Thursday, December 29, 2011

Happy Holidays!!

We had a great Christmas at our house! Love Bug and her siblings really enjoyed the day.

It's easy to shop for Love Bug, because she loves so many educational toys and games, and she LOVES books! She can read all her letters, but can't actually read yet. Here she is "reading" a book she got for Christmas that she's had read to her about 15 times now.

She also got these fun things for Christmas and we are excited to add them to our Tot School this year.

Stack and smile blocks- we can't wait to do some Education Cubes activities with them!
Melissa and Doug Sushi set- Love Bug is a foodie. She and her dolls will have a lot of fun with this set. AND Love Bug is learning about different cultures and foods in tot school, so this goes well with it.
Learning Resources Super Sorting Pie
This was a gift from Love Bug's grandma. We are so excited about it! Love Bug "bakes" regularly, and a pie that also teaches her things**** Perfect ****.
Melissa and Doug Ice Cream Scoop Set
This was a special treat that we got for participating in Melissa and Doug's North "Pole".
We love it! Magnetic scoops of ice cream was a brilliant idea! Love Bug is still trying to get the hang of the scooping and stacking and its really challenging her motor skills.
Melissa and Doug Slice and Bake cookie set
We first saw this set when we were picking out a gift for a friend. Love Bug REALLY wanted it (baker....). Her other grandparents gave it to her for Christmas. She is learning to sort by color and decorations. She's learning to manipulate the spatula to pick up the cookies, and learning to share and do nice things for others (and she doesn't even know it!)


I know by now you're wondering if I get any kick back from Melissa and Doug. I WISH! I do love their toys and games.

Lakeshore learning Pick a Berry Word Building Game
I am one lucky duck to have a LSL near my home. My wallet, not so lucky. But clearanced learning toys are my dream, and this place has them!
This was our fun find. It's too advanced for Love Bug to use as designed right now, but we are using it for letter recognition, especially lower case letters; matching letters, taking turns, etc. Jedi uses it with us and its just perfect for testing him on his spelling words.


We also got some new books this year and will be featuring them at some point in our school in 2012.

Hope you had a happy holiday season!!


 

Nativity Tot School

Tot School
Love Bug is currently 34 months
The holidays took over and we are a bit late posting this. We took off two weeks for the holidays, but this was our week before Christmas! We used a few nativity Preschool packs from 1+1+1=1, and Over the big moon

Tots Together
(Tots Together is a day each week a few parents of "home preschooled" tots get our kids together to socialize and practice being in a group setting while learning.)

We had a holiday sensory box

Sorted animals and people
 Used our three-part cards
 Sorted nativities by size
 Did our number puzzle

Made our own nativity scenes


Footprint Christmas Trees (Pinterest)


Had a stable snack
 Practiced swaddling a baby



We didn't do a themed outing this week, but we did head to a fun inflatables place nearby.



Hope your holidays were lots fun!!

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Trains and Christmas Tot school

Tot School
Love Bug is currently 34.5 months

We knew the holidays would throw a wrench in our Tot school plans, and they didn't disappoint!
This is actually two weeks worth of "school" but it was so scattered about that there isn't much to tell individually.

We spent some time working on math. Love Bug really enjoys her monkey math scale. She did a great job of matching number to see if they weighed the same.
We did some beading

Matched colors on our color mat
Played with the counting train
 Read train books

Did some conductor puzzles
and played with our newly made tactile matching balloons orginally found on Pinterest (LOVE)



TOTS TOGETHER
(Tots Together is a day each week a few parents of "home preschooled" tots get our kids together to socialize and practice being in a group setting while learning.)
We did a lot with trains!! Basically- that's all we did.

Tots together the following week didn't happen. Love Bug had a nice Christmas sensory box to play with and we did lots of Christmas activities together to get things done for the upcoming holiday. She loves helping wrap presents.

We took a trip to the mall to see the huge train display

And....Santa!!!



We adopted an Elf on the Shelf and he's been creating mischief every night. Love Bug runs downstairs first thing each morning to find him and see what he did!






We love the Christmas season!!
We're on vacation until after the New Year! Happy Holidays!