TOT School ~ Halloween...

~Smiley is currently 33 months old~

~Lovebug is currently 13 months old~

Halloween...

This week was mainly centered around Halloween. We talked about halloween, pumpkins and jack o' lanterns. I found these fun little halloween stamps at the target dollar section a while back and both kids really enjoyed playing with them...

Smiley transfered little jack o' lantern erasers into cupcake molds.

Our little lovebug had to try it too, of course. She did really well with this. I was quite impressed with her persistence :)

We traced halloween shapes with markers...

And used them with our orange playdough...

We practiced cutting a lot this week. Playdough works really well for cutting practice :)

We baked halloween cookies (as if there isn't already enough sugar this weekend ;)) Smiley had a blast. He loves baking with me!

I made orange frosting by adding pureed carrots. You can't really tell from this picture, but it turned out orange and you couldn't taste the carrots at all. At least the cookies now included the slightest trace of vitamins ;)

Later today, we will conclude our halloween theme with carving pumpkins and going trick or treating :)

Fine Motor Skills...

Our little lovebug loves any type of fine motor activity. Here she is putting pennies into cupcake molds.

I was very impressed that she was able to also put the pennies in a piggy bank. This was definitely a bit challenging, but she persisted and was able to fit quite a few pennies in the bank!

The fisher price stacker is another toy she enjoys right now :)

Fun...

We went to fly kites for the first time this week. We all had a blast.

We also played some golf...

and learned how to pitch...

Tot School~Letter Ee, Fall

~Smiley is currently 33 months old~

~Lovebug is currently 12 months old~

Letter Ee...
We covered the Letter Ee from Carisa's RRSP program, which we still love :) I was't a great photographer this week and I only have one picture to show... More next week!

Fall Theme...
Many activities this week were again centered around our fall theme.
We sorted leaves by color (they are from the Target dollar section). This is now too easy for Smiley and we did it in German to work on his German color knowledge. He actually knew all of the colors in German :) (We will need to work on grey, black etc next)

The little tot just worked on putting them in a bottle and getting them back out ;)

On another day, I added a number in the bowls and Smiley had to count out the correct number of leaves in the correct color.

We made a leaf pattern...

Learning Toys...
Our little lovebug worked on a farm animal puzzle. Still a bit trickey, but she gets the general idea ;)

We played A LOT with our little people zoo this week. Smiley is playing really imaginatively with his toys now. It's a lot of fun!

He still loves his cars from the Disney movie CARS. He calls them "name cars". Of course he knows all of their names by heart :) One afternoon, when I walked into his room, he had set up his cars on his train table...

He really enjoyed building towers. We recently got this tower set at a consignment sale. It's a huge hit around here with both kids! He totally gets the idea of stacking by size and that the hole needs to be on the bottom ;)

The scatterpillar game came out this week as well. This used to be a big hit with Smiley, but he had zero interest in it this week and only played for about 2 seconds...

Legos were a big favorite though. He built a helicopter (the tower below) and flew it around for two days ;)

Both kids enjoyed the tunnel :)

We worked on cutting along lines this week for the first time. Smiley did quite well with it. We will have to start doing this on a regular basis. Fortunately, it is part of Carisa's curriculum through the memory verse :)

We built a fort every single day this week! The kids LOVED LOVED LOVED this ;)

Tot School, Fall & Letter Ee

~Smiley is currently 33 months old~

~Lovebug is currently 12 months old~

Fall Theme...
Most of our activities this week were centered around fall. It finally cooled down a bit here and actually begins to look like fall. We painted a paper bag in fall colors and then went on a walk and collected fall leaves.

We used the leaves to make a collage...

We made pumpkin muffins one day and banana muffins with chocolate chips another day :) Smiley is REALLY into helping right now. So, being able to help me with the muffins was a big hit.

We went to a farm/pumpkin patch and had a blast. We sat on tractors...

Played in a huge bean box.... The kids spent a really long time in here. They couldn't get enough :) It was one gigantic sensory tub ;)

We rode on ponies...

We just looked cute...

We saw goats and fed goats...

We rode miniature tractors...

We sorted pumpkins...

The had a lot of fun playing amongst all the pumpkins and we picked a few pumpkins to take home with us :)

Fine Motor...
Our little love bug played connect 4 a few times this week...

She really liked fitting the coins into a little nursing bottle. The coins are almost the same size and she had to really push the coins in order to fit them in the bottle. She really enjoyed this :)

Letter Ee...
Smiley worked on the letter Ee this week. We mainly used activities from confessions of a homeschooler.
We dot painted the letter Ee...

Of course, simply stacking the caps of the paint is still tons of fun as well ;)

It was the first time that we tried coloring by numbers and Smiley was really into it. We will have to do this again!

Shape sorting. Smiley wasn't very interested in this activity this week...

Tracing the letter Ee with play dough...

Using the elephant counting cards...

Seasons...

We focused a lot on the 4 different seasons this week. We talked about the fall- the changing weather, the leaves chaning colors and falling, the animals preparing for winter etc.

I found some cute downloads from montessory for everyone that fit this theme. Smiley had to identify to which season the different trees belong and then added the appropriate clothing. He really liked this activity (although I had to talk him through it a bit...)