickly grew tired of the slow swinging and demanded Abby be removed.

When we got home, we made a collage out of our nature treasures by taping them down onto paper. I think I liked this activity a lot more than he did!

On one page of the book, there is a picture of an apple cut in half, revealing the hidden star. Adam thought it was quite cool to see the star inside. Although he said it looked like a flower. I agree.

This is the face of a boy that has just eaten an apple seed. I was cutting up slices for our snack and when I looked up he was chomping on something with this weird look on his face. We had an impromptu lesson on not eating seeds.

I made a little book out of some drawings and paintings that Adam did.

I didn’t plan very many activities for our book this week because we had a play date at a children’s museum one day and I went out of town for a wedding on Friday. But that’s ok. Some weeks are more filled up than others and that’s how I like it!

Other tot school activities:

Melissa & Doug Beginning Pattern Blocks

Color matching file folder game from Confessions of a Homeschooler

Magnetic Thingys (can’t remember their name)
I tried to get him to match up all the colors but that only lasted about a minute…

so we built robots instead! And on another day he discovered that my computer chair was magnetic and turned my chair into a robot. He’s in to robots lately. :)

And of course there was play doh

Check out 1+1+1=1 for more great ideas on what to do with your tot!

Abby’s First Trip

Abby tagged along on a little “girls trip” to Colorado Springs for my cousin Tonya’s wedding. She was surprisingly a pretty good traveler!

Mommy and Abby on the plane
Let’s all just ignore me in the picture

Abby and Nana
I know my Mom will hate this picture of her, but just look at my sweet little AbbyGirl!

Airplanes sure are cool….until they take off and make your ears hurt!

All Tuckered Out

Abby did a lot of sitting on the bed playing

Tonya the Bride!

Abby and Kinley…my cousin Tiffany’s little girl. Kinley was very interested in Abby and had to be reminded to be “soft” and “nice”. That’s hard for a 15 month old with 2 older siblings! :)

Abby and Kaya…Tiffany’s 5 year old.
Kaya was so cute with Abby and even helped feed her once.

I just realized I didn’t get any pictures of me with my cousins! How dumb of me!

We had a fun….yet tiring….short little trip and Adam had a great “boys weekend” with his Daddy at home. I loved the squeals and screeches of delight from Adam when I walked in the door. There really is no place like home!

Fun at the Children’s Museum

This week we went to a children’s museum with a couple of my friends and their kids (which are the same ages as Adam and Abby so it’s lots of fun!)

It was ‘free day’ at the museum so it was packed but that didn’t seem to bother the kids at all!  They happily played and ran around.

Adam and Dallin

Lexie, Adam, Brynlee, and Abby – Heather and her kids had already left

 

After the museum and a picnic lunch, we let the kids play in the fountain (the kind that shoots water up from random holes).  Adam went right in and loved it!  It took Lexie a little while but eventually she had fun and then they screamed and ran around and had a blast!

 

We spent over 4 hours there and it was so fun getting out and doing something different.  I definitely want to take Adam back (hopefully on a day it’s not quite so crowded)!  Thanks Katie and Heather for a fun day!

Abigail’s 6-month Portraits

We had Abby’s pictures taken last weekend the little stinker was very stingy with her smiles!  She has such a cute, wide-open grin, but sadly, we didn’t really capture that.  We still got some cute shots of her though so I’m happy.

I know the color is off on some of these and that’s because some of the ones we ordered were retouched, but we got a CD with all the images so there are a few on here that are in their raw state. 

 

This one is our favorite because she loves playing with her toes so much right now!

   

Miss Grumpy Pants

Tot School – Week 8

- Adam is 32 months old -

Check out 1+1+1=1 for more info about Tot School!

As we walked downstairs on Monday morning to do Tot School, we had this conversation:

Adam - “I’m really, really sorry. I don’t like to do Tot School”.

Mom - “You don’t?”

Adam - “Yeah, I do!”

This kid cracks me up! He’s at such a fun age!

We had fun this week reading “My Blue Boat” by Chris L. Demarest (using the Before Five in a Row curriculum). Sadly, this book is out of print but I was able to find it at my library. It is a simple story about a boat that goes on an adventure in a child’s imagination and the illustrations are wonderful watercolors.

We reviewed the ASL sighs for boat, water, moon, and stars and learned the sign for blue.

A suggestion in the manual is to explain some the vocabulary words that your child is unfamiliar with. There are many great words in the book like channel, harbor, swells, and beacon. And he learned what a lighthouse was for.

On the inside of the front and back cover of the book, there is a pattern of boats in a row. The book suggested guiding the child’s finger from left to right, down the page as you tell them that that is how you read a book, from left to right. Adam actually enjoyed tracing the pattern of the boats.

We also followed the suggestion of having Adam quickly put his finger on the picture of the boat on each page as I quickly turned them. Most of the boats were in the same general area, but on a few pages, the blue boat was in another spot and it was fun to see him starting towards the normal spot and then have to search for the boat in order to put his finger on it. The manual stated that this was a good exercise in tracking and Adam giggled the entire time!

We sang “Row Row Row Your Boat” just about every day too.

Stamping a letter B using Bubble wrap and Blue paint.

Together we colored a picture of a boat and Adam started making marks, saying he was writing. I asked him to write his name and to my surprise he said, "A-D-A-M” as he made marks (I’m pointing to his “name”). I had no idea he knew the letters in his name in order!

The plan was to watercolor like the illustrations in the book, but that only lasted a couple minutes because he discovered that when you dip a paintbrush full of paint into water, the paint comes off and swirls around. He went on and on about snakes and bugs while he dipped the paintbrush in over and over again.

In one of the illustrations there are a bunch of stars in the sky so we counted those and then used star cut-outs to practice putting sizes in order from biggest to smallest. He needed quite a bit of help after the first couple of stars.

I found a little toy boat and surprised him with it on Saturday when we had the pool out. My plan was to have him make up a story about where the boat was going, like in “My Blue Boat”, but he just wanted to drive it around and pretend it was a submarine under water. Oh well!

For other Tot School activities this week, Adam tossed plastic rings into the pool (or up in the air….or at the house….or at his baby sister), and Daddy helped him do somersaults into the pool. He thought he was pretty darn cool doing that!

I just LOVE this picture of him! Pure summer joy right there!

Inside we…

Played with a foam number puzzle I got at Dollar Tree.

Glued pom-poms onto paper .

Made play doh cookies

And did a new file folder game I made called “The Funny Farm” where he had to match the animal head with the animal backside. After he did it “right” the first time, he had fun mixing them up and putting the heads on upside down.

To get out of the house, we took a trip to an aquarium with my Mom and sister. It has been 4 months since we went and Adam really enjoyed it this time! He kept saying, “Let’s do somefin’ else!” as he ran to each new tank or exhibit.

Adam and Mommy driving the boat. I think this is Adam’s favorite part of the aquarium!

Adam the Marine Biologist busy at work. This is his second favorite part!

Riding a giant frog with Aunt Annie

Baby Sister Abby intently watching the fish swimming around.

We had a great week of Tot School and Before Five in a Row!

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