Tot School

- Adam is 37 months -

Sorry for the picture quality….my camera was left at my parents’ house so these were taken with my camcorder and the quality isn’t great.

I had everything planned and ready to go for our week on “Corduroy” (using Before Five in a Row) but we have all been sick going on 2 weeks now, my voice was practically gone and I couldn’t make it through 2 sentences without coughing.  That makes it hard to read for extended periods of time!  So, we bagged “Corduroy” and will pick him back up later.  Adam was still begging for “Top School” so I pulled out some things and let him choose.  (There was also a lot of movie/TV watching and laying around going on too)

Water Colors

Button ArtHe LOVES this!  My mom gave it to him for Christmas and he played with it multiple times this week.  I’m not sure where she bought it, but I found it on Amazon here.

Beads, an ice cube tray and a measuring cup….one of our good old standbys. 

ABC Fish matching game

Funny Face file folder game 

Number MatchingI just picked up these number magnets (as well as letters) at Target for $1.  I kind of like that the font is a little bit funky….it helps him learn to recognize the number even if it looks a little different than normal.

Then we pretended they were cookies and he put them on this cookie sheet (yuck, time for new cookie sheets!) and had fun baking and eating them….several times. :)

Melissa and Doug
24-piece wooden puzzle
We gave him 3 of these puzzles for Christmas but we’ve only gotten them out a couple of times.  He needs a lot of help but we just work on one animal or dinosaur at a time and he does well picking out the pieces that will match and figuring out how to fit them together.  I was going to get him 12-piece puzzles but a friend recommended the 24-piece ones and I’m glad I got them.  I like giving him a challenge!

I am almost done preparing next week’s winter/snow theme so I’m praying that I’m feeling better so we can actually do it!  I’m really the only one that seems adversely effected by being sick, so if Mama is feeling good, Tot School will go on!

LeapFrog Letter Factory Review

I bought this DVD for Adam for Christmas (along with the more advanced Talking Words Factory for later) and he loves it!

He has watched it a handful of times in the last 2 weeks and can now tell me the sounds of 18 out of 26 letters!  I had thinking that teaching him letter sounds would be boring and repetitive but this DVD has made it so easy.  I highly recommend it!

I have two complaints though…one is that it only teaches one sound per letter so I will have to eventually teach him that some letters make more than one sound.  My second complaint is that they teach that the letter “L” makes the sound “uhl” as in “uhl-ick” (lick).  I don’t like that they have attached a “U” sound in front of the “L” sound.

Other than those two issues, I think it is a great DVD and wanted to recommend it to my friends with toddlers/preschoolers and my fellow Tot Schoolers. 

(I bought mine from Amazon for under $9.00…here’s the link)

Visit Tot School at 1+1+=1!

Just as Predicted…Abby is Walking Everywhere!

Abby turned 11 months old 2 days ago and within the past few days she has started walking more and more.  She needs to have something to pull herself up on, but after that, she will usually walk around rather than crawl.  She does it on her own without us having to coax her into walking.  It’s kind of strange to turn around and see her walking in her slow, unsteady little way.  I have also found myself setting her down standing up rather than sitting lately too.

I guess this means I need to find her some shoes!  I’ve been putting it off because they grow out of them so fast.  Any ideas on where to find cute, affordable, baby girl shoes?

Discovery Gateway Museum with Daddy!

Nat had all last week off so one day we took the kids to the Discovery Gateway Museum.  I took them once during the summer but Adam loved having Daddy there to really play with him while I was handling Miss Abigail.

Playing with balls in the Beehive

They were directly above Abby putting balls down a tube and she loved looking up at them

Playing House

Buying Groceries
Picking Vegetables

Loading the Veggies
Adam loved turning the wheel on this conveyor belt

Water Table

Abby playing at a little table
Putting Duplos together. 
She wasn’t just banging them together, she was actually pressing them together, trying to make them stick.
Both Adam and Nat loved building pipes on the magnet wall and then dropping balls through them

Another favorite was this wind tunnel thing where you put a coffee filter in and it shoots it up into the air and floats back down.

We had so much fun together!  One of my New Year’s Resolutions is to try and keep Saturdays for fun family activities rather than having to clean, shop, and run errands all day.  That just means I have to do all that stuff on my own during the week I guess!

Abigail is Walking!!

Dear Abby, (ha ha)

Walking at 10 1/2 months is NOT cool!  You are still a baby!!

Love, Mama and Daddy

Abby took her first “real” steps on Christmas Eve Day and by Christmas Day she was standing for several seconds and then taking 3-4 steps.  One week later she is standing for longer periods of time and will even bounce, dance, and play with things while she stands alone.  She is taking as many as 8 steps at a time now!  I think she’ll be walking as a regular mode of transportation by the time she turns 11 months in 1 week.

