Tot School - The Letter V

~James is 30 months~

V v what begins with V? Venus, volcano, vowels, violins, van, vegetables, and violets in a vase! We had a very fun week exploring the letter Vv. I also put together lots of pumpkin-related activities. (SO excited for Halloween this year!)

Art & Music:
Hooray, James was interested in crafts this week! He glued all the pieces, I gently placed them on the paper and he smashed them all into place. :) While we did this craft we listened to violin music. I was SO happy to find out James likes classical music just as much as I do! We listened to (my fav) Concerto in D minor for two violins and when it was over James said, "More music!"

We take an art class every Monday; here are a couple recent masterpieces.

Letters & Numbers:
We pulled out our trusty alphabet puzzle (LOVE this puzzle - I use it for so many activities) and talked about vowels. James has also been really into lining things up lately. After he finished lining up these letters he said very proudly, "Ooo, look at this!" (yes, we have pink carpet - not my choice!)

I printed out this cute V activity from Kidsoup. James had fun with it and kept talking about the vacuum cleaner and how noisy it is. :)

James has been counting like a madman! Thanks to Sesame Street & Muzzy, he's mastered counting to 10 in Spanish and Mandarin Chinese.

I found some cute pumpkin calendar inserts, James played with these for a good 20 minutes. Rearranging the sequence, calling out the numbers.

Science & Nature:
James had a little Tot School session with daddy (mommy was busy at the spa)! They talked about and looked at pictures of Venus and watched videos of volcanoes on Youtube. From the sounds of it, they both really enjoyed their school time together - perhaps Daddy will have to join in Tot School more often! (note: the Venus craft was a part of a larger project James and I did for Paul's birthday.)

Practical Life:
Had I not seen it on other blogs I never would've thought to have James help me with laundry. I wish I had gotten a picture of him helping me load the dryer. He had such a big smile on his face the whole time and took the job very seriously. I can't wait until he's old enough to change the litter box!

We spent one whole day just doing veggie related things. We planted James' favorite vegetable, broccoli. This was such a fun activity to do with James. I really let him do most of the work and I was so proud at how focused he was. He treated those little seedlings like they were his babies. Sadly, the seedlings didn't make it more than 24 hours. By the next morning the birds had almost entirely eaten them. I *think* I managed to save a couple... we'll see.

We also made a delicious harvest vegetable soup. James poured all the ingredients into the crockpot. I decided to skip taking photos on this one since James really needed my help.



Other activities:
On our veggie day we played with this vegetable matching activity. Another great find from Kidsoup. James did a great job matching the cards and then went through them all counting, "one broccoli, two broccoli". :)

I was so excited to find this cute pumpkin muffin tin. I had some mini Halloween erasers on hand and put together this sorting activity. James enjoyed it so much he did it several times throughout the week.






Another big hit was this color puff/tong transfer activity. James sorted the 4 colors into individual pumpkins. Actually, he said he was "feeding" the pumpkins. :) (oh how I love that kid!)
We had SO much fun with these yarn pumpkins I made as well as our homemade pumpkin playdough. Click here and here for separate posts about both of them.





Finally, we had fun searching for orange stuff for the I Spy book I am (eventually) going to make.

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