Tot School~ Thanksgiving

~Smiley is currently 22 months old~

I wasn't a very good photographer these past two weeks. For some reason, I never seem to have the camera handy when we're doing tot school. I have to try to work on that...

ABC's

Smiley surprised me these past two weeks. He picked the book "Dr. Seuss ABC" a few times in a row for his bedtime story, and after about a week of this he knew nearly the entire ABC. I was very impressed and decided to start reinforcing the letters during tot school. He knows almost all the upper case letters and most lower case letters, but I still thought it would be fun to start an ABC book...

So, this past week we worked on the letter Aa.



We also made a cover page for our ABC notebook that we found here: http://totallytots.homestead.com/ABC.HTML

The finished products:

We found the idea for the Aa craft at No Time for Flashcards...

Learning Toys

We played quite a bit with different learning toys/puzzles these past two weeks, but I only snapped pictures of Smiley working with this sorting toy.

Fall Theme

We continued our fall theme over the past two weeks, leading up to thanksgiving. Smiley enjoyed using the dot paint to make some hand turkeys...

I really liked the paper plate turkeys as seen on 1plus1plus1equals1 and wanted to try it with Smiley. He really enjoyed gluing the little paper squres on the paper plate. However, once I put paint on his hand, he freaked out and started screaming. I managed to get a quick handprint, before he pulled his hand away (hence the smeared fingers). I should have known that this craft may not be a good idea for Smiley. He really doesn't like it when his hands are dirty (he doesn't seem to mind a dirty face though). Oh well, we'll try again next year ;)

We got Smiley a little people Mayflower this year, and he enjoyed playing with it many times this week :)

Lastly, we spent several days with my husband's family in San Diego. We all had a great time just hanging out around the home and relaxing. By the way, Smiley got a hair cut a few days ago and my baby boy turned into a big boy! I can't believe that his short haircut aged him about 6 months!!!

Tot School

~Smiley is currently 22 months old~

We had a busy weekend last week and I didn't get a chance to write a post, so I decided to include the past two weeks of tot school in today's post :)

Learning Toys...

Smiley had fun playing with puzzles. These are actually too easy for Smiley now. I will have to look into puzzles that are a bit more challenging. Maybe for Christmas or his birthday :)



Smiley continues to like to play with his pegs. He usually lines them up or stacks them by color.

We had fun sorting our animals. He first sorted them by animal group...

...and then by color...

He always likes playing with his lacing beads. He particularly enjoys sorting them ;)

Farm Theme...

We finished our farm theme last week. We played quite a bit with the matching game from our farm tot book...

And we colored the different animals of our tot book.

Fall Theme...

We had fun making a collage for our fall theme.

And we baked a bunch of pumpkin muffins. Mmm....

Physical activity...

Smiley is a very energetic boy, so he needs lots and lots of time just running around and getting his energy out. He really likes playing with this tunnel from IKEA. It's great for indoors!

Life School...

We don't get snow in our area, so we were lucky that a park had trucked in quite a bit of snow for the kids to enjoy. It was Smiley's first time seeing snow and he had a blast playing in it!

He kept wanting to eat it though ;)

They also had a gigantic Titanic slide. Of course, daddy and Smiley had to check it out...

Looks pretty scary, doesn't it??

Here is what Smiley and daddy thought of it...

Tot School

~Smiley is currently 21 months old~

Tot School Toys...

Smiley had fun playing with his lacing beads. However, rather than using them for their intended purpose, he decided to collect all the bees, then all the flowers etc. A great tot school activity nonetheless ;)



Farm Theme...

We had some more fun with our Farm Theme this week. We enjoyed playing with our farm sorting toys. Smiley first sorted them by animal group. Here he is collecting horses...

Next, he sorted them by color...

To make it even more fun, we sorted them into the rings of his fisher price stacker toy :)

We then worked on this fun farm matching game

I also put a farm tot book together for Smiley and he had lots of fun with the different activities. Here he is working on some animal matching... You can find it here: http://lapbooksbycarisa.homestead.com/FarmTotBook.html

Love...

Smiley is completely in love with his little sister and can't get enough of her. So, much of the week was spent loving on his little sister :)

Pumpkins...

Of course we had to carve pumpkins! It was Smiley's first time and he truly enjoyed himself :)

Halloween...

Smiley enjoyed dressing up as a dog and going trick or treating for the first time!

He only wore his hat for a couple of pictures and that was it ;)

So much candy!

And...

just because she is so cute, here is another picture of his baby sister :)