Mr. Smiley, 27.5 months

Tot Trays

Well, there weren’t so many trays this week . . . like I said on Friday . . . it was a weird school week.  In fact, they are still laying out in the school room.  I guess they weren’t that enticing. 

Other Learning

Mr. Smiley enjoyed helping me prepare for my Totally Tots post on Eric Carle using the book Brown Bear, Brown Bear. 

He stacked the Eric Carle books while I read.

Enjoyed painting a brown bear with Do-A-Dots.

We worked on saying colors with a Brown Bear color book from Carisa.

And he painted for the first time.

Life School

Starbucks . . . isn’t that normal for most 2 year olds?

For more Tot School posts, head on over to 1+1+1=1!

Honey will soon be wrapping up his Tot School career. 

Graduation. 

I might cry.  No.  I have two more grade levels coming through the ranks with Smiley and Sweet Pea.  The trays will still appear in our household next year.

Like usual, the pictures and descriptions will be a little bit random.  I am going through my Picassa web album looking for pictures for Honey’s birthday photo album and throwing the Tot School pictures into this blog post.

We studied the Letter T for tractor . . .

Honey learned about the Letter U . . .

He stood too close to a fire and burned his hair, eyebrows, and eyelashes . . .

Memorial Day Weekend

Honey saw some buddies that moved away . . .

Attempted to climb the climbing wall at church . . .

Worked together with Mr. Smackdown to drain the kiddy pool into the rain garden by creating a siphon . . .

  And that’s all for now . . . I have taken way too many pictures.  Yikes.

Mr. Me-Too is 44 months.

Mr. Smiley is 22 months.

Here are some highlights of some of our activities.  I thought that I had more pictures . . . but I just realized that I edited a bunch of other pictures (as far back as January!).  So though, I sorted through a lot of pictures tonight . . . I don’t have much to show for my Tot School snapshots!

Mr. Me-Too matched colors using paint chips.  (Carisa’s great idea!)

Using some foam stickers from Oriental Trading, Mr. Me-Too was given the freedom to make his own picture.  I like using stickers like these because it requires little fingers to practice fine motor skills.

After seeing a marionette puppet show, my mother’s helper (who ROCKS!) helped the boys perform their own puppet show when we got home.  It was GREAT! 

Using colored popsicle sticks, Mr. Smackdown and Mr. Me-Too, created a road for Mr. Smiley to drive a matchbox car.  Mr. Smiley wasn’t as cooperative as they would have liked.  Eventually, the boys stacked the popsicle sticks by color and stuck them in a milk bottle. 

Mr. Smiley enjoyed playing with his brother’s Etch-A-Sketch. 

And we spent a lot of time moving ping pong balls from one basket to another.  

(Mr. Me-Too is 43 months old.)

Tot Trays

I forget where we got these amazing chopsticks, maybe PF Chang’s, but they are perfect for Chinese food and extracting pompom balls from beans (thanks to my sister, Michelle).

By the way, the hat on Mr. Me-Too was a permanent fixture that day.  I am not sure why, other than the fact that I love wearing my skullcap. 

Inspired by someone’s blog (I’m so sorry . . . I don’t remember which blog because I went through the whole Tot School list last week—I left you a comment), I cut out mittens, numbered them from 1-10, and placed the correct number of dots on the back of the mitten.  Mr. Me-Too had to place them in numerical order and then flip the mitten over and place the correct number of dots on the backside of the mitten.

We had fun printing an entire ABC booklet to use our Do-A-Dot’s with which you can find at Making Learning Fun.

We received some packing peanuts the mail when my Bed Buddy Foot and Hand Warmers arrived.  So the boys obtained some “swords” (kabob skewers) and gently stabbed the skewer through the packing peanut.  Once the kabob was full, they slid the peanuts off into the vase.  Once the vase was full, they completed the task.  (This does require supervision.  We had one sword fight that wasn’t pretty—but no blood.)

I don’t have real good pictures of our next activity.  We have 100 bouncy balls from Oriental Trading.  The boys had to load a large spoon up with balls, carefully climb the stairs without dropping the balls, dump them in a container at the top of the stairs, and then come back down to repeat the process.  (It got rid of some restless energy!)

At the suggestion of Confessions of a Homeschooler, I purchased some VERY large push pins (and yes this is another activity that needs a little bit of supervision.)  I hand printed (you can use a computer) several letters of the alphabet and Mr. Me-Too used a push pin to poke holes into each letter. 

The boys were so curious.  Why on earth did I have a pair of shoes on a Tot Tray?  Can you guess?

Their task was to find as many shoes as they could and dump them into a pile.  It was a bit eye opening to me—I didn’t realize how many shoes we had.  And I will have you know that Granola Mom had the LEAST pairs of shoes!!!

