Our first week of Tot School seemed to be very successful. I think her favourite activity of the week was 'painting' with a bingo dabber. It poured all day Tuesday, so I thought it would be a great day for this activity.
I decided to keep her in her jammies, to save her clothes. A stained pair of PJs is no big deal, but I was afraid of ruining something nice.
She did put the dabber in her mouth a few times, but not as much as I had expected. I gently showed her how to dab with it and told her we don't eat it. Either way, she ended up with a slightly pink tongue, lips and nose!
Oops :-)
Admiring her work.
This was fun!
We did plenty of activities the rest of the week, including the pom and pipe cleaners that I wrote about last Monday.
As I mentioned earlier, Tuesday was a very rainy day, so we played 'fetch' the ball down the hall. I threw a baseball, a spiny ball and a ball that lit up with contact down the hall. She chased and brought them back over and over. It helped run off some pent up energy and kept her occupied for almost 45 minutes! Pardon the state of my hall, we are currently in a tiny apartment and this is my storage area. Those are her Christmas and Easter dresses hanging on the wall!
Tuesday night, I spent 4 hours rearranging the hallway and living room to give us more running around and play space. Before this, I was rotating toys every few days. Now, she has access to everything, so first thing Wednesday morning she started hauling everything out! Wednesday is our playgroup day, it takes place at the community centre, Salean spends most of the time running from area to area. Wednesday afternoons rock for Mommy because she actually sleeps two hours after playgroup, so Wednesday isn't the best day for Tot School here. The most we got in was counting cereal at playgroup snack time. She also spent another 45 minutes or so playing with her poms and cup. She saw them on the shelf and reached for them, pointing and saying "Da!", which is her way of saying "I want that!"
Thursday, we tried some sock sorting. My child has a strange obsession with socks. They are something to be danced with, tossed in the air, flung around and cuddled. So, I thought, what better way to get in some sorting practice than to sort socks!
I set a blue one on the bench and dumped the rest in her bucket I asked her to find another blue one, She proceeded to dump them, scoop them, everything but find a matching one.
She even tried to put one on! She did the same with her shoe at playgroup Wednesday, putting her sock/shoe on by setting it on the foot :-)
Friday ended up being a busy day. Daddy was home from work early, so he took us out to see the Easter Bunny (which ended up being a bawl fest), to look at motorcycles and out to dinner. We got some learning time in before we went out, though.
No, my child does not drink pop...according to Daddy, she steals bottles from him. I am sure this is just his excuse to avoid putting the in the recycling. But, she has about half a dozen stashed in various place around the room and she loves to toss, shake and kick them around.
We have 3 ring stackers, she loves them all! The first we got is the generic plastic one that just about every kid has. I am not crazy about it because it is cone shaped. Unless you stack them in the correct order, you can't get all the rings on, and this gets confusing and frustrating for her because she gets to the top and has rings to stack but no space to stack them.
The other two we got from family for Christmas. On is a colourful wooden ring stacker and the other is a wooden one decorated like a penguin. They are both labeled 18 months, but I brought the colourful one out a few weeks ago. She loved it! If she is paying attention, she can put the rings on the dowel fairly easily. I usually talk to her about the colours, naming them as she puts the on. Sometimes I lay them out flat on the table and point out which is first, second etc. Usually she ignores me and stacks them the way she wants.
She really likes the penguin one as well, I just brought it out last week. I don't think she is quite ready for it. The pieces are heavier and thicker, so she has a hard time stacking them. She really does not get the plastic flipper part laying on the floor by her knee. I have let her play with it twice and she has gotten really frustrated both times, although Friday she tried to combine them, so she didn't get as frustrated as she did the first time. I think I may put this one away for a few weeks until she has more practice with the colourful one.
The weekend was a busy one and the warmest we've had this year! We spent all day Saturday outside and we ended up with our first sunburns of the year. Being redheads, we get them fairly easily. Time to stock up on sunscreen! I also made some coloured pasta for later use. I only made one colour, bowties, if she likes that I will make more later.
So our first real week of tot school went well. I am hoping to plan more activities to go along with this. I want to start to introduce colours, but I think I may wait until about 18 months. It gives me time to collect items to go with each colour, as well.
Hope everyone had a great week!
~Natasha
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