Tiny Tot Time

Isaiah is currently 22.5 months

Bookshelf

We use the Ikea Trofast system for both Olivia and Isaiah. It works so great because for Tot School we can just use the shelves, and then going into Kid School, we substitute the drawers and have a perfect set of workboxes.

*Disclaimer: The following pictures represent moments in a little bit of a rough week. Both kids were sick, Isaiah being the sicker of the two. Don’t let these pictures lead you to believe what isn’t true…I should have gotten pictures of grumpy Isaiah too, but when he was grumpy I was holding him in my lap with one hand and working with Olivia with the other…

Isaiah gets to choose what he wants to play with off of these shelves. Some of the shelves got played with multiple times (the stacking blocks and shape sorter), while some of the shelves were not even touched (the “N” shelf and cutting fruit).

On top of the shelf:

• LeapFrog Tag Reader Junior with Sesame Street Alphabet book
• LeapFrog scribble and write. In the past weeks he has chosen this a lot, but he didn’t very much this week so I’ll be rotating it out of his options.
• Manhattan Toys See and Put Birdhouse
• Melissa & Doug Pet Sounds Puzzle

First shelf:

• Melissa & Doug See and Spell
• Various “N” items

Bottom shelf:

• Melissa & Doug Shape Sorter
• Various Cutting Fruits including Melissa & Doug Cutting Fruit and Kidoozi Garden Fresh Fruits & Veggies
• Melissa & Doug Stacking Blocks

    

Books

While JP is deployed, we are living with my parents, so we do school in Olivia’s room. Which actually works out just fine. It’s a nice big room that has her queen bed, an upright piano, the school table, and both kids’ shelves. And the bed provides a comfy & snuggly place for reading too!

“The Very Hungry Caterpillar” by Eric Carle has been a favorite of Isaiah’s for over 6 months now.

Table Work

Isaiah didn’t really want to spend much time sitting at the table with us (probably because I kept wiping his running nose). But the little time he did he produced these two Dot Paint Masterpieces. I downloaded them from 1+1+1=1 Blog here.

Isaiah’s Picks

These are toys and activities Isaiah found to play with on his own.

Shape sorting wooden blocks by Imaginarium.

He’s been pushing this stroller and a shopping cart around a lot lately.

     Running on the bed (if he wasn’t so cute, I definitely wouldn’t post pictures of our unmade beds). I don’t normally let him run on the bed…but, this was a result of some sick/grumpy moments when I needed to focus on Olivia, and he was only happy doing this.

His beloved Montessori Cylinder Block was right by his side most of the week.

Counting the cylinders with his feet. This silly boy cracks me up every day!

Tech Time

Isaiah loves the iPad!!! We all love the iPad!

Getting in a little exercise while playing his Eric Carl Very Hungry Caterpillar Ap.

This week Isaiah got more iPad time in than usual because he wasn’t feeling well. It’s one of the things he likes to do even when he’s sick.

 

  

Sensory Bin: Nest

This week’s sensory bin was all about birds and nests to go along with our MFW Kindergarten science unit about nests and Animal Homes. I actually reinvented a flop of a sensory bin from a few weeks ago that was supposed to go with our Leaf science unit – both kids took one look at it and walked away. This time around it went over much better.

In our bin we had:

• a variety of silk leaves I bought at Michaels
• leaf felt stickers I bought at Michaels
• trees from the Tree Toob (these didn’t get played with at all)
• insects from the Insect Toob (these get played with all the time, whether they are in a sensory bin or not…Olivia’s a bug loving princess!)
• a birdhouse I picked up from Michaels
• gold pom poms
• nests, birds, and miniature eggs also from Michaels
• tongs
• small white paint tray

Here’s Olivia first feeding the birds a caterpillar, and then next she was hiding the birds in the birdhouse from the attack insects. I’m not sure how she got into the attack bugs, but I guess it did go along with one of our themes of God providing different homes for different animals for protection.

 

Even though I try to encourage group play with the sensory bin, they just aren’t always interested at the same time. I could not pull Isaiah away from his Montessori Cylinder Block (I purchased this at Montessori Outlet a while back and is one of his all time favorite toys. This is Part 1, and I’m getting ready to buy another part to give him more challenge as he has mastered this one).

