Tot School

I'm finding that often it's the first few days of the week that I have time for some formal Tot School sessions with Silas.   This week was no different!  I'm aiming for 2 days a week where we sit down and go through his boxes (I use plastic shoe boxes to organize his 'tot trays') and choose a few activities.  On Tuesday he did three pages from Kumon's "Let's Cut Paper" book.  He enjoyed it, but will like the more advanced pages.  I got this book for him last Christmas and we're only just starting it - that's why I love Tot School.  I find the time for these kinds of things!  He's fighting me on the 'one hand on the scissors' guideline (wants to use two hands to open and close them), but in the end he realized it worked a lot better. He's really progressed since that time a few weeks ago when I started him on snipping across strips of coloured paper!

I also pulled out a bingo dabber I bought and used it on a letters page.  Silas loves to dab!  He hasn't used one before either but he was begging for more pages after the first session.  I just printed out a page of letters and had him dab the "S"s he could find as well as filling in a few big letter "S"s on a page.  Silas, of course, loves the letter "S".

Carisa at 1+1+1=1 has given such rave reviews of Leap Frog Letter Factory that I added to an order from Amazon in order to qualify for free shipping.  Silas doesn't watch tv (we don't have it) but he does have a few dvd's. I'm still a little on the fence when it comes to "educational" movies for kids, but I have to say that Silas really enjoys this one.  In fact, he packed it around with him everywhere he went - to town, to bed, in the car - just so he could look at the cover and show it to people!  He also enjoyed the game included and we played it together (I had to run the remote). He doesn't know all his letters, but I believe this will really help him figure some of them out.  For instance, he now knows "R" because he love race cars, and this is what the "R" is all about in this movie!

And finally, I've noticed that Silas is very into pouring in the bathtub, and getting quite good at it!  The rice and pasta are not all that interesting to him, too easy I think, but he likes water.  I think I'll start giving him a little just at the table to pour his own milk or water at meals and snacks and see what happens.

Oliver is now officially one!  His birthday was on Tuesday, so I guess now he's graduated from Tiny Tot and is now in the Tot School portion?  I feel that Silas may be ready for a more preschool like program, but I'll definitely be sticking with what we're doing for summer.  But Ollie is now on board so I may set out some more formal stuff for him next week, too.  Here's what he was up to this week:

Silas built him some towers to knock down out of cleaned milk carton with the top taped down (so they were rectangular rather than peaked at the top).  They both enjoyed this!  Silas is great at being a big brother, so once I pointed out how he could help Oliver enjoy this activity, he was right into it.

As a quick distraction for him, I grabbed this bucket of feathers and showed him how to blow on them.  Here he is, mid-blow, making the feathers puff up a bit.  He was pretty proud of himself!

This was a gift to him (thanks, Grami!) for his birthday.  Fascinating!  He played with this a lot over the week.


Now that I've gotten used to packing the camera around with me (almost) everywhere we go, I've realized that the boys and I do a lot of really great stuff.  "Stuff" that really helps them learn about the world around them, the specific one they live in.  Someday I'll be expanding those borders a bit, but for now I'm just really grateful for our beautiful outdoor setting!  I'll be posting about a little more "Life School" later this week!

I'm a consultant for Usborne so I have a big stash of these fantastic books.  The boys both really enjoy them and I often find them looking through a book on their own in my bedroom.  Here are some of the big hits this week as far as books go:





For more ideas and information on Tot School, please see 1+1+1=1.