Diligently Teaching: 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.