The Little Red Mailbox

 

Have you seen the adorable little mailboxes at Target’s Dollar Spot??  Well, our Target had them (out with Valentine’s Day items, the Monday before Christmas) and M insisted that he needed one very badly.  Now, I normally don’t just give in to him on every little thing, but they were awfully cute, and I thought he could play mailman with it. 

So, it’s turned into this very endearing routine between M and Daddy.  It’s sooooo adorable.  M asks for “mail” every evening and Daddy says, “Well… we’ll see…”, then later writes him a little note, which we slip into the mailbox when we check on the darling-sleeping-sweetness later on.  Sometimes there’s even a Curious George ring or some such trinket included. 

Now,  I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but Daddy is up at 5am every morning and M doesn’t see him before he leaves for work. 

So, lately, every morning I hear a little thud, pitter patter over to the dresser, then a sweet voice (well, sweet, depending on what the clock says) exclaiming  “The mail came!”  (He knows if the flag is up, there’s mail!)  Then a clink, clank, clunk as he opens the mailbox… then more pitter-pattering out the door and into my room for me to read him his note.  It’s so much fun and such a nice way to keep the two of them connected first thing in the morning. 

Sometimes M will stick a painting or a note of his own in the mailbox and put it on Daddy’s side of our bed for Daddy to discover when he comes home.  This is always very exciting as you can imagine. ;) 

The notes M writes always go something like this… “Dear Daddy, love Matthew.  Mommy and Daddy and Matthew.”  Goodness, I sure do love my boys!!  :)

Have a beautiful day! :)

Tot School – Dec. 27, 2009

M is 40 months old

Tot School was pretty much non-existent this past week, but we managed to get a few things in…
Snowflake matching:
I printed the snowflakes from here, cut them into cards and M tried matching them up in our pocket chart. He did pretty well with this considering some of them were pretty tricky.
No picture for this one, but I printed some snowman grid gameboards from here, and we took turns rolling a die, then putting that number of cotton balls on our game cards. We went top to bottom and left to right. Whoever filled their card first won.
M’s cousin S came over for the day on Tuesday and we made homemade playdough. I didn’t add any coloring (it was a little off-white due to the brownish vanilla I put in it), but we did add silver glitter and vanilla extract. Yum! And pretty! I set out a tray of goodies: There’s buttons, googley eyes, ribbons, pipecleaners, and various lids here.
And the kids had a great time making snowmen:
Aren’t they adorable? And if you’re wondering which child used the pipecleaners for super-long noses… well, that would be my child, hee hee. ;)
We also used up our green playdough that was getting a little old. We used cookie cutters, glass pebbles, colored pasta, buttons, and glitter glue to decorate them. M gave these to grandparents and godparents for Christmas.
On Christmas Eve we had about 8 inches of snow dumped on us. I grabbed a couple of buckets and M played (well over an hour) with real snow and his little cars on the kitchen floor.I’ve noticed that if I occupy him with this kind of thing, he is quite happy to play on his own as long as I’m sitting at the table, cooking, or just hanging out in the kitchen. We explored how snow melted into water and then we set it back outside. Saturday morning he remembered it and we brought it in and he played with the ice!
I hope you are all having a Merry Christmas (remember, Christmas has just begun - it lasts for 12 days!!!). :)
For more tot school, go here!

Tot School, Christmas-style – Dec. 20, 2009

**M is 39 Months Old**

This post will be some of the Christmas-themed activities we’ve done in the past couple of weeks. We’ve had a productive, relaxed, insightful, and just plain fun time on my “blog-break” (more about that in future posts).

First, this is how I’ve been finding M first thing many mornings:(sorry for the blurry photo… these old hands of mine aren’t very steady before my coffee, heh) – he’s been sitting in front of the tree, all lit up in the dark, playing with toys so sweetly and quietly. I think he is really soaking up the magic of Christmas and those Christmas lights – remember how special they were when we were children? :) I’m loving this stage with him.

