20 Best Tips

Tot School ::14::

~ Kaleb is 26 months ~

Ninety three pictures this week. 93. Apparently I was a little camera happy this week, but I will not be showing you every single one, so you can relax. :) I will however be sharing a little something fun that I pulled together for Kaleb as a Tot Tool, so hang on ’til the end!

Kaleb love the DK books, especially the Touch and Feel: Animal Colors right now. The pages are all sorted by different colors and show animals that are that color. One of the animals on each 2-page spread is tactile, which he loves!

There are very few “big-kid” games that Kaleb can play along with (without much frustration on the older kids part). Laurianna decided that she wanted to play Old McDonald (a game I recently picked up for $0.25 thank.you.very.much). Kaleb loves hearing the different animal sounds and it’s a great way for us to practice our animal names and sounds.

Another new favorite game in our house is Horton Hears a Who! – You to the Rescue! – one I picked up on clearance after Christmas at Target. The kids have so much fun hiding the little “dust specks” and it’s too fun watching them try to pick them up with the Horton nose. Makes for some fun pictures too!

This week it snowed again and while the older kids went outside to play, I distracted Kaleb with some other table activities. He’s still had a pretty rough cough, so inside seemed a little better for him. During that time we had fun putting beads onto pipe cleaners.

Then I found an activity that kept Kaleb happy for an entire hour. A bottle of glue, colored rice, many beads and complete stickiness later, he had a lovely messy masterpiece.

I have lots of little beads left over from who-knows-what, and I was throwing out a Parmesan cheese container this week I thought it might be a great fine motor activity for Kaleb to drop the beads into the container one at a time. He loved it. He would get between 10-15 in and then I would close the lid, he’d have fun shaking it, and then ask me to open it back up. He’d dump out all the beads and start over again. The most fun was spilling the beads all over the floor!

There were other activities this week too, but I’ll leave you with the Tot Tool that I created this week. I made a Color Matching game for Kaleb (you should be able to print it off from the link below). There are 10 colors/sheets with 6 cards on each sheet. Each color sheet has the ‘base’ color and then 5 picture cards of an item that match that color. I printed them off and laminated them to make them a little sturdier for his hands to hold onto (and also they will survive longer in our house).

I’m only giving him 2-3 colors to use at a time and spread the pictures out on the floor. Then I show him the ‘base’ color and he finds me a picture that matches that color. Click on the sample image from the cards below and it will take you directly to the pdf file.

That’s it for this week! I’m working on some other Tools for (my) Tot too, so be sure to check back later!

Don’t forget to visit Carissa at 1+1+1=1 for some more Tot School posts.

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Tot School ::13::

~ Kaleb is 26 months ~

This week turned out to be quite the pajama week for our kiddos. We had some snow. And by snow, I mean more of a glorified “spit”, but enough to cancel our local schools for a few days. And if the local schools don’t need to meet, it really seems like a waste of clean clothes. And so pajamas seemed to stay on most every day (Kaleb even wore them under his snow suit, if the truth needs to be told).

When I asked Kaleb what he wanted to do, he went straight to the toy shelves and pulled out the nesting buckets that I have from Tupperware, climbed up in Daddy’s chair and started stacking, and nesting … and then just being a general goofball. Because bucket = hat in toddler-world.

The next time he went to the shelf, he pulled out the box that has different puzzle boards in it, so I picked a board that has 5 different shapes that you are supposed to stack in order of size. He isn’t up to stacking by size, but he can get the shapes in the right places. And while they weren’t stacked quite right, he did have fun rearranging them to his specifications. *grins*

And once we were done sorting all those shapes, we played a little game together and Kaleb showed me where different body parts were: nose, toes, chin, back, shoulder, hair… he thought this was hysterically funny and just kept laughing and naming different places he would touch the block too.

We had some friends over this week and Kaleb was nice enough to share his puzzles with a tot-friend of his, Reagan (22 months). I love this Melissa and Doug puzzle and even though he can pop the chunky pieces in quickly, it’s fun for us to practice naming the animals and also the sounds that they make.

The two of them also had fun working on the vehicle matching puzzle (another Melissa & Doug). Kaleb still likes to pretend he doesn’t know which ones match, put the piece in the wrong spot, and then smile and move it to the correct space.

That’s what I have in pictures this week. For some strange reason, I don’t have any pictures of the kid’s playing in our pitiful excuse for snow… otherwise those would be in here too. :)

Don’t forget to visit Carissa at 1+1+1=1 for some more Tot School posts. Be sure to also check out the new blog Totally Tots (spearheaded by Carissa) for some other great ideas of things to do with your little one!

Tot School ::12::

~ Kaleb is 26 months ~

There were quite a few things that we did during our Tot School time this week that were repeats of last week’s post, but we did branch out a little bit too. Since Kaleb is no longer taking a morning nap (please allow me to grieve this point *sob*) there was no way that I could avoid having him using the easel along with us.

And he was THRILLED.

And by thrilled I mean of the paint-splashing, scream-your-head-off when Mommy confiscates the paintbrushes kind of thrilled.

But it made for some wonderfully cute pictures of him doing his best to paint a marvelous picture.

Watching him paint was so sweet – he would close his little mouth when he dipped his brushes and then the mouth remained WIDE open when painting. Too.stinkin.cute.

I also received a Noah’s Ark to review this week and he had so much fun pretending with me. Hearing him name some of the animals (umm…the ostrich isn’t too easy, really) and make noises along with them is fun.

We spent time using playdough too – making snakes and trying to make shapes together. Kaleb loved using the molds we have for our playdough to make different designs and creatures.

