Creation Day 4, Sun, Moon, and Stars, and Yellow

The Objectives
Bible Theme: God Made the World Around Me
Lesson: Sun, Moon, and Stars (creation day 4)
Memory verse: Genesis 1:1
Color: Yellow
Shape: Circle
Number: 1-2
Letter: A-G

Well, I figured that since I took forever to get my last post up that I'd put up some stuff we've been working on as we do it.  I suspect that this "week" is going to go longer than a week like the last ones have!  Once again, I feel like I'm not very organized and so I've actually been rolling out the new theme slowly!  I just love when he gets up from his nap and discovers that his trays have been changed!  His eyes light up and he runs straight to them!  So far these have been a big hit and here I thought, "eh, gotta get something new out".  

Got out the yellow playdoh for the little guy.  He enjoyed playing and creating while he watched some Veggie Tales.  

I usually start out with something simple, playdoh.  Then based on how he's doing with that item I'll add more things.  When I see he's losing interest or I think of something else that may be fun to add then I'll start adding more things.  Here, I decided to add some jewels in the colors that we've been working on.  I tried to get small, medium, and large versions of the gems in the chance that I would be able to extend his learning process.  Playdoh is a toss up for this little one, sometimes he absolutely loves it and can play forever, other times, it's only an activity that lasts several minutes, "All done!!"

I love this marker board.  It's been so useful!  I've been putting his creation day magnets here but once I added day four it got pretty crowded.  Those got moved to the dish washer door.  I decided to draw a sun, moon, and stars and label them.  By the door, I placed a small tin bucket with an eraser and his orange and yellow white board markers.  He loves being able to color here and tries to trace over the drawings!

This was one of those, "eh, I'll throw this one out there" trays.  We got a beach bucket that had  this as a lid and these shapes as well.  The bucket got lost at the beach but I still wanted him to be able to play with the shapes.  He's had a shape sorter for a long time and lost interest with that one so I was doubtful that he'd be interested in this one.  Surprisingly, he really liked this tray!!  This has been one of the first trays that he'll go to!  

I have been looking for some tongs for him to use for a LONG time!!!  I was so happy and excited when I found these ones!!  Unfortunately I stepped on them and they're broken!!  Boo!!  I knew I should have purchased a few of them!!  Here I used yellow gems in the shape of suns.   I had the gems in a little hamburger basket tray but they were really difficult to grasp with the tongs or the spoon (even for me).  It was much easier once I put them in the tin bucket.  Initially, he liked using the tongs, but I've seen him using the spoon more often.  However, now that my big feet squished the tongs, I guess it doesn't matter!  lol!  

Creation Day 3, Plants, and Blue (25 mos)

The Objectives
Bible Theme: God Made the World Around Me
Lesson: Plants (creation day 3)
Memory verse: Genesis 1:1
Color: Blue
Shape: line
Number: 1
Letter: A-G

The Recap
Looks like Week 2 is going to turn into another 2 weeker for us.  It's more because of my issues rather than Jesse just loving the trays so much that I just HAD to extend the lessons.  Of course, I had to be all unorganized and not have ALL of the stuff ready in time for Week 2 to start, but I suppose that's okay.  I've had some high expectations for this week but I'm not sure if the tot is enjoying it as much as I'd hoped!  One of the great things about teaching my toddler is seeing him extend an activity in a way I never thought of or simply creating different uses for the trays than I'd intended.  It's so neat to see his creativity and imagination shine as he explores!

This is his art work for his Creation book.  I was racking my brains on how I could get my 2 year old to have a page to represent land and plants.  I know it's all about the process, but I really wanted him to have a page that went with the theme of the book.  So I decided to get some patterned scrapbook paper and arrange shape foam stickers to look like flowers.  My goal was to get him to paint over the entire paper with a light blue paint (for the sky) and then I was going to peel off the stickers.  I used some masking tape for stem.  

Here he is working on day 4, where God created the land and the plants.  He enjoyed using his roller brush and his old plastic baby spoon to paint!  I tried to make this a 2 day project with the hopes that he would paint more of the paper but on day 2 he tossed the paint around a bit and was done!  

Playing on the iPad.  He's loving the Montessori Numbers App and the Wee Sing & Learn ABC App!  

