Tot School - Farm Animals

~Cameron is currently 25 months old~

For our first official Tot School I grabbed some materials from my supply boxes.  And it just so happened to be all farm animal related.  So we went with it.  Cameron is having an absolute BLAST doing Tot School.  He loves the time focused on just him, and is really soaking up all the learning and new things we're trying out.  I'm having a blast too.  I'm introducing a wide variety of activities to him to evaluate his skills and abilities.  

 Here's a picture of Cameron matching up baby and mommy animals.  He did fantastic at this, and made the correct animal noises for most of the animals.   Although he tends to get cow and horse confused sometimes.

 

I am a big fan of sign language.  Cameron learned some basic communication words when he was around 9 months old, which made expressing his needs much easier.  I have these great sign language cards that I purchased a year ago.  I pulled out some animals to go along with our theme for the week.  We ended up only learning horse, cow, pig and duck, because Cameron was losing interest.

 

I pulled out my felt board and a felt story that I had made back in my college days.  Cameron adored this.  The story we did was Cock-a-Moo Moo.  Cameron loved to put all the pieces up on the board as I told the story.  We also reviewed the names and noises of each animal.   I think he really enjoyed the tactile experience of this.  I'll definitely be creating more felt board stories and activities for us.

As part of our little "circle time", I decided to introduce some songs.  Now Cameron has never appreciated my singing.  As a baby, he cried louder when I tried to sing to him (sheesh, I didn't know my voice was that bad).  And as a 1 year old, he never seemed interested at all when I played music or sang.  So I was curious to see how he would do with music now.   He seems to "Bebop" around when he hears music on the radio or TV these days.  I started out teaching him The Itsy Bitsy Spider.  He loved it.  He attempted to sing with me a little, and did all the motions.  I was so tickled.  It was definitely the highlight of the week for me.  We also sang, If You're Happy and You Know It as well as Old McDonald Had a Farm.  I can't wait to teach him more songs now.

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I scored these awesome books on clearance at our Wal-mart the other day.  They are Kumon Let's Sticker and Paste, Let's Cut Paper and Let's Color!  As much as I love homemade items, I was excited to find a more curriculum-like book.

 

 We tried out a page from the Kumon Let's Color book.  Cameron was supposed to color "ketchup" on the omelet on this page.  I was impressed by how well he did at staying inside the "omelet" area.  I am also extremely surprised by how he correctly holds his writing utensils already.  I've noticed that he grasps his crayons correctly, in the past, but always thought maybe it was a fluke.  Hopefully he doesn't lose this skill.

 

I am really noticing that Cameron has some fantastic fine motor skills.  I asked him to lace his beads and he did every. single. bead.  Here he is holding them all up for me.  I was so proud, and so was he.  I loved how hard he concentrated on this activity.

 

My solution for keeping the beads from slipping off the end of the string is to put a clothes pin on the end.  At first Cameron wanted to take it off, but quickly realized that without it, the beads would fall off.

 

We also did a dinosaur foam sticker activity (I know, it doesn't go with my farm animal theme).

He spotted this container of dinosaurs that I found at the dollar store, and was so anxious to get them out.  He REALLY loves stickers.  Unfortunately the backs were hard for him to get off by himself.  

I've been rummaging through all my old college school supplies.  I just found the box last week, and was delighted by all the goodies I forgot I had made in my Early Childhood Education classes.  I'm still working at getting everything organized and sorted.  Next week, we will be doing Brown Bear Brown Bear What Do You See.  I love this book and so does Cameron.  I'm so excited, because I have a lot of neat things planned.

Tiny Tots

Elissa is four months old now.  I can hardly believe it.  She is finally getting a bit happier with tummy time.   She's doing really well holding her head up at a 90 degree angle.  And she loves to grab at the toys that she wants now.  And of course, everything goes in the mouth.  If it's not a toy (as you can see she's trying to stuff the entire thing in her mouth here), then it's her hands.  I'm sure it will be a while before she's even interested in working on rolling over (just like Cameron did). 

 

What Elissa really loves to do is SIT.  If you try to lay her back, she does what I call a "baby sit-up".  Here she is exploring and grabbing some of her toys in he Bumbo seat.   

Click here to check out some great Tot School ideas and see what other moms and tots are doing during Tot School time.