October Sensory Tub - Halloween

How much fun is this?!
It's a sensory tub, Halloween style! I got the idea from one of my favorite blogs, Chasing Cheerios.

Sensory tubs are great because they help children explore their senses and develop important cognitive skills. They're also great for adults because they force us to use our imagination and unearth creative skills in order to make them! :) I had so much fun making this one that I went ahead and planned out sensory tub themes for the next 12 months. :)

Most importantly, James L-O-V-E-D this tub. He asks for it all the time and spends a looong time counting and sorting the items, scooping the beans, filling and unfilling the little pumpkin... it was cute how much he liked it.

Bean Bags

I've been in a really crafty mood lately, so I decided to whip up a few bean bags for James to play and learn with. Well, they were so easy to make that a few turned into 18!

I made matching pairs for each color/pattern. I was going to give them to James for Christmas, but I couldn't wait. We are having so much fun with them! We throw them, match them, play catch, hit them with rhythm sticks, play hide and seek with them - there is so much you can do!

Tot Book - Noah's Ark

I got this clever idea from the 1+1+1=1 website and immediately made one of my own for James!I modified the pattern a little to make it work for us: I made pockets for the mini books instead of taping them down (I know James would rip them out). Also the original has paper clips, which I know James would be tempted to eat, and the pockets keep everything in place anyway. I decorated with stickers to make it even more fun. :)

I expected to wait and introduce the book in a few months, but curiosity got the better of both of us and I gave it to him early. I was surprised at how much he liked and understood it.
Of course the pockets were a huge hit and he kept hiding Noah in them ("where'd Noah go?!" he'd say). He loved all the animal stickers and kept counting them out loud ("two penguins, two bees, two zebras!"). Some of the stickers are soft, some are shiny and once again he surprised me by pointing out which were which ("oooo duck soft!").

It was cute to see him enjoy my homemade creation! I really enjoyed making it too. Truth be told it's a bit tedious with all the printing & cutting, but I like that kind of work. :) I'm almost finished with a Finding Nemo book and I'm looking into finding graphics for a Sesame Street book.

Carisa at 1+1+1=1 has created lots of these books and has graciously shared her patterns for them - click here to make one of your own!

Tot School - The Letter X

~James is 29 months~

Our letter of the week was Xx. We also had fun with Halloween-y type stuff. :)

Art & Music:
We made this "x-ray" X by cutting "bones" out of black construction paper and then coloring the bones with white chalk.

Once a week we attend an outdoor art class. Sadly, James is showing a real disinterest in all things crafty. (I'm SO bummed!) I did manage to get him to stamp a few of these images before his anti-crafting rally began. ;)

James enjoyed singing songs and banging away on his new xylophone. We made up some funny Dr. Seuss type songs about the letter X. (the fox with polka-dot sox ate lox in a box) :) Another time we made up color and shape songs and "played" the shapes with rhythm sticks.

Letters & Numbers:
Desperate for X ideas, I put together this tic-tac-toe game using some foam letters I had on hand. I think James *almost* understood the game.

James practiced his tracing skills on this erasable letter card. This kept his attention for a good 20 minutes - he'd color in the X, then erase the card and start all over again.

Our outdoor alphabet - you can never go wrong with sidewalk chalk!

Another (far-reaching) X idea - James got a (small) kick out of this treasure map I made for him. He moved his little ship along the dotted lines to find where X marked the spot. :)




A very exciting thing happened this week - James learned how to read and spell his name! I found these big wooden letters at Michael's when I was pregnant and planned to paint them and hang them in his nursery. 2.5 years later and they're no where near a wall. :)

I've also been working on letter sounds with James - here's a video clip of him sounding out the letters in his name. It's hard to hear him say "mmm" and his "a" needs some fine-tuning, but otherwise he did a GREAT job!

I made these little pumpkin stick manipulatives. James had fun sorting them in numerical order into these popsicle containers.

Calling out numbers while playing with a number mat.

Science & Nature:
I made this little sensory display for James. He spent so much time exploring the gourds, talking about which were bumpy and which were smooth.

We took a long walk around the Botanical Gardens.

We had a playdate at the Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute (BUEI). They have a simulator there that James loves and lots of other fun things to explore.