Music:
We have been singing and making music quite often now that his instruments and song book are out and accessible all the time: (Don’t let the blank look on his face fool you, he really does LOVE doing this!)

Fine Motor Skills:
This was a great post from Allie at No Time for Flashcards. However, I really didn’t feel like making one on my own so I gave M some yarn (instead of wire) and some felt I had cut into squares and cut a slit into the middle of – M strung the felt pieces onto the yarn, then we formed it into a wreath and hung it on the tree:
I made these fun rubbing plates using cardboard from a cereal box:I used a cookie cutter to trace the tree, star, and angel and free-hand drew the snowflake. Then I went over the drawings with hot glue. M used them with newsprint and crayons: This was a little tough for him because the paper slid around quite a bit. Here are the best samples of what he did: I plan to make more of these for other holidays – they were fun and really held his interest. He must’ve done dozens of these in the past two weeks.

Sensory:
I filled a large pan with “pretend snow” (shaving cream) one day and M played in it with his little cars for TWO HOURS. I am not kidding. TWO HOURS. There was a mess to clean up, which took me a good 15 minutes. But it was worth it for TWO HOURS of him being involved and interested in something. :)He asked for it again another day and played with it for 20 minutes, sigh. (ugh, look at that kitchen floor. So old and ugly. If anyone wants to give me a Christmas present, a new kitchen floor would be perfect. :) )

Math Skills:
M has really taken off with his understanding of patterns recently. He is really getting it. We did our pattern Christmas lights again, this time in an ABCABC pattern. At first he insisted that it could only be red, green, red, green, etc. Then I talked to him about how we sometimes play games with Daddy and we each take a turn, even though there are three of us. We ended up naming the green lights M, the red lights Daddy, and the blue lights Mommy, then strung them up – he really got it! At the end we were calling them by their colors again and he understood perfectly. We even did some AABB patterning and he picked up on that too! Yay!!

We did a quick counting game with some cardstock Christmas trees and pom poms. I drew little spots for 30 pom poms to go on each tree, then we simply took turn rolling the number cube and putting that many pom pom “ornaments” on our trees to decorate them. The first one to have all the spaces filled won.
I found some Christmas pattern mats here, and printed them in black and white. M was really into this, so I went back and printed a lot of the non-Christmas ones from the same site. The fact that they were black and white instead of colored like the ones we normally use provided just the right amount of challenge to M to make it interesting. He enjoyed “coloring” them with the pattern blocks.

Literacy:
M practiced spelling his name with this ornament stringing activity I made for him. You can read more about that here.
Religion:
We’ve really been enjoying our Jesse Tree stories every evening. I switched to a green felt Christmas tree to see if M would actually hang the ornaments on the tree. He has put some on the tree, but some are still in the “air” too. Such a silly boy sometimes. :) He has really learned a lot from this project, and is always so excited when it is Jesse Tree time!

Nature Center Time:
We are enjoying our Nature Center classes so much, and they just keep getting better and better. I’ve decided to start adding these into our Tot School posts so we’ll be able to remember how much fun we’ve had!

A couple of weeks ago we talked about what animals do when it snows. Did you know weasels turn white (except for the tips of their tails, which turn black) in winter? Or that frogs dig down deep into the mud and turn into frog ice cubes? :) The kids had a snowball fight inside with cotton balls, made candy cane animals,

(It’s a reindeer!)

and went ice-skating on wax paper:M had a ball. We are out of wax paper or we’d be doing this every day. I even tried it and it was fun for me too!

The next week “Nature Santa” visited and read a story about Christmas trees in the forest to the kids:
His glasses were fogged up here because he had just come in from a zero degree day.

M got to make bird feeders with bagels and seeds, and one with fruit loops on a pipecleaner: These are hanging in our yard waiting for the hungry animals to discover them.

We even got to eat a pancake breakfast with Santa! M had the time of his life until….
it came time to actually meet Santa and talk to him: He was suddenly very shy and completely forgot to say all the things he had planned on saying. :) It’s ok though because Mommy has Santa’s phone number and will be giving him a call to let him know what M would like. ;)

For more Tot School posts go here.

