Tot School- Christmas Activities Week 2

This was a fun week of Tot School.  Little Guy is starting to get a little more about Christmas and it is such a fun time!  Little Guy is 29 months old.

This weeks Tot trays begin with a puzzle from Gift of Curiosity.  Little Guy had been getting frustrated with 9 piece puzzles made of paper, but I thought we would give this one a try since it was only 4 pieces.  It was not too bad.  He did not get as frustrated, although I can tell he would prefer to always use "real" puzzles.

This is the last piece.

I pulled out the painted wheels that I had used in fall tot school for Little Guy to make a snake.  In keeping with a Christmas theme, I only got out the red and green wheels.  Little Guy enjoyed this activity again.

Walking his snake.

Next was the shadow match from the reindeer pack at Royal Baloo.  He seemed to enjoy this one, and we had a great time talking about the different objects and people.

Here's Mrs. Claus.

We did another sort this week, from the Christmas pack at Gift of Curiosity.  This sort involved sorting ornaments and presents.  We did not have many presents under our tree yet, so this on involved discussion on that.

This one is an ornament.

Of course, we had some cutting practice!  This was actually 2 tot trays.  One was simply cutting practice from the Christmas pack at Gift of Curiosity and from Christmas themed packs at 3 Dinosaurs.  The other was cutting practice then gluing the pieces into a pattern.  The cutting pages from the reindeer pack at Royal Baloo had all the same items across the strip, which made it great for patterning practice.  At this point in time, Little Guy is not doing patterning on his own, but I am modeling how to do AB patterns with him.

Recognize our wreath materials?  This is another activity that we did in fall tot school, but revised for Christmas.  I put out Christmas ribbons to make a new wreath.  I also added a bell to the wreath once Little Guy was done weaving.

Our beautiful Christmas wreath!

This last activity was by far Little Guy's favorite!  I gave him a Parmesan cheese container that had a lid with one big hole on one half and 3 little holes on the other half.  Little Guy had 5 big pom-poms and 5 little pom-poms (in Christmas colors, of course).  He had to push the pom-poms into the bottle through the hole that matched their size.  He LOVED this!  He chose this activity to do do nearly everyday, and would do it multiple times in a row!

This one goes in this side!

I hope you are enjoying Christmas themed Tot school as much as we are!  Next week will be our last week of Christmas themed activities!

What do you do all day?

What do you do all day?  This question is posed to me often now as a stay at home mom.  I get it especially from former colleagues who work all day.  So here goes!

We still get up early.  Daddy gets up around 6, and I try to get up around then.  He likes to see Little Guy in the morning before heading off to work, so Little Guy is up for the day around 6:45.  We get dressed and head downstairs for breakfast.  After we finish breakfast, we do Tot School.  I try to have about an hour for this everyday.  After Tot School, we get ready and head out!  Once we are out of the house, we are usually gone until lunchtime.

All loaded up in my car seat!

This is what we we do:

Two days a week we head to Stroller Strides for a great workout for mama and then playtime for Little Guy.  (If you have not heard of Stroller Strides, you should check it out! It is such a great workout for me and Little Guy is content in his stroller for the hour it takes. Plus we get to meet other mamas and kids.) One day we go to story time at the library, and one day we head to church for a bible study.  This leaves one morning a week with no set plans. We fit the grocery story, stops at the playground, other errands, and play times with friends around our plans! That means we stay pretty busy every morning!

Ready for Stroller Strides!

Little Guy still takes a nap every afternoon, which gives me time to shower (on those Stroller Strides days), read my bible study, and do work around the house like cleaning or food prep. Sometimes I eve get a chance to sit a relax for 5 minutes (until I remember the laundry that needs to be folded).

After nap we tend to stay home so we are here when Daddy gets home. This is a great time to get out sensory materials like play dough and oatmeal or get outside and play for a little while. 

It is amazing how busy we stay. I feel incredibly blessed to be able to stay at home with Little Guy!

