To start with, this was the original Tot School arrangement. It worked best with both of them sitting at the table involved in there own activities. Occasionally Oliver would want down and I'd introduce him to some other floor activity (like the fridge magnets below). I would have liked to combine their activities for simplicity, but it seemed like half the things Silas would like to do, Oliver would just eat, you know? On the other hand, trying to coordinate two different activities at the same time, and still stay true to the spirit of Tot School (spending some focused time with your child), was a huge challenge.
Although, now that I'm looking through the pictures, there are an awful lot of Oliver activities on the floor, aren't there? But I felt like I was cheating by having Oliver doing his own thing on the floor while I focused on Silas's less "do what you will" activities that involved following directions or at least obeying basic rules such as "Baby Alligators are NOT allowed to paint".
Oliver has enjoyed this farm set all month. He's especially into the chickens right now! It helps that our toy rotations always include trucks, tractors and/or trailers so he can haul them around the house too.
Silas knows all the letters in his name, which really surprised me! Carisa of 1+1+1=1 was right! Leap Frog's Letter Factory DVD really does work! I had know idea he was aware of anything other than the S's in his name. That's his "t" he added at the bottom by the way. That's got to be his all time favorite letter. And, as you can see below, we drew a lot of them! He's so into letters, which I love. I've always adored reading, taught myself to read at the age of four, and I cannot wait until Silas is ready to move on past letter recognition, "I made a T!" and "Sssss starts with song, mom!" comments that I hear all day long (which always make me smile, too!). By the way, the "T" that he made below came out of nowhere on the 6th of September. I took his picture because he was soooo proud of himself - and because he's darn cute that way!
Here's one way I try to cater to Oliver's love of eating the activity! Banana coins to insert into the container. It was a little tricky for him, but non-frustrating because he could always eat them if they wouldn't go down! The popsicle sticks were better - he inserted and removed them for quite some time about three days in a row.
Here's Silas reading his beloved, well worn teddy a story, I belive it was Baby Beluga by Raffi. It was neat listening to him read the story - another first for Silas, he's never 'read' a book to anyone or anything that I know of. Since this photo was taken he's also started to 'read' favorite books to Oliver now and then.
Here's something else that really occupied the two boys: a masking tape road all over the house, with box bridges, tunnels and "crashes" (no ramp on one side of the bridge) complete with fisher price houses, airport and garage. They loved this game! Silas in particular played all afternoon! This was, of course, my mother's doing. She has the boys for a full day while I work on Wednesdays. You can see why they love it there!
There have been quite a few road trips this month what with trying to get all of our passports organized, a cousin's wedding, a family apple picking day and some geocaching with dad. But our boys are getting to be quite the travellers, as you can plainly see:
This is Silas giving us directions as he follows the map from the back seat. The directions went something like this: "You go past the trees, and down the hill, over the bridge, then drive for a long, long time. Then turn left and drive some more, past the town and into the hotel. And that's how we get there!" It was very enlightening. He's been really interested in maps lately, and globes. I wouldn't be surprised if a globe showed up under the Christmas tree this year!
After apple picking - an exhausting adventure to be sure!
Geocaching (or "treasuring" as Silas calls it) with dad. We got started on this through Scott's parents. Scott is definitely hooked, I like being able to stop at neat places around the province rather than drive past them all so we can see how far we get in one day (yawn!). Silas loves the little toys left in the boxes that we trade for by leaving our own little toys in the boxes. And Oliver? He's happy just to be let out of the car seat!
Just last week there was a Rivers Day in town, celebrating and raising awareness around the rivers in our valley, both of which are salmon habitat. Silas loves to fish, they both love anything to do with fishes, so it goes without saying that they enjoyed this day! I love the expression on Silas's face as he watched a salmon dissection!
And that's a very brief summary of our month together. Coming up soon is our new way to do Tot School. I've completely rearranged the schedule over the last week and it seems to be working out really well for us all. Hope you come back soon to check it out! For more really great tot school posts, please see this link.
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