Tot School: August 23-29, 2009

Sunshine is 25 months, 2 weeks old.

We began our week by making muffins for daddy for breakfast. It was lots of fun and Sunshine LOVED licking the batter!

Sunshine pulled out her bottle and tooth pick fine motor practice game. She hasn't played with this in several weeks, but it was a hit this week.

I found this great song/counting activity here - Mr. Seahorse Counting. Since we are still working on our ocean theme I figured this would be a fun one to do! Sunshine enjoyed it well enough and each time we counted them all she clapped and say "YAY!!!".

We continued working on her Ocean Lapbook by making a tactile starfish. Sunshine loved pouring and spreading out the sand.

We also made a sand castle for her lapbook. I cut out various shapes and Sunshine glued them down, then we added sand to make them tactile as well.

When we were done with our tactile activities, Sunshine insisted she play with sand some more, so I gave her a bucket with sand, shells, and plastic sea creatures. She was so creative that she used the larger sea shells as shovels!

We also worked with Sunshine's' shape puzzle as well as making music and playing with her Magna Doodle. To see what other tot parents have done with their kiddos this past week, visit 1+1+1=1.

Tot School: August 10-23, 2009

Sunshine is 25 months, 1 week old.

This will be a lengthy posting as it will encompass 2 weeks worth of Tot School. We haven't done too much over the past couple weeks, but will be getting back into the swing of it this week! :) We continued with our ocean theme these past two weeks.

Here is Sunshine painting with water on a neat velvet art picture that I found in the dollar bins at Target. All she had to do was paint it with water and the colors came to life! It's a great picture of dolphins swimming around!

We also found these capsuls at Target that were ocean animal themed. You put them in warm water and the capsuls desolve and out pops a sponge in the shape of an ocean animal. Sunshine really enjoyed doing these!!

We pulled out her tunnels/playhouses on a hot, muggy day when it was too hot to go out. Sunshine loved bouncing up and down out of the sunroofs of the playhouses, playing peek-a-boo. Daddy and I crawled though the tunnels and we both got stuck. Later that evening Nunny and Papa came for a visit and as you can see Papa got stuck too!! ;)

We enjoyed playing with playdough and some sea creatures. We used them to make impressions and ocean scenes.

Sunshine finger painted with yellow and blue paint discovered that it made green when mixed together. She started out using her fingers, but finished up using assorted sized paint brushes.

Favorite picture of the two weeks:

We also went on a mini-vacation this weekend. We had a blast and I will post pictures in a different post!

To see what other tot parents have done with their kiddos this past week, visit 1+1+1=1.

Reach for the Stars: Part 2

The Reach for the Stars program through Sunshine's school is ending this week. In my previous post about it, I said I would make a list of some of the books we read so here it is! (These are in no certain order and are only SOME of the books we read!)

1. Chicken Little pictures by Laura Rader

2.Eensy-Weensy Spider adapted by MaryAnn Hoberman

3. The Napping House by Audrey Wood

4. What Daddies Do Best by Laura Numeroff

5. The Going To Bed Book by Sandra Boynton

6. Yertle the Turtle by Dr. Suess

7. Panda Bear, Panda Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin Jr

8. Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear? by Bill Martin Jr

9. Hurry! Hurry! by Eve Bunting

10. When Is MY Birthday? By Ray Sipherd

11. When Mama Comes Home Tonight by Eileen Spinelli

12. Curious George Good Night Book

13. Elmo's Lift-And-Peek Around the Corner Book by Anna Ross

14. Five Little Sharks Swimming in the Sea by Stever Metzger

15. A Story of Kindness (Disney Princess)

16. Shiny Touchy Smelly by Sarah Phillips

17. Five Little Monkeys Play Hide-and-Seek by Eileen Christelow

18. Goldilocks and the Three Bears retold by James Marshall

19. Counting Kisses by Karen Katz

20. Little Rabbits' First Word Book by Alan Baker

21. Puff the Magic Dragon by Petter Yarrow and Lenny Lipton

22. Mommy Hugs by Anne Gutman and Georg Hallensleben

23. Daddy Kisses by Anne Gutman and Georg Hallensleben

24. The Pigeon Loves Things That Go! by Mo Willems

25. Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak

26. Baby Bear, Baby Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin Jr

27. Twinkle Twinkle Little Star as told by Iza Trapani

28. I'm a Little Tea Pot as told by Iza Trapani

29. The Little Mouse, The Red Ripe Strawberry, and the The Big Hungry Bear by Don and Audrey Wood

30. The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister

31. Mouse Mess by Linnea Riley

Tot School: August 2 - 9, 2009

Sunshine is 24 months, 4 weeks old.

We have been going to the beach alot recently so I figured we should do an ocean theme! Most all our fun this week was about the ocean!

I found these great sheets of compressed sponges from AC Moore and cut out sea horse shapes. Sunshine enjoyed making prints using different colors of paint.