What do you do all day?

Toddler Countdown Chain

This time of year, many kids may be making a countdown chain to mark how many days left until Christmas.  In our house, with only a toddler, this didn't seem like it would have much meaning.  So instead we made a countdown chain that counts the days until Little Guy will see his grandparents!  Little Guy  keeps telling us "I want to see Grandma and Granddaddy" and "I want to see Grandpa and Grandma B."  This is a way that we can show him we are getting closer to seeing them. 

 All you need to do this is some paper (cut in strips), a stapler, and stickers (optional).  First, figure out how many links you need.  We started with 17.  I used red and green paper (which was a great way to model some simple patterning).  Little Guy put stickers on some of the strips (about 5 before he was done with the stickers), then I stapled the chain.

Every morning Little Guy and Daddy take one link off the chain.  (The first day, Little Guy went back on his own and took off another link!  He is excited for the chain and to see his grandparents.)  We are all excited to see the chain getting shorter!

What are you counting down to?

Tot School- Christmas Activities Week 1

Hello!  I hope that you are starting to get in the Christmas spirit!  We sure are around here!  Last week's tot school had several Christmas themed activities.  I hope you enjoy them!  Little Guy is 29 months old. 

The first activity was an elf and reindeer sort from the reindeer pack at 3 Dinosaurs.  Little Guy had to cut the pictures apart, then sort them.  He has really been enjoying glue lately, so of course he had to use it on this activity!  Luckily, he hasn't (yet) gotten glue all over!

Hmmm. where does this one go?

Ever have an idea that you think they will love, and turns out they don't?  This was one of those ideas for us.  I have been saving bottle lids (mainly from milk).  For this activity, Little Guy needed to sort the lids into the same colored bowl.  I thought this would be easy for him and also fun.  He really did not like this activity, and only completed it once during the week, on the last day.  Who knew?

Here's another blue lid.

The Christmas tree decorating activity was lots of fun, especially since it involved mini M&M's!  This was  from the Christmas pack at Gift of Curiosity.  Little Guy had to place one M&M on each star on the tree.  This was great one-to-one correspondence practice.  He really enjoyed eating a few M&M's at the end.

I can't wait to be done with this!

Beading was the first activity he chose, but he never came back to it!  I pulled out all our red, green, and white beads from our bead collection, along with 3 pipe cleaners.  This was pretty simple, in that he just needed to put the beads on the pipe cleaner.  When he gets older, we can repeat this activity with the addition of making patterns.  For now, it is great fine motor practice.

Concentrating hard on those beads.

This next activity was one he kept returning to over and over, but it was also one I had to modify a few times.  We used sparkly pom-poms in four sizes and a 4 compartment tray (I picked it up at Target the day after Halloween for only about a buck).  He had to sort the pom-poms according to their sizes.  The first time he did the activity, I had too many pom-poms out, so he got frustrated.  For the next time, I limited it to 5 pom-poms of each size.  Then it was almost too easy for him to sort.  So then I added the tongs.  This seemed to be just right!  I made it a little harder to use the tongs, especially on the small puffs, without being too hard.

Its hard to work to squeeze the little pom-poms.

The last tray was lacing snowflakes.  This is a great activity that he enjoys, and is easy to switch up seasonally or thematically.

In addition to the tot trays, he had some printables in his binder to work on.  From the reindeer pack at 3 Dinosaurs, the pages were the Rudolph color by size and prewriting practice. Instead of Little Guy coloring the different sizes of Rudolph, I asked him to circle all the big reindeer, or small reindeer.  We also used pages from the Reindeer pack at Royal Baloo.  These were the matching page (seen below) and the ABC mat with capital letters.  The ABC mat was great for pointing to as we sang the ABC song.

The line goes here.

What Christmas themed activities have you been up to?

We linked up to Tot School Gathering Place at 1+1+1=1 (we were featured last week)!