Have a beautiful Christmas with your families! :)

Tot School – December 6, 2009

M is 39 months old

 

This was a pretty easy and fun week for us.  I filled M’s shelves up with some Christmas-themed file folder games I made last year, a new puzzle, his ABC collage pages, and a couple of fun clothespin math activities.  We also had no less than 3 play dates and a day at our local community center’s creative play area.  And a big dinner at the in-laws to finish the week out.  Whew.  The busy season has begun I guess. :)

 

ABC Activities:

M can not get enough of cut and paste pages lately.  He is going through 2 letters per week in his ABC book and we’ll soon be done with the whole alphabet at this rate.  He always asks for his “cutting pages” first; I think he loves that he can do it completely on his own and has the routine down.  However, I’m not sure he’s really learning much about letter sounds from this activity, except when we take his book down and “read” it.  I’m thinking of starting up the letter lapbooks again after we finish our ABC book with the collages, because he really seemed to soak in a lot with the lapbook activities.   He’s still not interested in doing any letter crafts, so I’ll wait a while before trying that with him again.  Anyway… here are the collage pages he’s done in the past two weeks:

He also spent some time looking at the ABC Book and doing the tracing pages: See that tripod grasp?  He’s really come a long way with this lately.  I showed him how “real artists” hold their paintbrushes and told him it’s important to make those muscles really, really strong, and he totally got into it.  He always wants me to help him hold the paintbrush the right way and it’s carried over to activities like this!

 

We matched the capital letters on a gingerbread file folder game from here.  Next week this will be out again and we’ll match “baby” letters to the “mama” letters. When I made this I put magnets on the back of the letters and we do one half of the alphabet at a time on a cookie sheet.  We also take turns (I made a lot of mistakes that he had to correct ;) ), which makes it more fun and game-like for him.  He tells me a letter to find and then I have to find it and put it on the right spot, then I do the same for him.  If he is having trouble, it’s easy to tell him the color of the circle he needs, as a little help.

 

Counting

We played this fun clothespin counting game with Christmas tags, ribbons, and foam stickers:

And we counted lots of things throughout the week in our everyday normal routine.  He is really doing well with counting and I love seeing him light up when he really “gets” something!

 

Patterns

We played another file folder game from here.  In this one M had to match patterns to create mittens: The right side piece of each mitten attaches with velcro.  He did great with this, which I knew he would (he was able to do it last year), but I added in a step where he had to describe the design to me - “a green rectangle above a blue circle” – as he found each mitten to match.

 

We also played a mitten matching game from the November issue of our High Five magazine.  Each mitten has a multi-colored design on it.  We played this Memory-style with the cards face down:

 

And we made ABAB patterns with some cardstock Christmas lights I made, using clothespins and yarn to string them up:

 

Colors

M did some color mixing with water in jars: He’s been asking to make colored ice cubes lately, which was something we did quite often over the summer.  He wants to use them in his bath.  Seriously, this kid comes up with some funny (but fun!) ideas sometimes.  So I decided to add a color mixing lesson in.  He loves using pipettes, so this is always fun.   Then he had fun dripping the water onto paper towels:

 

We did another file folder game.  This one was from here (also made last year).  I made the stockings into pockets and M loved fitting the candy canes into the matching stocking. 

 

Fine Motor Skills

Several of the above activities involved the use of fine motor skills (almost all of them, actually), but I also surprised M with a new (Dollar Tree) Mickey Mouse Puzzle.  He’s been putting his 24 piece floor puzzle together with no problem lately, so I wanted to see how he’d do with a 25 piece small puzzle.  He had it done in no time – all by himself!  He knew to look for pieces that had a little bit of whatever image he was looking for, and didn’t need any help at all.  I’ve asked for some puzzles for him for Christmas from relatives, and I’m interested to see how he does with a 50 piece one.  Needless to say I have bought out all the 25 piece ones at Dollar Tree. :) 

 

Music

We sang a lot this week and played instruments.  I have a binder of songs that I’ve put together for M and he has a small bin of instruments.  It’s more noise than anything, but it’s a lot of fun and he loves it.  There are no pics; I’ll have to do a separate post about it sometime!