We made an ocean bottle. We put sand, shells, rocks, "seaweed" (small piece of fake plant), water, and a drop of blue paint. Sunshine added all the elements herself and got a little help from me where the water was concerned. Once all the ingredients were added in I super glued the cap on so Sunshine could play with it over and over. (NOTE: Do not use sand in it. All it did was make the water murky so we actually did it twice! ;o) )

I set up a tot tray with seashells and rocks that we collected from a previous beach trip. She enjoyed feeling their textures and banging the rocks together.

We started working on our first Lapbook this week. It will be a combimation of Hello Ocean from Homeschool Share as well as Tot School's Ocean Lapbook. Here are the two elements we created this week - a book about seagulls and a fan book about tide pools.

Here is a picture of Sunshine doing one of her self-acliamed chores - she feeds our kitty each day.

To see what other tot parents have done with their kiddos this past week, visit 1+1+1=1.

What does Kayley's DOB say about her??

July 13, 2007

Diaper Houdini

I go in to get Sunshine up, like I do each day, this morning and I see her naked bum sticking up in the air! Uh-oh!!! No diaper=soaked sheet, blankets, and pillow case. I find her diaper and it is bone dry, which means she has gone all night with out a diaper. Oh dear. This is the first time she has done this and I hope it's the last (although I know deep down it won't be). Ugh.

Nose Spelunker

Ok, so we all know that 2 year children like to stick their fingers in holes - ear holes, nose holes, etc. Well, Sunshine has taken this a step further and is not just stuffing her fingers in her nose, but has begun stuffing THINGS up her nose!!! Yep, you read that right - she is sticking things UP her nose. Ugh... what are we going to do with her?!?!?! At least thus far it's just small pieces of paper that are easy enough to retrieve, all be it gross.

About 10 years ago, there was a little girl in a preschool I was teaching at who shoved a small shell up her nose and during nap time she started blubbering oh so dramatically, "I ... HAVE... A... SHELL... STUCK... UP.... MY... NOSE!!!!" I laughed so hard when all was said and done, but having to make that phone call to her mom to tell her mom that we were not able to get it out was not fun what-so-ever. Her was was hysterical, laughing that is, when she came to pick her up so it all ended on a happy note, but as a parent now I don't know how I would handle this news! I just hope that I don't have to receive this type of phone call from Sunshine's school any time soon!

(Note to self: Remember to tell her teachers about her new hobby on Monday!)

Reach for the Stars!

Sunshine's childcare center is taking part in a program through Usborne Books called Reach for the Stars. For the next 14 days we are going to keep track on how much time we spend reading to Kayley each day, with a complete goal of reading for a total of 300 minutes over those two weeks. We are asking people to sponsor us and at the end of the two weeks Sunshine will get 50% of the sponsor total in books; so if she gets $40 total she will receive $20 worth of free books. The other 50% goes to buying books for Sunshine’s classroom. If she gets 10 people to sponsor her at $10 each (for a total of $100) she will get an additional prize of a book kit from Usborne. I am going to start keeping a log on my blog of the books we read each day so that in the end I can look back on al the stuff we read! The program actually kicked off on Monday of this past week so I have a bit of catching up to do as far as posting what we have read, but that will be in my next post!

Tot School: July 27 - August 1, 2009

Sunshine is 24 months, 3 weeks old.

We started our week off with a surprise from Grandma and Grandpa. They brought Sunshine over a lego table and some duplos! She was so thrilled!! Its a great table too; one side is for legos and the other side is plain white flat surface that is perfect for playing playdough or coloring on.

Thank you Grandma and Grandpa!

Sunshine explored with our nature items that we collected on our nature walk last weekend. We had found some neat round seed pod thingies (not sure what tree they were from) and to our surprise one of them was FULL of little black ants! Sunshine broke it open and starting yelling, "Buggies momma! Buggies!" So we got an unexpected lesson about ants at the same time! LOL! She also worked on one-to-one correspondence by putting one acorn in each section of an ice cube tray; we still have lots of work to do to master this skill.

Sunshine enjoyed drawing with a few different types of art media this week as well.

Sunshine got to play mini golf for the first time this week! She loved it, until that is she threw her ball into the water for the third time! LOL!

Sunshine made the letter C for circles to add to her alphabet book!

Sunshine sorted some summer themed erasers that I got at the Dollar Tree. She did GREAT with it!! We did this a few times before she grew bored of it.

We ended our week with another trip to the beach. We bought a kite and had a fun time trying to fly it. Hehe... Sunshine enjoyed running through the waves and splashing in a puddle with her beach toys. I must add that she is getting quite the tan; she has more tan then I do! (So glad she has her daddy's genes for that one! Phew!)

Favorite picture from this week: We finally got to use our pool for the first time this season and I just adore this picture of Sunshine and I.

To see what other tot parents have done with their kiddos this past week, visit 1+1+1=1.