Isaiah was most interested in transferring miniature eggs from the nest into the small paint tray and counting as he went. He did this over and over again. It was a great activity for him, and I was really surprised at how well he did the one-to-one correspondence counting. It was the first time he has done this skill.

I’ve tried having him use large tweezers to work on transferring objects and fine motor skills, but he couldn’t get it at all; so, I bought these miniature tongs, which are much easier to grasp and squeeze. He gave it a try, but after the first try he put them down and didn’t try again (notice his cylinder block right by him…this was a constant companion for him this week).

I thought maybe the eggs were too small for using the tongs, so I switched out the eggs for these gold pom poms. Again, he tried, but then he opted to use his fingers.

Sensory bins are fun and great, but have taken me a lot of time, energy, and money to put together…so, this one is going to stay out for the rest of the month and into November. I have some pumpkins to add into it next week, and then maybe I’ll pick up a few Thanksgiving items to add to it, but for the most part we are going to try to get some more use out of this one and maybe pull back out the apple bin.

For more great ideas on sensory bins visit:

1+1+1=1

Totally Tots – What’s in the Tub

Counting Coconuts 

SpartanGirl Sensory Activities for Kids

Sensory Bin: Apple Pie

I love sensory bins! And if you’re not familiar with sensory bins or why they’re so great, head over here to read the Montessori Minute: Sensory Activities post. Carissa at the 1+1+1 Blog also has a lot of great ideas for sensory bins, and is great about posting links to other sites with great ideas. On her blog go to “Theme Printables” on the top, choose a theme, and then dig in…it’s a treasure trove of ideas!

This school year we’ve had a a few really great sensory bins – Creation, Space, and this week’s Apple Pie theme that I’m highlighting here. And I had one giant of a flop one a couple weeks ago for our Leaf unit (I’m going to try and reinvent this one next week for our Animal Homes unit…we’ll see how it goes). I tell myself to try, try again; and then I scour my favorite blogs and get some great ideas.

This week’s sensory bin came directly from Delightful Learning. I was so excited to find this post because we were also reading the book How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World from our MFW science unit.

Our bin contained the following:

• Wheat berries as the base.


• 2 red and 2 green apples I picked up from a fruit vase filler pack at Target.


• Apple Pie spices: cinnamon sticks, whole All Spice, Apple Pie Spice, salt shaker filled with salt (and a cotton ball stuffed in the top).


• Salt shaker filled with wheat berries.


• Dried sugar cane reads I picked up at Hobby Lobby.


• Dried wheat I picked up from Hobby Lobby.


• Contents from the Down on the Farm toob (I didn’t get this Melissa & Doug Bundle; but I think it’s pretty cool…they have a whole variety of them).


• Two Thomas & Friends trains.


• Measuring cups.


• Cloth World map.

Most of the time we just set it out and the three of us sit around and play. I follow the kids’ lead a lot to see how it sparks their imagination (our space sensory bin turned into a whole new planet called Opitizi where all the astronauts and aliens ate rice and beans for every meal and said the word “wanga” for everything). And it’s great to just run your hands through the wheat berries, pick them up, and then let them rain down on everything…it’s messy, but I love how the three of us can enjoy it together.

I also try to direct some of the learning. Here’s what I did with each child (sorry for the lack of active pictures, but I find myself a lot of times too in the moment to grab my camera).

Olivia…with Olivia’s imagination, most of the time she just wants to free play and make up stories, but I was able to get in a few other activities too:

• Math: I had her point out the different size measuring cups, and then using the wheat berries, she determined how many scoops of each size it took to fill up the 1 c. measuring scoop.


• Geography: As we read the story “How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World” we laid out each ingredient on the specific country on our world map.


• Home Economics: We talked about the different ingredients that go into making apple pie and where they come from. For example, the wheat in the pie crust comes from wheat berries off of wheat stalks which then need to be ground into flour. The butter in the pie comes from milking the cow and then churning the cream. Etc…

Isaiah:

• Colors: discriminating between the red and green apples and naming the colors. He’s awesome at this!