Then, they had to match the pairs of shoes because I mixed them all up.  (Rosey-Posey was over for the morning and helped us.)

After finding a match they created a parade of shoes.

Finally, they walked in another person’s shoes!

I created patterns with unifix cubes and they had to mimic the pattern.  Afterwards, they started making each other patterns.

Mr. Me-Too and Rosey-Posey played a snowflake matching game from Confessions of a Homeschooler.

Life

It is possible for 3 young children to have a Quiet Time in one room and stay reasonably quiet.  Yahoo!

Can you tell that I loved having a little girl around the house?  Rosey joined us for yummy snacks.  I am working my way through a Sue Gregg cookbook and came across her yummy homemade Cheese-its.  Rose liked it until Mr. Smackdown started complaining.  And Mr. Me-Too loved them . . . well, until Big Brother started moaning. 

The boys also enjoyed working out with me this past week.

They also had their fare share of play time!

Mr. Me-Too, 39 months

Most of our traditional Tot School activities were accomplished at the beginning of the week. After that, school consisted of life, which also provides learning opportunities.

Lacing cards . . . always add an element of frustration to Mr. Me-Too’s hands. However, they really work on improving fine motor skills and acute concentration. He got to the point where he didn’t want to miss a hole!

He worked on writing the number 1.

Mr. Smackdown helped sort the Alphabet Pumpkins from File Folder Games.

And what is a school day without a tea party or snack?

Mr. Me-Too joined us for Mr. Smackdown’s Saxon Math, and greatly enjoyed creating a movie theater for his counting bears. They were working on 1-to-1 correspondence.

We raked leaves and jumped in the piles.

Much conversation and activities this past week focused on the upcoming holiday that occurred yesterday, Halloween. You can read about our activities and my thoughts here, and be on the lookout for a follow-up post.

We also visited a pioneer settlement, that I already wrote about.

They sorted the bag of candy that we purchased from Costco into 7 different piles.

This fun activity was inspired by Royal Baloo. I put some water in those little plastic cups that I have been storing for such a time as this. Then I added food coloring, gave him a medicine dropper, and let him figure out what to do. I really thought he would mix the colors (like his brother did) but . . .

he just transferred them to another cup!

I have been collecting bottle caps for several months now. Why? I’m not sure. I just know that Carisa uses them for Tot School. Using tongs the boys had to take the caps out of the coconut oil tub and into their own buckets.

And a little sparring ensued.

Mr. Me-Too met the Letter E. I dismantled our Resurrection Eggs and the boys had to match the colors and snap them back together.

I really like stickers. On the same day that I purchased our ticket stubs, I threw in some garage sale stickers. The boys priced items in some toy catalogues that came in the mail.

We went to the apple orchard with Mama, my amazing mother-in-law who comes every Wednesday to fold laundry spend time with us.

Mr. Me-Too discovered a new animal to love . . .

It was parent night at AWANA, and I was able to shadow Mr. Me-Too until Mr. Smiley became quite tired.

And he biked . . .

and he got in the leaves with Hottie Hubby . . .

and he told people that Jesus loved them . . .

For more Tot School posts visit 1+1+1=1.

If you will remember, I recently took a trip to IKEA with a few of my girlfriends.

I have traveled to IKEA (twice in the past month) because we were the blessed recipients of Room on a Dime sponsored my very own Mom and Dad. (Sorry, this sponsorship is only for family members, more specifically my sister and I!)

This year we chose to work on our school room. Tot School and Kindergarten had been occurring in our dining room. However, it wasn’t very efficient and the close proximity of the boys to each other caused . . . tension. At the suggestion of some friends and a little bit of blog hopping, we decided that we needed to move to individualized work spaces.

Wow! What a difference organization and space makes! So thanks Mom and Dad. We are loving our new school digs!

And the best part about it all? When I came home from my weekend away at the Hearts at Home conference, the Hottie Hubby utilized his small work force and put the whole room together! What a surprise!

Tot Trays here we come!

What I love about our new work space is that I can now have the boys work on separate school lessons at the same time! I don’t know why this is working better, but I think it is because we have space, more specifically my brain and body have space to think and multitask.

This week I had Mr. Me-Too sort the animals in Noah’s Ark. He had to work on finding pairs.

The Hottie Hubby and I are working on helping Mr. Me-Too express his feelings. Often he wants to cry or throw something. I understand that he is frustrated. So we are trying to be patient and creative, encouraging him to learn how to tell us what is wrong. Thankfully, Carisa at 1+1+1=1 posted a feelings lapbook that we have been using.

Mr. Me-Too is matching the feelings faces.

Then, he picked out a face to color.

And completed learning about that color by finding objects in our house that were yellow.