Other fun activities:
Since he was so keen on matching last week, I thought these homemade Halloween matching cards would be a hit. Silly mommy - I laid them out, he took one look at them and proceeded to clean them up.

Pouring - James did a great job pouring water and mini erasers from one container to another. I love the look of satisfaction and concentration on his face. This is hard work for little ones! :)

James was very focused on arranging like shapes in a line. There are so many fun things you can do with these shapes from this Melissa & Doug puzzle.

These opposites cards were a HUGE hit this week. James amazed Paul and I by recalling 95% of the cards after seeing them only once before.
This falls in line with something we've noticed this week - it's as though a switch flipped on inside James' brain. Suddenly he's talking & understanding so much more. One warm day he said to me, "Outside is hot. James is hot. Is Mama hot?" We've been having little conversations all week and I'm loving it!

I've been working on creating a more independent environment for James. I created accessible learning stations in his playroom - click here to see more pics. I moved his shoes to an area where he can get them, I created a little section inside the refrigerator where he can help himself to healthy snacks and I've been letting him pour his own drinks (with a little help) :) He is LOVING his new independence and I can see his self-confidence growing.

Click on the button to the left to see what others are doing with their tots!

James' World

Last year I made a post about James' new playroom. It has since evolved into a playroom/classroom and it's my favorite room in the house! Wish I had some place like this when I was a kid!

I always enjoy seeing other people's playing/learning spaces, and since a few people have asked me to, I thought I'd share some pics of what ours looks like...

The room is actually meant to be used as a dining room so it's situated adjacent to the kitchen and living room making it a perfect location for a playroom! It gets nice and sunny in there and those windows look out to the ocean. :) (see why it's my favorite room?) The book nook is in the back corner. The top two shelves of the bookcase hold some of my teaching tools - thankfully I found a new method of storage since this picture was taken (see below).

To the right of the book nook. There's an open patio that we use for messy activities. It's also where I keep my container garden. To the right of the doors is James' "discovery table" (see close up below). I change it up often to keep him interested. That cute little Bobby car and play kitchen are, so far, a total waste of money. He could care less about them for now. :(

Here's an updated picture of my new storage shelf, which my sweet husband installed (thanks, honey!). It's full of more teaching tools. I used to have everything crammed onto the bookcase and in our office, but now it's all in the same room - yay!

Facing the wall opposite the patio doors. Notice the cute kitty on the mat. :} Both cats LOVE sleeping in the playroom! In the corner is the little art station. I keep the basic supplies (crayons & chalk) out in the open, but all the messy stuff (i.e. the good stuff) is kept in my craft closet in our office. To the right of the art station is his ABC station (close up below). I rotate the items on this station, too. Some times I'll put out books, magnetic letters, ABC color pages, etc.

Another shot from the same angle, but in this one you can see his work table, the seasonal bulletin board (close up below) and some of his past art work. He just started an art class this month, so the bulletin board will be full of little masterpieces :) in a few months.

Close ups of ABC station & discovery table. During Tot School time I move the stuff off the discovery table and lay out 3-4 trays of different activities.

Close up of seasonal bulletin board - this is where I get to use all that scrap paper I own and never use otherwise! I'll have to figure out a new way to adhere the artwork to the board though since my little monkey likes to climb up on his chair, pull out the push pins, and bring them to me saying, "owie, mama." (yikes!) Guess I should take the hint!

And finally a cute piece of artwork near the doorway. :)

Tot School - The Letter Y

~James is 29 months~

This week we focused on the letter Yy. We decorated this Y with yellow yarn - James really liked using the big glue bottle, but got annoyed when the glue got on his hands!




He had fun playing with the skein of yarn, too. He kept calling it "Big Dude", which is what he calls Big Bird (Sesame Street) - here he's making Big Dude and Grover dance. :)

I put together this Y tray and left it out all week. Big mistake - the Y's ended up all over the house. :)

We fingerpainted with yogurt and once James realized what he was painting with he declared it was time to "paint tongue!" :)

I happened to find this book at The Barn (Bermuda's version of a Goodwill) for 25 cents! It's part of a series called Alphatales. I found a few more there too, but I had to go here to order the rest.