He was interested in this tray for a couple of days.  Soon the paper was off the tray and he was just playing with the letters but he got the idea of it right away!

I thought these bugs would go great with a plant theme.   I ended up just tossing this tray together.  I thought he'd be more interested in the bugs and try to build stuff.  Nope!  Instead he decided to pretend the blocks were food and brought me more and more food to eat!  After we put them all on the floor and I showed him how to make squares out of the triangles.  We counted shapes too, which he enjoyed.  I love how he can make things infinitely more interesting than I ever intended!

He decided to make more food (pizza) after he was done counting
.

I have been wanting to do this tray for awhile now!!  I just thought he would love it!  I couldn't bring myself to buy a block of foam though!  I know it's not that expensive, but come on...you can get this stuff free in packaging!!  Well, we finally got something that had the foam block in it and I was super excited!!  Here I used red flowers as well for a bit of review.

He really wasn't too interested in this activity at first.  He gave it a few tries and was done.  But as I left the tray out, I noticed he'd run over to it from time to time and play with it more and more.  

He loves his bumble bee magnifying glass!  

Here's another one that I was really excited about!  I debated and debated on what to use as the base for this sensory bin!  We just had melt down here and there were TONs of small rocks on our block (used instead of salt to help melt the snow).  The neighbors had swept them into nice neat piles, so Jesse and I worked as the "clean up crew" to go gather the rocks.  It was kind of a pain because I wanted to rinse them out before I let him play in them.  We don't have a hose so I had to do this in our tub!  Yuck!  Thankfully, I did rinse them out though because not only were they really gross, but I found an old rusty nail in there too!  

This was a pretty neat learning experience for him.  He decided to start putting rocks inside the tupperware.  The lid has a small hole in it and he had to figure out which rocks could fit and which couldn't.  Nice opportunity to practice vocabulary words "big" and "small"!  

Here's another activity I was really excited about trying - even if it did take forever to put together!!  I've seen some "I spy" sensory bins around the interwebs and had to give it a try!!  

He has loved this activity!  He was able to match them all up and really enjoyed getting up and moving around to get the objects matched up to the pictures.  It ended up being a great open ended activity as well!  When he would get tired of matching the objects or found one he really liked, he'd stop matching and then use his imagination to play with the objects!  The Ronald Mc Donald toy was a favorite - he likes pretending that one is a phone and will push "buttons" while naming the "numbers" he's dialing!  The toy truck was also a favorite!  I plan on doing this for his next color too!  

All about Creation, Red, and Circles (25mos)

Starting up again:
Wow!!  It's been a long time since I've posted an update on Jesse's tot school.  While I haven't posted anything here in a while, Jesse and I have been busy learning - I've yet to find an efficient way to put a post up for all to see.  We took a long break over the winter and just started back up last month!

A new path:
Once I decided to start Tot School back up, I decided to go a different route.  I was primarily doing the printables from 1+1+1=1 (which are amazing).  I think he just wasn't ready to do a lot of the matching stuff and therefore was not very interested.  So after doing some searching, I found another amazing program (www.ABCJesusLovesMe.com) that is centered around God and the bible!  Plus it's FREE - gotta love that - with full lesson plans and great ideas for starting points.  I plan on integrating other things into this program as I go along as well.

Alright, so we just finished Week 1 of the 2 year old curriculum and Jesse had a blast (we took longer than a week but who cares)!  I have to say one thing that I'm not too fond of with this new program is that it doesn't really put a large focus on the alphabet, however, Jesse is really good at this and is able to identify many of the letters already.

The Objectives
Bible Theme: God Made the World Around Me
Lesson: Day, Night, Water, Sky (creation days 1-2)
Memory verse: Genesis 1:1
Color: Red
Shape: circle
Number: 1
Letter: A-G

Week 1 Recap:

Happily painting with white tempura paint using a sponge brush and sponge roller.  

This is page 1 of his Creation Book.  He is showing how God created day and night .  

Focusing on red, I decided to whip up some red "paint" for bath time.  I used shaving cream and red food coloring.  I also made some red "sand" using baking soda, water, and red food coloring on another night.  He loved painting everything red and then watching the water turn red.  