The boys always see me sew. So I decided to have them sew something or be involved in a sewing project. I stitched some pre-designed animal pillows together and they stuffed their pillows. This really worked their fine and gross motor skills. I think this will be a project that we repeat. They struggled with it at first. It was difficult because they couldn’t visualize what they were really doing by stuffing the pillow. It just seems like an endless task! Mr. Me-Too made Lady the Cat, and Mr. Smackdown stuffed Matthew the Fire Dog.

Since we have a lot of energy in our house . . . my mom helped facilitate a creative outlet for all this manliness. When things get frustrating . . . go to the punching bag! This also works great for some hand/eye coordination!

(Oh, you can get a glimpse of the old school room!)

Mr. Me-Too learned how to sort and put away the silverware.

We made pumpkin muffins.

I had the boys help me fold all of the diapers!

And we went to our last gymnastics class for a few months. Sadness!

We are currently reading a GREAT book, which I will soon share . . . but not quite yet. To reinforce what we have learned in our book, the boys decorated a feelings bucket. This serves as a visual tool to remind us to always fill each others bucket with kindness.

I am actually attempting to capture three weeks worth of Tot School in one blog post. Even though this one has yet to be completely written, I began to take pictures of Tot School for my next post today. So here goes with some highlights of The Granola Family’s Tot School.

It all began with Do-A-Dots. If we are having a rough day or I need a quick, non-messy craft project to keep hands (prone to mischief–when Mom is cooking) busy, this is my quick draw. It always produces excitement and about an hour’s worth of entertainment.

I bought a REALLY big coloring pad at Walmart, choosing a pad that has cartoon pictures that are simple in design, with a lot of white space. This allows them to have a large area to create Monet masterpieces.

I have been including Mr. Me-Too in parts of Mr. Smackdown’s phonics lessons. We are using Rocket Phonic this year, but I pulled out my Saxon letter cards for this activity. They matched the letter tiles to the correct phonics card. This would have been a fabulous letter recognition and sorting activity for Mr. Me-Too, but he enjoyed lining up his letter tiles, much to the dismay of his older brother who wanted all of the tiles to be gently placed on their respective cards.

They have been using the balance and filling it with cars, letter tiles, and whatever small items they can find. I am not sure what goal they are accomplishing, but they really enjoying seeing the balance teeter back and forth.

Mr. Me-Too has been working on some fine motor skills by lacing alphabet beads onto a string.

We worked on patterns and colors with this Melissa and Doug sorting peg game.

Mr. Me-Too also had to match the magnet to the correct picture in the Alphabet Magnetic book. I said the sound and the object and then he looked for it. Big Brother also enjoyed helping Mr. Me-Too locate the required animal. In fact, it became a little bit of a competitive game.

The boys worked on finishing a Thomas the Train puzzle.

Using an Abeka preschool art book from last year, Mr. Me-Too cut out a lamb puppet that was perfect because it looked like Lovey Lamb from AWANA.

This started out as a educational alphabet recognition game on our front window, but it turned into art 101.


We took a big trip to see our family doctor for Mr. Me-Too’s and Mr. Smackdown’s yearly physical. They are both healthy and growing strong. While we waited, the boys worked on coloring their Mailbox Bible Club page.

This is our fabulous doctor doing cranial sacral on Mr. Me-Too, who absolutely LOVES it when Dr. P works on him!
On our way home, we had yet to clean the Loser Cruiser from our Canada vacation and stopped by a local car wash and gave the minivan a necessary bath and vacuum. It took some coaxing and prayer to help the boys understand that we weren’t hurting our car.

And our recent Tot Time brings us to a close with the introduction of colorful and see-through counters. Mr. Me-Too individually placed each counter into a former cod liver oil container.

Later, the boys sorted the counters and cubes into colors.

The hit of the week, was when my Mother’s Helper, Miss. Swan, blessed our household with her calmness and a belated crafty birthday present. The boys had a blast creating animals and insects out of pom pom balls!

And so closes three weeks worth of school. My goals are to get a bit more organized for Tot Time. IKEA here we come!

Check out 1+1+1=1 for more Tot School ideas!

I am a teacher.

Tot School is nothing more than intentionally providing your tot with
age appropriate activities that are fun and engaging. By choosing specific
toys and activities, we expose our tots to a variety of early learning
skills. Mastery is not the goal, FUN is!

We read a story about a little boy who didn’t obey his parents and subsequently fell into a manure pile (the boys enjoyed saying “poop,” as did their Grandma). As a result the boy learns that children should obey their parents because God tells us to and it offers protection. Then they colored and glued on some textured items to the picture of the little boy. I don’t know if they learned a lesson, but it was fun to talk about who poops.

Mr. Easy is very intent on using his pencil correctly.

Big Brother, Mr. Smackdown, enjoys getting to use markers for Tot Time.

Mr. Easy separated “squishy” and “hard” items.