We had a little yoga session one morning. James had a great time doing this and it was so cute to hear his little voice say "Namaste". I think we'll have to make yoga a regular part of our routine! (couldn't take a pic of this as I was doing yoga with him!)

Another fun activity we did was to hunt around his playroom for yellow things. I'm going to put together an I Spy book for James, an idea I got from 1+1+1=1. We made that Y out of yellow chenille sticks.

Other things we did this week:
We've been going on lots of walks lately now that the humidity is starting to dissipate. Bermuda is one big garden - lots of beautiful flowers, plants and trees every where you look.

We found this giant pod under one of the Poinsettia trees in our neighborhood. We also gathered a baggie of nature items and we spent some time viewing them under a little magnifying glass. James thought this was so much fun we did it a few more times during the week.

Letters

• bottle cap spelling. I found this idea on 1+1+1=1. James did a great job!
• putting small pasta on a word hunt grid I tore out of an activity book. James loves looking at letters and calling out their names, so I thought he'd enjoy this activity. Nope! He thought it was much more fun to roll his *new car over the pasta instead, which of course was totally fine with me. Who knew pasta could be so versatile?!
• playing with letters on a magnetic board

*James is finally showing interest in using the potty! Hooray!! He did a great job this week and got a new toy car as a reward. I know some people don't believe in this method, but it works for us! (I've been collecting these "new" cars from The Barn & garage sales for months!)

Numbers

• this foam number puzzle was a great find at the local dollar store (where nothing is actually a dollar). :)
• (I didn't get a picture of this) One day James completely surprised me by showing me he knows how to subtract! He was playing with some small erasers and began taking one away and counting what was leftover until they were all gone. His math-loving daddy was very proud!

Fine Motor

• Sorting - I realized I have a goldmine of learning tools in my closet - board games! James pulled out this chess board and played with it for almost an hour. He sorted the pieces so each one had its own square, then matched the pieces to their corresponding color square. He kept calling the bishop "yawn" - I guess because the piece has a slit at the top of it that maybe looks like a mouth yawning? :) I love the way kids think!
  
• Sorting - James LOVED this activity. I've had these little birds for who knows how long. I'm in search of some tongs to make this activity more challenging.
  
• Buttoning - trying out the button snake I made. James didn't really get into this activity though, so I set it aside and we'll try again another time. :)

Matching

• colors/textures - this puzzle set has LOTS of pieces and I realized James enjoys this activity more when there are fewer pieces to work with.
• I found this pack of 8 classroom borders at a teaching supply store for $2. I cut up two of the borders and made a matching game out of it. James had so much fun matching the constellations and calling out the animal and color names. I'm glad he's into matching now - I have SO many ideas for this kind of activity!

Matching/Counting/Sorting - James' favorite activity this week was this nut and bolt task. I like that it's self correcting. I thought it would be more challenging for him to match up the size of the nut with the correct bolt, but he mastered it very quickly. After counting them, he lined up the bolts according to size and said, "small, big, VERY big!" :)

We had a really fun week! And, if you're not too bored of this post, there's just a couple more school related things I wanted to share:

Paul and I made a decision this past week and I'm SO excited about it! We decided I'm going to homeschool James for his preschool years. There are several private schools on the island that I've heard are quite good for the primary and junior high years and I feel comfortable sending him to one of them later on. There's also a great Montessori school here too which leads me to my next thought...

Over the past few months I noticed I've been leaning more toward Montessori inspired learning. I've done some reading on it lately and I think the concepts behind the method are wonderful. I also love how the classrooms are set up. I've been trying to introduce more of the Montessori style into our home. There are loads of blogs out there with ideas on how to do this in an easy and economical way. I was referred to this great online store called Montessori Services. I ordered a bunch of stuff from them recently, but since they don't ship to Bermuda (Grandpa is forwarding it down to us - thanks, Dad!), it'll be a while before we see it.

Click on the button to the left for more great Tot School ideas!

Button Snake

I found this FUN idea on What Did We Do All Day and quickly made one for James. It's a great way to teach children how to button.

It's sooo easy to make - you attach a button to the end of a ribbon, then cut slits into little squares of felt and voila! a button snake is born. I made a loop at the "tail" end of the snake to act as a stop and also so James could carry it around, which he did. :)

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