A few weeks ago I picked up these stacking rings (I have no idea what else to call them) at a yard sale, so all the kids had fun playing with them. Kaleb had trouble actually getting them together, so we also tried sorting them by color and had him hand us the colors that we asked for…we’re still working on learning our colors, even though he is sorting like a pro!

That wraps up our Tot School highlights for the week! Don’t forget to visit Carissa at 1+1+1=1 for some more Tot School posts. She is also working on a new site, so stay tuned to see what she has planned! You are going to LOVE it!!

Tot School ::11::

Tot School was a little scattered this week since Kaleb started acting very tired and lethargic on Wednesday and then that night began complaining that his ear hurt. We’ve never had one this young actually TELL us what was wrong with them, so at first we didn’t really give it much credit. But it was so sweet (and sad all rolled into one) – he kept putting his little hand on his ear, leaning his head to the side and saying “hewrt, hewrt” in that cute little toddler voice. And sure enough he had a double ear infection.

Although we weren’t quite as focused, we did get a few things squeezed in to our days. I pulled out a bunch of my teaching supplies from years ago and actually hung them up! When I use tape on our walls it leaves a nasty residue, so I finally bought some of the 3M adhesive tabs to hold up the shapes and colored crayons. And Kaleb LOVES them. He’s been running over to the wall and naming colors, not the right ones, mind you, but at least his naming colors!! I pulled out some of the smaller crayons I had and he would hold them up to the matching crayon on the wall and repeat the color after I named it.

We also spent some time doing puzzles this week again. We’re using the 3 part alphabet puzzles and only doing a few at a time so that it doesn’t get too overwhelming for him.

He pulled out his stacking cups (Discovery Toys) and also his big buckets (Tupperware) to stack inside each other and also have fun stacking in a tall tower and then know down…or see if it would fit in his mouth. While it’s great to strap him in at the table, it’s also hard because those little arms can only reach sooooo high!

Since I don’t have as much to share this week, I did want to share what my overall goals for Kaleb were this year:

  • Identify basic colors
  • Identify body parts
  • Identify 3 shapes
  • Sing ABC song and identify key letters (K for Kaleb, M for Mommy, D for Daddy)
  • Identify animals and the sounds they make
  • Sing a few simple songs (Twinkle, Twinkle, ABC’s, Jesus Loves Me)
  • Count 1-5, then 1-10 if mastered
  • Sort items by color, type and size
  • Know difference between big/small
  • Understand prepositions on/off, in/on/under
  • Copy circles and lines
  • Put together simple puzzles

Be sure to head over to Carissa’s at 1+1+1=1 for some more Tot School posts and ideas.

Tot School ::10::

~ Kaleb is 25 months old ~

We pulled out a few of the newer Christmas toys this week for the little man to play with, so he was rather thrilled. I apparently underestimated him when buying some of the toys (sigh), since he has already ‘mastered’ some of the puzzles. But as long as he enjoys doing them and playing with them, we’ll keep using them!

Although we have the smaller leap pad, Kaleb isn’t quite up to it yet so he has another toy that is similar and does alphabet and counting – just the basic things. Since he is becoming more interested in singing the alphabet he is more interested in this one now. Another day he lugged it around the house with him and let his sisters push him around in the laundry basket while he played along.

Kaleb is also loving his stringing beads and figured out how to get them on the string all by himself this time! He actually did quite a few and then dumped them all over the table.

He then started stacking the square blocks and building a tower. He was so thrilled with himself!

We also pulled out the colored bears for sorting this week to see if he could continue to sort the four colors, which he did! Yeah, Kaleb!

Kaleb has been having fun discovering the difference between hot and cold. We freeze our gogurts and so he sits at the lunch table saying “Cold? Cold?” while squeezing his gogurt. Then later he runs over to the stove asking, “Hot? Hot?” He’s got it down now!!

Laurianna also had fun trying to teach Kaleb how to play Go Fish. We have some great cards from Alphabet Alley that are nice and thick (you can read more about them here). Love them!!

Years ago I bought a cd from Discovery Toys called Sounds Like Fun. Every now and then we’ve been playing it and Kaleb LOVES the alphabet sounds song on the cd. Here he is at the table singing along and raising his apple in the air while singing “Apple, apple, ah, ah, ah.” (If you don’t have this cd, I’d highly recommend it!!).

Be sure to visit Carissa at 1+1+1=1 for some more Tot School posts! Have a great week!

Tot School ::9::

~Kaleb is 25 months old~

Quite a few of our Tot School photos this week show a certain little man wearing the same pair of zippie pjs. And while I promise that we do wash them, it is growing increasingly difficult to get him to take them off.

He loves them. And by loves them, I mean kicking, screaming and crying should we even hint at taking them off.

Good times.

Kaleb has been playing quite a bit with our Leap Frog Fridge Phonics game, so we are hearing the ABC song repeated all.the.time. And it’s sinking in because he is singing along sections of the song and even doing bits by himself as he walk around the house.

Thanks to Carissa for mentioning the puzzles she found at Ross last week! I went the next day and despite the fact that the toy section looked like a tornado had gone through, I found ONE set of the alphabet puzzles that she had gotten. And Kaleb is loving them!

Kaleb got some mini playdough containers for Christmas and he loved trying to stack them. He also loved trying to eat the playdough (nothing new), but loves all the little toys that we have to stick in our playdough too.

Everyone got a little energy out playing musical chairs together. Which resulted in much crying every time the music was turned off.

And Kaleb and I had fun playing with some of our Little People and attempting to count – but apparently he just likes to listen and won’t count along anymore.

And the biggest hit of all this week was being able to play along on the wii Outdoor Challenge mat with the big kids. He needed a little help, but it was so much fun to watch him!

Don’t forget to head over to 1+1+1=1 for some more Tot School Posts! Have a great week!