Adam starting taking steps at 11 1/2 months and by his birthday was walking really well.  She just seems so tiny to be walking around.  How on earth has this year flown by so fast?

Another development that happened a day or two before Christmas is that she finally got her first tooth!  No sign of any others yet. 

She started using words on purpose right around Christmas also!  She calls me Mama and Adam Buh-buh, and can sometimes get the “r” sound in like Bruh-buh.  Much to Nat’s dismay, she will only occasionally say Dada.  I don’t know what it was about Christmas but she exploded developmentally all at once!  I forgot how fun it is to see a baby learn and develop.  She will be a toddler before I know it!

Our Christmas

We had a wonderful Christmas this year.  It was our first year staying in our own home on Christmas Eve and I loved it! 

Christmas Jammies

Cookies and milk for Santa and carrots for the Reindeer

I just realized I didn’t get any pictures of Adam with the train set that Santa brought….but here’s the load from his stocking (and his train in the background)

Ditto for Abby….no picture of her with her toy from Santa.  We were too busy playing with the new camcorder that Nat got for me.  So we have lots of video but not a lot of pictures!

Isn’t it funny what kids get the most excited about?  Adam couldn’t wait to color with the “Cars” markers that were in his stocking!

We went down to my parents’ house for brunch and more present opening. 
Two words….Spoiled Kids!

Playing with Papa

On Sunday we had Christmas with the Gardner side of the family.

Abby loved the baby doll from Grandma LesaAdam opening a present from his cousins

Once again we were having fun with the video camera and didn’t get very many pictures but I sure do love my new camera!!  It segments the videos and is all digital so I can upload them and they are already separated.  No more tapes to deal with!

Adam made this Christmas so much fun and I can’t wait until next year when he is 4 and Abby is almost 2!

Tot School – Christmas Part 3

- Adam is 37 months old -

Sigh….so much to do, so little time. I had so much more planned and prepared than what we actually did but ‘tis the season for busy schedules I guess. On the bright side, I’ll have a lot of things ready to go next Christmas! So, for the past 2 weeks, this is what we did for Tot School:

The following 2 printables are from Confessions of a Homeschooler’s Preschool Pack

Size Ordering Candy Canes

Ornament CountingAdam counted the ornament on the tree and placed the corresponding numbered star on top. He easily counts and knows the numbers 1-7 and 8 and 10. The only thing he had a little trouble with was double counting or missing some of the ornaments because they were rather small.

Coloring a Nativity scene

In this picture he is pointing out that the Shepherd is signing “milk” because the baby Jesus wants some milk.

I got these Christmas erasers at the dollar store and we played a matching game
And I attempted to do patterns with him…he still isn’t quite grasping patterns
Then he lined them up all…
Stood them all up…
And then had the reindeer give sleigh rides to each pair of erasers using the cart from our Little People Nativity.
He played with them for a while and would say, “Go reindeer go! Go reindeer go!” and then “They’re back to the North Pole!” when they finished their ride.
One day we made Christmas trees out of felt and added sequins and glitter. I thought he’d really like the glitter, but he was much more interested in gluing the sequins on!

For our Family Home Evening treat one night we made Gingerbread cookies
The funny thing is that neither Nat or I even like gingerbread but apparently the kids did! I think next year we’ll stick to plain old sugar cookies.

I am looking forward to the new year and getting back into using Before Five in a Row for weekly themes. And after we finish that, it’s on to a Letter of the Week type at-home preschool. I’m excited!

I’m also excited (yet exhausted at the thought) that Abby will be 1 in just over a month so I want to begin planning and putting things out specifically for her to do as Tot School. Adam has been doing more preschoolish things for a long time now so I’m excited to research and plan things more along the lines of the actual Tot School theory.

I’m taking this coming week to plan and prepare our Before Five in a Row themes for the next few weeks so hopefully we can begin a unit the following week. Sometimes I wonder why I do this to myself. It’s so much work!

I Can See!

Technology and modern medicine truly are a miracle!  I had LASIK Eye Surgery yesterday and as of my post-op appointment this morning, I’m seeing right around 20/20 and my eyes should continue to improve over the coming months.  It’s awesome!  I went to bed with blurry/fuzzy vision after my surgery, and after a 4 hour nap (thanks Valium!), I woke up seeing clearly with only a little irritation and dryness. 

Today my eyes have been dry and a little irritated, but mostly just tired.  Most of the time it seems like I’m just wearing my contacts (which I’ve worn for probably 13-14 years) so it’ll be neat to wake up tomorrow morning (or the middle of the night since Abby has been waking up crying lately) and just be able to see without any glasses or contacts.  It’s kind of strange!

I’m really grateful to Dr. Hoopes for blessing me with this surgery.  I didn’t think I’d have it for many years and I feel so lucky and blessed!

I want to post about our Christmas but this is about all the computer time my eyes can handle….maybe tomorrow.