• Counting: lining up and counting the apples. He can already count past 10, but the one to one correspondence hasn’t come yet…but he tries. Often times with our four apples he counted all the way up to 10 apples.


• Patterns: Just beginning to plant the seeds of patterns…red apple, green apple, red apple, green apple. At not even 2 years old, he’s a ways away from mastering this skill.


• Scooping and pouring: I add spoons and various containers for him to practice.


• Animal identification and animal sounds.


• Sound discrimination: we shook the salt shaker of salt, salt shaker of wheat berries, container of whole All-Spice, and the dried wheat stalks to hear the different sounds.

Together we smelled and even tasted the different spices. Olivia said, “Yech!” and Isaiah said, “Mmmm, that’s good!”

So, that was our week’s fun with the sensory bin. It was a big hit with the kids, and Olivia even asked to play with it one night before bed!

Tiny Tot Time

Isaiah is currently 22.5 months

As the year is going on I’m getting better and better about Isaiah and his activities. I’ve even printed off a couple Tot School Printables for him. I’m still a long way off from my vision…I want lots more one-on-one time with him…but everyday I make progress For the most part I am extremely blessed that he likes to play independently. Even so, he does love to sit at the table with us, he loves to scribble, and he loves it when Olivia gets to do her school by teaching him something.

“Coloring” his a is for apple page. A couple days later he did letter stamping on a new a is for apple page.

I showed him how to draw a line between the pictures, and he even did it…once. Then he went back to “coloring.” He also really enjoyed the fruit stickers. I took them off for him, named the fruit, he took it from me and repeated the name of the fruit, and then stuck it down on the paper. At one point he even pretended to eat the fruit off the paper saying, “Yum, yum, yum, yum….”

I cannot tell you how much time he spent with this puzzle…it seemed like hours! He is an expert at it now though, and loves to say the word “octagon.” On one of our walks I pointed out the stop sign as an octagon, and so now he is starting to point them out wherever he sees them.

In the background you can see a corner of his toy shelf. Sometimes he plays with these and other times he goes and finds his own toys. The past two weeks our theme has been fruit and he loved playing with the cutting fruit I laid out for him. We even tried a matching activity. I printed out pictures of fruit and showed him how to match up his toy fruit with the picture. He did pretty good with it, though it didn’t hold his attention more than a couple minutes.

Letters, letters everywhere! Isaiah loves letters! He points them out…actually shouts them out….wherever we are. So, I indulge him and give him as many letter toys as I can. He loved the flashcards from our MFW Kindergarten curriculum. I don’t use them for Olivia, but they were perfect for him!

Olivia’s favorite way to practice her phonograms is to be the teacher for Isaiah…and he loves it too. It involves a lot of laughing, a lot of screams, and a whole lot of silliness.

We all love the iPad! And we love daddy for buying it for us! One of us is always using it…well, not literally, but we do use it a lot! Someday, I’ll do a post on our favorite educational (and non-educational) aps.

Climbing on everything!

Sensory Bin: Space

I wanted to go ahead and share a little bit about our sensory bin from our Space unit a few weeks back. It was such a big hit and inspired so much creativity in Olivia that it is actually still being played with. We currently have two sensory bins out…this one and our most current one Apple Pie.

This sensory bin came directly out of our Creation unit sensory bin. I just added a few space things to it and voila…

• The base is black beans and rice…I discovered the vacuum easily picks up the rice, but leaves all the black beans behind.
• Small gold pom-poms for stars.
• A big yellow pom-pom for the sun.
• A bouncy glitter ball for the moon (I actually had 2…one for each kid).
• Glittery silver and gold star foam stickers.
• Space Toob (I didn’t get this Melissa & Doug bundle, but would have if we hadn’t already had the puzzle).
• Toy Story Lego Planet Pizza set.
• Spoons and various containers for scooping and pouring.
• Giant tweezers for Isaiah to practice fine motor skills. The idea was for him to pick up the pom-poms with the tweezers…long way to go on this skill.
• Magnetic letters s-u-n.

Olivia blasting off! This bin became her imaginary world of the Planet Opitizi.

Olivia claiming her planet…became a good lesson on sharing. 

Read more about sensory activities and the fabulous benefits of sensory bins at this Montessori Minute post.