Tot School

(M is 35 months old)

We've been talking about patterns for a while now and M apparently thinks it's a line up of any kind. He made these "patterans" this week and was so proud of them:

It was so cute, he listed off the patterns to me like this - circle, square, circle, circle, star, square... and on and on until he was at the end. Evidently we need to work on the idea of repeating objects in order for it to be a real pattern. And don't you like how we had to hang his lacing beads up on the window tie-back? "For decoration" of course. :)



We did a little toothpick and styrofoam activity, pushing the toothpicks in and then putting beads on. I tried the whole pattern thing with him again, seeing if he could copy my pattern. He did, and then he added his own little touch:Then some pipe cleaners got in on the action. This activity kept him busy for quite a while:
We did a little squeezing-water-out-of-a-sponge-with-a-garlic-press activity (That's it's official name). I think I got this idea from The Wonder Years, but I'm not 100% sure on that.
He did his foam ABC puzzle. Hammering the letters in never gets old.We did a dinosaur matching game (file folder game found here):
And we lined up color cards by shade, lightest to darkest:
He did his name puzzle:
And he worked on this little wipe-off mat we found (dollar spot at Target, I love it!) - We picked a letter then I went through and named all the objects for him and he circled the ones that started with that letter's sound. He did great. And he actually circled things, which I didn't know he could do. Yay for fine moter skills! :)
He spent about an hour playing with play-doh, he was very into it!
He worked outside on his car. He's really into fixing things lately (pretend of course). :)
One day he had to have a Superman mask. He doesn't even know who Superman is, but he got a little Superman action figure at a garage sale and I told him a little bit about him. So we went online to see if there was a mask we could print out. No superman, but I found a cute site that has a lot of animal masks - all printable for free! He decided to be a frog! :)
That's my boy!

For more Tot School ideas, visit 1+1+1=1!

Ribbit. Have a beautiful day!

Open Ended Art - Yellow Collage

This is our first time participating in the open-ended art carnival going on here! I am excited because I think M's collage turned out pretty good! :) Of course I may have a little mama-bias going on too. ;)

I put some materials together, including a little basket with yellow pom-poms, some yellow felt pieces, yellow ribbon pieces, some green paper with stickers that he cut out earlier in the week, and a few feathers. I also put his scissors out with some yellow foam, tissue paper, and some yellow-ish scrapbook papers. I taped a piece of blue paper to the table with all the supplies:

Then I waited. M watched me set everything up and then he would occasionally go over and look at it, but he wasn't doing anything. I think he is used to me telling him it's art time and what we are going to do. I was hoping he would just climb up and start creating something.

Finally I said, "You can get up at the table and make a collage with those things if you want to." And he jumped up into the chair and got started right away.

I tried to keep quiet, and for a while I reconciled myself to the idea that he was going to have a piece of paper with 3 little yellow pom-poms and puddles of glue all over.

But I just couldn't stay quiet and eventually I said, "Ok, I think that's enough glue for now" in my happy-happy mommy voice, and I snatched the glue bottle away. :)

He cut up some of the foam and other papers and then he really started glueing stuff on. I was in another room when he came to tell me he was done. He was very excited. So was I when I saw the finished art:

How fun! I am loving this!

To see more open-ended art visit Teaching My Little BookWorm!

Have a beautiful day! :)