Tot School Feb 8 - 12

All about love! We had a really fun week focusing on Valentine's Day and all about love. I switched things up a bit, and we did most of our activities downstairs in the kitchen. I've been having a difficult time keeping the office/school room clean. I just get so involved sometimes preparing things that I don't clean up as I go and when Monday morning rolls around it's a mess! But I found this great little basket at Target for only $2.50, so I load everything we need in there and just take it downstairs.

The other thing that wasn't really working for us was using trays for her Tot school learning toys. So I brought those downstairs to the living room too. It required me to unload all her play toys from the TV cabinet, take them to the basement playroom, and load the TV cabinet back up with our learning toys for the week. This week I had several puzzles, a winter Tot pack, letter T Tot pack from the previous week, blocks, cash register, doodle board, and her Kimochi Bug. This worked out great as it helped with our living room clutter and got us downstairs actually playing with all her other toys in the playroom.

Here's a quick summary:

Theme: Love
Bible Verse: By this we know love. Because Jesus Christ laid down His life for us. 1 John 3:16.
Bible Story: All about Jesus' death and resurrection focusing on how much God loves us.
Letter: I
Number: 14

So, here's a few pictures from two of the days. She let me take a couple pictures of her this week, but for the most part we refrained from the camera again.

Our basket loaded up with all kinds of fun activities for Day 1.

One of our activites was taking Valentine beads and stringing them onto pink fuzzy wires. Then we shaped them into hearts and mailed them to the grandma's for Valentine's Day. I was pleasantly surprised at how how well Olivia enjoyed this activity. She stuck with it through completion, which I think actually ended up taking about 1/2 hour. This is where I got the idea from.

Here's the end product of Day 1. Top left across to bottom right: HWT letter I, Jesus Loves Me Tic Tac Toe from our Jesus Loves Me lapbook, deocrating read foam heart box with sticker and glitter, Itty Bitty Bookworm letter/number/color/shapes, heart cut outs for Valentine's ornaments for Grandmas (I folded scrapbook paper in half, drew half a heart, and she cut out along the line...on subsequent days she decorated the hearts with stickers and glitter, and then we punched a hole in the top and threaded through ribbon that read "Hugs and Kisses"), God Made Olivia mini book, beaded hearts, and Itty Bitty Bookworm Valentine booklet.

The "God Made Olivia" mini book was another huge hit this week. She normally doesn't like to color, but she diligently colored a couple pages each day and then wanted to read it over and over again.

She let me take a picture of one of her Itty Bitty Bookworm activities. She measured the length and width of hearts using candy conversation hearts. She really enjoyed this activity as well.

We added to our Jesus Loves Me lapbook playing Bingo, talking about salvation, talking about the different aspects of love, more coloring pages for "God Made Olivia" mini book, and making a Valentine for Jesus. We practiced writing "I" for our HWT activity, and letter matching for the word Valentine from here.

We did have other days...mostly spent on making Valentine's and reading Valentine books. It was a really fun week for both of us!

And Isaiah continued to make discoveries in Teeny Tiny Tot school...particularly with his hand in his mouth and blowing bubbles with his slobber (o: