The Art Box – January 25, 2010

Several recent posts from Adventures in Mommydom inspired me to put our old playdough in M’s Art Box this week.  (By “old”, I mean it was made a couple of months ago and has been mixed with enough other colors of playdough that it’s starting to look not-so-pretty.  Besides, I’m itching to cook up some Valentine playdough sometime soon!)  With it I included a little divided container with googley eyes, buttons, sea shells, beads, and glass mosaic pieces.   I also included some pipecleaners. 

M was extremely excited about this!Here’s what he made:

Aren’t they cute, especially the last one??  He had a ton of fun with this.  So now I know exactly what to do with the playdough when it’s time to make a new batch!   This will definitely be a somewhat regular addition to M’s box.

He’s also been itching to paint craft sticks ever since this.  So… he painted craft sticks.  I was hoping he had some crafty plan for them, but nope.  Just painted them all orange. :)

I also put a roll of electrical tape in the art box.  M saw it and knew exactly what it was for.  We’ve only done this once before (here), but it’s been hanging on the wall ever since and from time to time he has asked to do the “tape painting” again, so I knew he’d be interested.  I let him cut the pieces of tape himself and he put them wherever he wanted, then began painting (first with do-a-dots, then with tempera). I love how it turned out:He said it was a “deep, dark forest” and then “sunshine”.  We had recently read We’re Going on a Bear Hunt.  I think this may be where he got the deep, dark forest idea.  He loved taking the tape off!!

He also painted this pretty little picture, which alas, came with no cute story.  I still like it. ;)

Join in and link up your kid-art below!  It’s so much fun to see what they do on their own!

Have a beautiful day! :)

 

Tot School – Jan. 24, 2010

M is 40 months old.

This was a pretty light week for Tot School. I had quite a bit planned and ready to go, but M spent a large amount of time each day in pretend play and was so happily amusing himself, I just let him do his own thing. I expected him to ask to “do school”, but this really only happened on Monday while I was busy (of course!) with housework.

So… perhaps we are entering into a more involved creative play phase? I eavesdropped as much as I could and heard some pretty interesting and exciting things going on. :) It’s always a little stunning to me to realize that my little baby is a real boy and can think on his own and make up stories and well, who knows what else! Am I the only one feeling a bit of bewilderment at this sort of thing??

Anyway, enough rambling. M did his (independent) shelf activities while I cleaned Monday afternoon, and there are almost no action shots of these. Sorry, I know those are always more fun!

Math Skills:

M practiced his size sequencing skills with Scrambler (from Bob the Builder):

And with baseballs too:

Visual Discrimination:

I never know if this sort of thing is a math activity or what… anyway, I’ll just put it in it’s own little category for now. M did these Curious George Shadow Match cards:There’s more than just these, but for simplicity’s sake I only photographed a few. I thought these would be fun, but M was not interested. I will bring them back out some time soon because *I* think they are fun! Maybe he’ll change his mind next time around. :)

Literacy Skills:

M did two “cutting pages”, as he calls them, of the letters M and K. I can’t stress how much he LOVES to do these; they are always the very first thing he heads for. (See the gross brown stuff? That’s what happens when you leave your kid alone with a purple glue stick and he uses the entire thing on one page.)

Music:

We have been singing and playing our instruments a lot and listening to some cds. If anyone has any children’s music recommendations, I’d love to hear them! We learned a fabulous and cute new robot song. Listen to it here!

Fine Motor Skills:

M pulled out all of these puzzles on his own one day and did every single one of them. There were 12 little wooden puzzles in all:

On one of his shelves I put out a foam tray (this was originally a mushroom container at the grocery store), and a plastic needle with yarn. He poked the needle through the foam wherever he wanted and then pulled the long length of yarn through. He had so much fun with this and came to show me his “design” several times: I have to say this was definitely one of the hits of the week!

I also set out a new Dollar Tree 25 piece puzzle for him. He did this completely on his own the first time with no help. :) He’s definitely a puzzle boy. He was so proud of himself and said, “I just kept looking at the picture to see what piece I needed!”

His marble track came out and he put it together with only a little mama-direction. He loves this and it’s always fun.

A wonderful friend sent M this fantastic little peg board: Can you believe how cute it is?!? I was so excited when I saw it and so was M when he saw it waiting for him the next day. He made designs and rows of patterns, and ran to show me each one. :) This is a sign that he really, really likes something. And, I just realized that marbles sit perfectly on top of these little pegs, so I will be heading to the dollar store very, very soon. ;)

Creative Play / Large Motor Activities:

M was finally able to go outside and PLAY! Yay!

Early in the week we had some beautiful weather – it felt like a little bit of spring. :) In Minnesota that means it hit 32 degrees. ;) It lifted everyone’s spirits a little bit! M bundled up and went out… I wish I could’ve captured more of this on my camera, but I wasn’t able to get many good pictures. Ah well. Here you can see he is trying desperately to ride his bike on the small portion of our patio that has been shoveled: It didn’t quite work, but then he found a little ride on toy and “snowplowed” for a while. He then proceeded to lie on his tummy on the deep snow farther back in our yard, and play with his little cars and trucks for close to an hour. I even had our windows open to let in a little fresh air. :)

We made Monkey Bread on Wednesday. Yum, yum!

He really loves to bake with me and I need to do more of this kind of thing with him.

Life School:

We have had a challenging couple of weeks lately with M’s behavior. However, things are looking up and he has acquired some new freedoms and been given some new responsibilities. After I-don’t-know-how-many-months of trying to teach him to put one thing away before getting something new out it seems to have really sunk in! He has been so great about this and usually puts toys and activities away on his own without being asked. It’s absolutely heavenly! :) Of course there are always a few exceptions because he will need more than one thing in his play quite often… but I’m telling you, the bedtime clean up has gotten so much easier and quicker. Normally we only have 3 or 4 things to put away! Whoo-hoo! Because it used to be 20!

He’s also started making his own peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and he’s allowed to use the microwave to cook his own chicken nuggets. :) This is all under very close supervision you understand. But still, he’s doing great and the more we work at making it fun for him to be a big boy, the better his behavior has gotten.

For more Tot School posts, check it out here!

Have a beautiful day! :)