Jesse made the attempt to stay within the circle and then wanted to paint over the word "Circle" and the fine print at the bottom

This is page 2 of his Creation Book.  I mixed blue tempura paint, shaving cream, and white glue for the water and then poured some glue at the top where Jesse could glue some cotton balls for the clouds.  He enjoyed layering the blue mixture in thick piles on his paper but wasn't very interested in cotton balls.  He also did NOT want to get his hands in the paint mixture.

Play dough has been the biggest hit this time around.  I pulled out all of my Valentine's Day themed stuff (because it was red) and let him mix and add it all to his "cookie".  I think he spent about 45 minutes happily creating on this morning!

Our duplo tray was a huge hit and quickly became a bath time activity.  I  only included a small handful in a metal bowl and used only red to go with out color of the week  

I found some awesome wooden beads and I thought Jesse could try to thread the pipe cleaners .  I loved that he had his own ideas and decided to put the beads in the container one by one.  He tried to do the lacing card but is still not very interested in it.  Later on, I added some red silk flowers to this tray thinking he could put them in the container but he just wanted to smell them.  

Jesse caught on to this one quickly.  He knew right away to put the smaller red circles on the paper.  The larger foam circles he just didn't know what to do with those.  My intention was that he would match the ones in the tin to the ones on the tray.  He was more interested in turning the tin into a phone.  I tried to put some sorting cups with the foam circles to match the sizes up and he still was not interested.  The foam circles are now moving to the bath tub to become "bath stickers".

I totally rearranged his area by taking a bunch of his stuff and stashing it in our room.  Things are more simple and more organized.  It has made cleaning up much easier for him and he's quickly caught on that everything has a place.  

• The circle printable can be found at  www.itsybitsylearners.com (Learning My Shapes)
• The apple lacing card can be found at http://www.1plus1plus1equals1.com/TotSchoolPrintables.html

Devotionals with toddlers

One of my most important goals with my little guy is to teach him about Jesus and our faith!  I want him to know the Lord, that He loves us, died for our sins, wants a personal relationship with us.  The big question now is HOW do you go about teaching a 15 month old these things?  Well, besides us teaching him to pray with our daily prayers and our mealtime prayers, I wanted to try doing some kind of devotional with Jesse.  After looking online for some kind of devotional book geared for little, little guys, I drew a blank!  I found nothing that I really liked or felt led to use.

Now enter in awesome book purchased from Target...

The DH and I were at Target and came across this very precious bedtime prayer board book

This sweet book is essentially a devotional and just what I was looking for.  Each devotion has a corresponding bible verse and a little prayer.  The devotions are simple and rhyming and there are some adorable illustrations on each page.  

Ok, now the question became "how to I implement the devotions with my son - besides just reading it like a regular book?"

Here is how we're making it work so far...

• We are focusing on a devotional for at least a week
• I turned the rhyming devotion into a song
• I'm teaching my son American Sign Language (ASL), so I learned several signs from each line and sign and sing the devotion
• I wrote the devotional with dry erase marker on an 8x10 empty picture frame (mainly for myself so I could memorize the devotion without referring to the book) and hung it in a high traffic area (our dining room).  

This is what my picture frame devotional looks like so far.  I want to either put some neutral decorative paper in the frame or even print up the devotional with some of my scrapbook software.  I've even considered scanning the devotional from the book and printing it out so that it has the cute illustrations in my frame.  But for now, this works and allows me to reference the devotional frequently with my son.  I put the short prayer from the book in a different color so that I can easily see it and so it breaks up the devotional and the song.  I put a song that I wanted to teach Jesse on there at the bottom and we usually sing that after we sing the devotional.  

So, "how is the devotional working so far?" you may ask...

Well, using the signs (ASL) really helped me memorize the devotional and I loved that the devotional I chose to start with had a few signs we already were practicing.  I've noticed that when I sing the devotional, Jesse tries to sign along with me and hums along.  I've also been singing it when Jesse is crying or upset (because the devotional is about how God will comfort you when you're sad) and it's worked as a nice distraction and an applicable lesson!  In all, I'd say it's working wonderfully and I plan on continuing my Toddler Devotionals!!  

