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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6 Months Old!

Abigail Elizabeth is now 6 months old!
I can hardly believe it!

She had her 6 month appointment yesterday and although she’s a petite eater, she’s holding pretty steady in her growth. Here are her stats:

Weight: 15 lbs. 1 oz. (45th percentile)
Length: 25 inches (50th percentile)

Abby is sitting up really well now and I can leave her for 10-15 minutes at a time as long as she has a pillow behind her just in case she topples. It seems that she has forgotten how to roll over, even though she was rolling both front to back and back to front just a few weeks ago. Oh well! Adam started rocking on his hands and knees and then army crawling around 7 months and I’m just not ready for Abby to do that! My baby is growing up too fast! But, she's so much fun and I LOVE seeing her and Adam interact. Adam frequently calls her Abs or Babe (not because he’s heard that word before, (like “What a babe!
”) but because he shortens everything and Babe is short for Baby). We love that he calls nicknames for her. They make each other laugh and it’s so fun to see.

Abby has been enjoying a variety of baby foods including trying sweet potatoes, squash and peas. She doesn’t seem phased by any of it like Adam did, so that’s good! The doctor said I should start giving her a breakfast meal along with dinner (I’ve been worried about her dropping her formula intake too much) so we’ll start giving her fruit and cereal for breakfast and veggie and cereal for dinner.

We sure love this baby girl!

Tot School – Weeks 6 and 7

- Adam is 32 months old -

It took us 2 weeks to complete our reading of “Goodnight Moon” because we took a couple days off for trips to the library, park, and then both kids wound up with a nasty cold. And we had to skip a couple activities. But, that’s the beauty of Before Five in a Row, you can do whatever you want, at whatever pace you want!

I loved “Goodnight Moon” when I was kid and Adam has loved it since he was a baby. Our board book version is nicely worn and chewed on and now we have a nice, new, big version of this book to enjoy.

To go along with the book, we….

Colored and pasted a little book of “Hey Diddle Diddle”. Adam can now “read” it himself because he has picture cues to help him remember the rhyme.

We ate “a bowl full of mush”, aka oatmeal, for breakfast. Adam LOVED this and requested “a bowl full of mush” for 3 days straight!
We read a mini ABC book with letters and pictures relating back to “Goodnight Moon”.

“What color was the balloon?”Adam colored the balloons to match the outline I did, and then correctly remembered that “in the great green room there was a telephone, and a RED balloon”.

“A Pair of Mittens”Adam used his hand prints to make “mittens”

We also searched for shapes in the illustrations and talked about how the word “great” can mean “good” but it can also mean “big” and that when the book says, “In the great green room…” it means it is a “big” green room.

For our Tot School activities we played with blocks…a lot!

Adam did a shape matching file folder game that I made from the blog Home Grown Hearts. He knows all the names of the shapes except square and sometimes oval.

Cutting and sawing play doh with a craft stick (tongue depressor)

Matching pictures with the Garanimals Memory Game

We colored with the Toy Story magic color thingys (his Nana gave it to him and I can’t remember what they are called!)

We went for a walk around our neighborhood and he practiced riding his Strider Bike. I love this bike! It is pedal-less so kids (even toddlers) use their feet like a push toy and learn to steer and balance before ever having to coordinate pedaling. The theory is that they won’t need training wheels when they move to an actual bike because they will have already mastered the hardest part of riding a bike…balancing. He is getting fast and if I remind him, he’ll lift his feet up and glide for a few seconds. It looks like fun!

Coloring. I’m trying to figure out how to teach him how to correctly hold markers, crayons, etc. I try to move his fingers into place but he switches back to random holds pretty quickly. Any suggestions?

One day we went to the park. This park has a great playground with lots of big, shady trees and it has a winding river and ducks! What more could you ask for?

Finger painting…which led to using a brush to get all the corners of the tray nice and covered. I love the tongue sticking out in concentration! He did this for 45 minutes and chatted the whole time about spiders and fences and other random things.

This was probably Adam’s favorite activity. He used scissors for the first time! These are little spring-loaded scissors, but I found them kind of hard to maneuver so I’m going to try out some others to see if they are easier to handle.

While cutting some pieces he emphatically said, “Get off piece!” when he was frustrated that he couldn’t move the scissors as well as he wanted to. I had to maneuver the paper for him as he snipped.

With all the little scraps he cut, I came up with the idea to have him glue them down (yes, that seems obvious, but I hadn’t thought about it prior to the cutting activity! I’m learning here! :) ). This was an even bigger hit than the cutting because he got to use real white glue for the first time!

While squeezing out a dot of glue he said, “I’m doing mustard. Stick the bread on the mustard!” and he stuck a piece of paper down.

Seeing how much he loved squeezing out the “mustard”, I picked up a few more at Wal-Mart for .25 each. I have a feeling we’ll be going through a lot of glue!

Sorry for the picture overload! I really love planning and carrying out Tot School and Before Five in a Row. Some days are better than others but when I do make the effort to sit with him and do these easy, simple activities, it always amazes me how funny and smart he is! I just sit and laugh at the funny things that come out of his mouth!

To see more Moms doing Tot School, check out the blog, 1+1+1=1!

Abby’s First Haircut

Abby had some pretty gnarly hair going on so I decided it was time for a trim! I HATE cutting my babies hair for the first time, but she had long hair growing out of the middle of the back of her head and shorter hair underneath. She also had long hair on the side and is nearly bald all through the middle where her head has grown. And to my dismay, it appears to be growing in a lot lighter! I was dreaming of a pretty, dark haired little girl! I’m sure she’ll still be pretty if she has light brown hair though! :)

Before

After

I’ve since trimmed up the sides a little more.

I attempted to put her hair in an elastic but it just makes her bald spots look even balder!

On a side note, I started mixing in some bananas or pears with her rice cereal and it’s a big hit! Next up is sweet potatoes, squash, or carrots! Yummy!!

This is what I have to look forward to! Adam gagged on EVERYTHING for the first month or so!