Tot School - Cutting

While my oldest son and I were working on his Thanksgiving Lapbook my 2 yr old wanted to join in on the fun. He always likes to sit on top of the table, its hard to contain him to the chairs. :) But I try! My oldest was cutting some food boxes so that we could recycle it to use it for a Pilgrim Puzzle to make it sturdy. Bubbers grabbed a pair of scissors and scrap cardboard and started to cut lines and snip pieces away. Now I don't usually let him have a pair of scissors at his age. This time though I thought was different. He was very careful and precise with his cutting. It was a good learning experience for both of us. I snapped a few pic's while he was working.

An early Christmas Tree

Well my oldest saw that they were decorated for Christmas in Iraq where daddy is. So he wanted to put up the tree here as well. So, we got the tree out and started decorating it.. I'll take a finished pic of it once its complete. Here's the start...My oldest tried putting it up by himself but soon realized he needed help from mommy when it got too heavy... :)

Starfall.com

Starfall.com is a great website to help teach children their ABC's, the sounds they make, about alphabets, blends, etc! It offers fun story books, games, and videos. My 6yr old enjoys going through each of the different areas. It has helped him through our journey of learning the alphabet and the sounds each make. Now, it supplements learning to read, sounds out the letters which form the words in each online storybook.

Today both my boys (6 and 2) were enjoying Starfall.com. I was able to snap a few pic's as they both were watching and listening to the stories. They both got up and danced when there was singing or music on. For the videos my 2 yr old sat on my lap and watched every video very closely while his big brother danced around to the music and sang the songs.

After my 6 yr old was finished, he started through the ABC's and had my 2 yr old saying A, ah Apple, A ah, Alligator, B buh Ball, C cuh Cow! So that was pretty neat to see the two of them together and my oldest teaching his younger brother. :)  That's part of what we did today. I was able to snap a few pics of them together to capture this moment in time.

Just monkey'n around!

We like to walk to the playground down the street. It's larger, has shade during hot sunny days, and it has more playground equipment for the boys to play on. My oldest likes to monkey around on the monkey bars. He recently found out he could go all the way across them in Sept. before daddy deployed. On the 7th & 8th I took some pictures of him in action. :)

Yay, I did it!

Here's Bubbers telling me he wants me to help him across!

Tot School - Castle Number Book 1-20

Even if the book was upside down, he still loved looking through it! :)

Tot School

I never thought about Tot school until I came across 1+1+1=1 Blog and actually saw someone gave it a name. It was just a natural thing that we just all go along with in our daily activites. My 2 yr old has been doing tot school for awhile now. To me he seems advanced for his age with some things. He is able to call on my cell and leave my mom voicemail. Yesterday I came downstairs to find him browsing a real estate website looking at homes for sale. He turned on the computer, started IE and went to a website. :) Crazy!

I'll be posting more once I get my pix organized from the last few days. Still trying to come up with a nice customized blog for us. :)

Tot School - Busy Puzzle People - Peg Puzzle

Last year my mom bought "Bubbers" a Busy Puzzle People peg puzzle. It has 6 cards with different themes and questions on it. Size people cards to fit in the slots on the cards. He likes to take this out on his own and play with it all the time.

He also loves to run the sweeper!

Handwriting, Turkey's, Pumpkin Patch Game, Playground

I had A writing his first and last name. He can do his first name perfectly but still needs help remembering his last name. So, I print out custom handwriting sheets from online for him for practice.

He also played the Pumpkin Patch file folder game. You have to fill in the missing alphabet letters which are stored on the left side.

Now it was off to the playground.. for some fresh air, rock & leaf collecting. In the following pictures you can see A showing a rock he found, L pointing at a tree telling me thats where the leaves and acorns fell from.

Back at home we collected all the leaves and brought them to the table. I got brown construction paper and traced both of the boys hands for the turkeys. We glued colorful fall leaves on for their feathers. They added faces with a black marker. I used the rest of the clear contact paper I had to enclose the turkeys in so the leaves would stay nice and not brown and dry up. :)

Halloween

Well, yesterday was Halloween! A was Transformers Bumblebee, L was Scooby-Doo, J was a Bumble Bee (even had wings!). I got the kids dressed and ready by 5:30. Trick or Treat'n was suppose to be 5:30pm-9pm..However since it was daylight not many people were out or giving candy. We waited until 6pm and then started to walk around our street. Not many houses gave out candy here. Some had lights on and noone was home. Other places we would get to the door and were told sorry we are out of candy! I guess that was their "trick". I would have just turned my light off. :(

So after we went in our housing area, about 3 streets worth, we went home and got in the car and drove a few blocks down the street to the other one. Many more houses lit up with decorations and giving out candy. The kids had fun looking at all the decorations and getting candy. We even got to go into a haunted house someone had made in their carport! A witch sat on her decorated porch waiting for you to make it to her to give you candy, a gorilla with a chainsaw greeted us, two zombie/ghouls happily told us "Happy Halloween", while they scared others. :) We finally made it back to the car at 8pm still an hour left to trick or treat but no houses left. LOL So, home we went and we looked over all the candy to make sure it was ok and the kids had some before bedtime.



A tried counting all his candy starting piece by piece. I showed him how to count by 10's to make it easier and quicker for him. Eventually he gave up counting them all up when he came across candy he wanted to eat. :) LOL That was our night of fun, missing daddy and gaga who usually trick or treat with us. ~~~ :)

Pumpkin Lapbook

We made a "Pumpkin Lapbook" using resources we collected from various sites on the internet. I like to check out different websites and save the items to my computer for future use. A's lapbook was made of 4 file folders and there is a pocket in the center to store his work. I taped the ends with clear packaging tape to keep it together after it was glued on the inside. In this photo he is drawing pumpkins on a vine on one of the inside flaps.

Here A is coloring a "pumpkin" mini book for his lapbook.

While A was working, on the opposite side of the table L had a Playskool toy which says the ABC's and counts to 10. My mom purchased it for A when he was L's size. :) I'm glad it still works and we still have it as it is a valuable item for Tot School. It is interative with the pen like tool that is attached. After it says so many letters you have to touch the screen for it to continue.

L is pointing to the alphabet, short vowel, telling time, and money posters we have behind our kitchen table.

Here the kids are using self inked Halloween stamps I bought for A from Walmart back in '07 when we were at Fort Drum, Ny. They really love stamping all over the paper. A has some of them "sliding" across the page.

L likes to sort and put the cars away in this car storage container that I think holds 100 cars.

L loves to color with markers! Good thing they are "washable", since he also likes to color himself sometimes. Here he is coloring a mickey mouse coloring book from Dollar Tree.

Through most of the time baby J was hanging out on the Cars couch.