Ice Cube Sensory Tub

(15 Months)
(Sensory Motor Skills- Children use their senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch, to guide and integrate their interactions)

I recently had an opportunity to try out another sensory tub (June 15, 2012).  I've been waiting for a nice sunny day to do some water sensory with the little guy but it's just been cloudy and rainy and just plain cold!  I decided that I didn't want to wait any longer and planned for some fun in the bathtub!

So what was in the sensory tub??  I got the ice cube tray ready poured water into it and put some frozen fruit in a few spots and then filled a few with some food coloring.  Inside the bin (in my case a large plastic drawer) I put some water, large spoons, and measuring cups.

To prep the bathroom, I had to put a floor heater on the counter to make sure the room was warm enough considering that the little guy was playing with ice.  I think I should have used colder water in the bin though because the ice melted pretty quickly.  (quick question...why did I all of a sudden start interchanging "tub" and "bin"?? Who knows).  As you can see he had a blast and of course had to eat ALL of the fruit.  I didn't put many colored ice cubes in the water and only used blue and yellow ice cubes, hence the slightly green tinged water in the tub.

Toddler Time - Cornmeal Sensory Bin

(14.5 Months)
(Sensory Motor Skills- Children use their senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch, to guide and integrate their interactions)

I tried my hand at a sensory bin awhile ago.  It wasn't the huge success that I had thought it'd be but my little guy did enjoy it.

We are on a budget, so I knew I couldn't go out and buy a bunch of stuff.  I had to be resourceful and use things that were actually around the house.  We have some Tupperware drawers that weren't really being used so I decided that would be what I placed the sensory stuff in.  We also had 2 boxes of cornmeal and I just could not see us using them both up any time soon!

Jesse hasn't played in sand yet and he also puts everything in his mouth still so I really wanted to create something that if swallowed wouldn't be a big deal.  The cornmeal was perfect for this and I also decided to put some raisins and uncooked rice in the batch as well.  To make it more interesting I threw in a few toys and some measuring spoons.

I knew I didn't have enough cornmeal to fill the bottom of that Tupperware drawer so I had to put the mixture in a smaller container and just used the drawer to try to contain the mess.  

I blocked off the kitchen and let him go at it.  At first he didn't quite know what to do and wasn't really interested.  I ended up giving him the measuring cups and spoons after a few minutes at which point began the real fun!  Soon corn meal was all over him and all over me, but what mattered was he was having fun and getting some practice scooping things up with the spoons!  

I only let him use this a couple times afterwards.  He was pretty much over the activity, as was I!  Next time I think I would leave out the raisins and the rice.  Surprisingly, he never tried to eat any of bin contents!!  

Toddler Time - Mega Blocks

(14.5 Months)

So I know that my son is only 14.5 months, but he is very eager to learn new things and has been catching on to things so quickly!!  I've been doing some research online and found a lot of parents "schooling" their little ones during what has been coined "toddler time".  Toddler Time is simply special time set aside each day to focus on the toddler.  During this focused time, the toddler is exposed to early learning skills through fun play.

I know I try to make every situation a learning situation but today I decided to intentionally set aside some "toddler time" and try to document it and take some notes on the activity.

I started out with something simple: Fine Motor Skills (playing with mega blocks)

I decided to put down a small blanket to define the play space rather than him having legos scattered all throughout the house.  And unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of him during the actual play time.  

I sorted the legos by color and allowed him to play.  My intent was for him to build, stack, or line up the legos.  He wasn't very interested in this however!  He did end up picking up different colored blocks and mixing up the piles.  I've been teaching him the American Sign Language (ASL) signs for the different colors and shapes so I made sure to say the color and perform the sign for the color of the block that he grabbed.  About halfway through our playtime I noticed that he was starting to "sign" the colors as well (I consider it to be kind of like baby talk.  He's not actually doing a sign for a color yet, he's simply moving his hands in the attempt to sign).  He also had fun placing blocks inside the bag.  I took that opportunity say things like, "that's right, the yellow block is INSIDE the bag" or "there are now 2 blocks inside the bag and the rest of the blocks are OUTSIDE of the bag".  

He did pretty well staying on the blanket and I did have to remind him that the mega blocks needed to stay on the blanket.  I did this by redirecting him towards the blanket if he took a lego somewhere else in the living room.  We ended the activity once I noticed him becoming more interested in his books.