M received a guitar for his 3rd birthday and this is how he likes to play it: Hee hee.   He asked me to get it for him a lot this week, and loves experimenting with the different sounds he can make with it.  We also listened to a lot of Christmas music – grown up and kid kinds. ;)  I have to be diligent about playing cds in our home because since he was born I haven’t listened to much music.  We never listen to the radio and I feel like I am always craving peace and quiet.  It’s been nice to have music back in our day, it can do so much to brighten our moods!

Creative Play

M has been dying to build a maze lately, but wanted help.  So this is what we did Friday morning:

He’s helping the Christmas Angel from his nativity set find her way out here. :)

I hope you all had wonderful weeks with your tots!  Go here to see more tot school posts!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Tot School – November 29, 2009

 

This was a pretty light week for us… and we enjoyed it!  We didn’t try to do too much, and just had fun.

Fine Motor Skills

M cut strips of green and red paper with the “zig zag” scissors, then we made a chain of loops and used stickers to close them up: He was very interested in this activity, and caught on to the fact that we were making a pattern.  This was a real breakthrough because in the past he hasn’t gotten the whole *pattern* idea.  I expected lightbulbs to appear over his head and bells to ring, but he just calmly said, “it’s a pattern, we need green next.”  Ha ha, this kid always amazes me and makes me laugh. :)

He spent a LOT of time popping the tiny bubbles on this bubble wrap, such a great activity for strengthening those little fingers:

 

He put pipe cleaner “branches” into the holes of a salt shaker, then added fall colored leaves (pony beads).  He loved this, and thought it was hilarious to call them branches and leaves.  We got this idea from the Schafer Family blog.

 

And laced up some Autumn themed lacing cards:

 

Sorting

M used tongs to sort fruit and vegetables from his supply of pretend food:

And we sorted truck cutouts onto a color wheel:

Math Skills

We played “store” with M’s pretend food and a cup of pennies.  We both had so much fun with this and M had a smile on his face the whole time.  I don’t know why we haven’t done this sooner.  He told me later in the day, “I had fun playing store with you, Mommy!” :)  We set up his fruit and veggies on the loveseat and he picked the items he wanted and I told him the price.  It was perfect for counting practice, and when he ran out of money we had a short conversation about why we can’t always have everything we want.  This great idea came from Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns!

 

Sensory

We played a sensory game with a few matching pairs of items and a small pillowcase.  One of each pair went into a small container and the other went into the pillowcase.  M had to pick an item from the plastic container, then try to find the matching item in the pillowcase using his sense of touch only. I held the bag for him, but he was on his own here just so I could take a picture. :)  He did great with this and had so much fun we did it again right away.  Here are the items we used: pennies, pinecones, wooden blocks, megablocks, clothespins, glass pebbles, pipecleaners wound into a circle, craft leaves, and spoons.

 

Thanksgiving

Here’s a picture of our finished Thanksgiving tree:

We had so much fun with this and we will definitely be doing it again.  What a great way to list our blessings and what we are thankful for.

We went to our Nature Center again for our weekly class and while there the kids drew pictures of what they are thankful for.  Here’s M’s: Apples were first on his list, you can see it in the middle.  Other things were his family, building a snowman, and going sledding when it snows.  He had a great time scribbling… I was surprised because he has not shown that much interest in crayons at home.  At the nature center he was still coloring when all the other kids were done!

I printed a turkey out from here, and M painted it with his watercolors, then cut the tail feathers apart:

 

Imagination

M has a tiny teddy bear that he’s been calling “baby” lately.  (He wants us to have a baby so badly!)  He made a little bed and “baby” slept in it: Then “baby” woke up and wanted to be rocked (someone else wakes up and likes to be rocked sometimes too). What a great daddy!! :)  (No, that isn’t quite the same way I rock M!)

For more Tot School posts, go here.

Have a beautiful week! :)