Tot School - Our House

This week our theme was "Our House"

The first thing I made was this matching game. I used a file folder and drew a house on the front with enough windows for us each (4 of us) to have 2 windows

I used an exacto knife and cut the windows and door so they can open.

On the inside of the folder I put our pictures - 2 of each.

I put our family picture behind the door just for fun.

C loved this matching game and had fun finding the matching pictures. I only taped the pictures so I could move them around if needed.

We counted the rooms in our house. I grabbed some pom poms and we went around the house and put one on the floor in each room. Then we took this bucket around and picked them all up. When we found them all we counted them to find out how many rooms we have in our house.

I had plans to count other items in the house, but we never got to it. Maybe we will do that this coming week.

Another use for those pom poms! C put the small ones through the holes in a Parmesan cheese container.

We received more stickers in the mail this week. I placed the large stickers on the paper and she found the matching small sticker.

I tried to get C to make any mark inside the empty circles of the sticker sheet (based on an idea from The Activity Mom) but C wasn't interested and wanted me to do it. She kept saying "you do it Mama"

She helped me in the kitchen again, she whisked ingredients for this recipe of egg stuffed tomatoes ("Miss Picky" even tried it, but did not like it)

She also "helped" me make these Oatmeal Waffles.

Tot School - My Family

This week our "theme" was Our Family.

 We worked together to make a family tree. I traced her arm and hand on brown paper and cut it out to make a tree. I printed pictures of our family, and C's grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and great grandmothers. I then cut them out and glued them on green leaves. We glued the leaves and put them on C's tree. She loves this! It hangs above the table where she does some projects and eats snack. She especially loved pointing out Mommy, Daddy and Baby J :-)

We traced and cut out all of our hands (had to J's while she slept!). After I took this picture I added the names of who the hands belong to. C is pointing her own hand.

Pointing to the smallest hand.

Cute quote of the week:
"Daddy is the only boy in the house" when I asked her how many girls she said "a lot" 
I am sure to Daddy it feels that way ;-p

No picture, but we also sorted objects that are for babies,toddlers, mommies and daddies.

This week's homemade toy - I took a Parmesan cheese container and put a piece of paper (I chose green to match the lid) on the inside. Then I put a green pom pom (to match the other green) inside. When you tip it upside down the ball seems to disappear! C thought it was a neat magic trick :)

Although C did enjoy it, I think this would be a better for a younger toddler. C ended up just opening the top and kept taking the pom pom in and out. This is based on an idea I found in Toddlers Together, which I found at the library. (language to use as suggested by the book - see, hidden, inside, turn, look, peek-a-boo, tube, where, pompom)

We combined the Melissa & Doug clock and this Shape sorter cube. They have the same shapes and she matched them. She also sorted the shapes by color.

I had my camera on the wrong setting but I still like how this turned out :) C had lots of fun playing with the balloon the cashier at the grocery store gave her. She even learned that when you sit on balloons, they pop :(  Luckily it didn't scare her, we just got out another and continued the balloon fun.

10 Ways to Use Stacking Blocks

We recently had fun playing with these Stacking Blocks by Melissa & Doug (affiliate link). I thought I would share some of the ways we used them

1. Nesting the blocks (this used to be C's favorite thing to do with these blocks)

2. And of course stacking

3. Comparing heights - here C found out she is the same height when all the blocks are stacked. But you could use a few blocks to compare heights of other objects. You can count how many blocks tall something is.

4. Knock over the blocks!

5. Stack the blocks sideways and make a new home for you Little People. This was a little tricky since our blocks are well loved and didn't want to stay stacked. But she still had fun. Of course you can put other objects in the blocks :)

6. Line up the blocks from smallest to biggest

7. Hide an object under 1 of 3 blocks. Here you can build your child's vocabulary by having them tell you the object is under the biggest, the medium size, the smallest, middle, left or right.

8. Stack the blocks and hide an object under one of the blocks. Your child can take apart the tower to find it! When I did this I only used 4 or 5 blocks at a time.

9. Find objects that are the same size as each box and see if it fits

10. We counted how many lacing bead fit in 2 different sizes of blocks

I would love to hear other suggestions!



shared at....

Tot School: All About Me

C is 28 months

We are back to doing Tot School after taking much of the summer off. Our theme for September is "All About Me".

I had many things planned that we didn't get to and we did many things that were unplanned.

I traced C on the back of some wrapping paper. She colored and I labeled the parts. When we were done we hung it on our wall :)

We are putting together a book for this theme. I traced her hand and foot for her to color on 4x6 index cards. Other pages include lists & pictures of her favorite things (foods, animals, colors, etc) and a picture that she drew herself. I will put these pages in a $1 photo album. We will add to this book as we do more with the All About Me theme - other weekly themes this month will be "my family" "my house" and "I can do it myself".

She counted her hair clips

She sorted the body parts to our mini Mr. Potato heads on a chalkboard I placed on the floor.

She matched ABC stickers to ABC's I had written on paper. She enjoyed this :)

We got these stickers in the mail this week and she immediately had to play with them

We went to the apple orchard with some friends

She helped me made these breakfast cupcakes (well, we made some into cupcakes and some into pancakes)

 I got out this Lego Freestyle puzzle I found at a thrift store years ago (not sure if they still make it, I couldn't find it on Amazon) All the pieces fit together, so there is no wrong way to put it together!

J is at the age (6 mo) where she is interested in toys (and putting everything in her mouth) and C is at the age when everything is hers and doesn't like to share (especially with her sister, she is different with our friend's babies). So we started having what I call "sister time". I really hope this will work on some sharing skills. In this picture C was building towers for J to knock over. 

Anyone have suggestions on how to get a 2 year old to share with their younger sibling?