tot school & learning through love - more with orange, fall, & halloween:)

Noah is 13 months old.

I'm excited to be linking up to both Tot School and Learning Through Love this week! I've been doing Tot School for a while now with Carissa, and I think I'll also start participating in Learning Through Love with Susana. I love both of their blogs:)

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We had a fun week this week! I had two days off from my nursing classes because it was fall break on campus:) So I had two full days home with Noah in addition to my regular half days I usually have which was very nice!

Oh how I miss my summer days of staying home with him all the time...I feel conflicted sometimes about staying home versus doing nursing. I have a real passion for both. I'm definitely planning on finishing school and getting my BSN, but I think ideally I'll end up working part time and then staying home/homeschooling Noah the rest of the time. This is something I am seriously in prayer about, so we'll see what God has in store for us:)

Theme: Fall/Halloween

I picked up some Halloween erasers for Noah at Walmart this week. He loved putting them into the ice cube tray...great 1-to-1 correspondence/fine motor work. He still isn't sorting yet, but I still tried. I also hope next week to introduce tongs or a spoon or something to work on transferring them a different way.

Noah also made another pumpkin patch picture this week. Since we already have one for our house, we made one for his Granny. Now it is proudly displayed on the fridge, of course:)
He has improved a lot from the last time we made a picture like this! He put every sticker on by himself this time...I was impressed!

Noah continued to play in his fall sensory box. He also played with bigger fake pumpkins/gourds at his Granny's house. And by playing, I mean he mostly chews on them:)

We also added a couple of new fall/Halloween books to our list:

The Scarecrow and the Spider by Todd Aaron Smith

I'm Not Scared of Halloween Night by Laurie Lazzaro Knowlton

Carissa had recommended these, and we just happened to find them on sale at our local Family Christian store! Noah really likes them both, and they've been added to our Shelfari over on the right incase you're interested in them:)

Theme: Orange

We continued with the color orange this week, and Noah kept playing a lot in his color box.

I tried another twist on hide-and-seek bowls....I used uncooked pasta and orange pompoms. Only I didn't have quite enough pasta to cover up the pompoms...but Noah didn't mind, and I just used what I had in the pantry:)
He liked the pasta MUCH better than the rice I tried before. He didn't really do much with the pompoms, but he did have LOTS of fun messing in the pasta, transferring it between the containers, digging around, and such.

We also read quite a few color books, especially concentrating on the sections/pages about orange.

Noah wanted to play with his foam number tiles many times this week, so I pulled out the orange ones and reinforced the color as he played.

Additional Stuff

This is more of a life skill that real tot school, but I thought I'd include it. Noah ate with a fork independently for the first time this week! He was quite proud of himself and thought it was hilarious to spear the food on the fork.

In other life skill-esque things, Noah added two new words to his vocabulary this week! He said "play" and "dance." If you've been reading here for any length of time, you know that these are probably Noah's two favorite activities, especially dancing! It is so exciting to hear new words from Noah...he is very proud of himself when he accomplishes stuff like that:)

He played with his Fridge Farm & Bubble Wash a ton this week! He is finally playing with it correctly too, and is able to make matched on his own. He also knows which magnets go where.
He actually was playing in his color box one day and found the orange horse magnets that go to the farm and took them back into the kitchen so he could put it where it belonged...funny boy:)

He played with his puzzles a few times....he still has trouble getting the pieces to fit into the slots, but he can match the pieces to the correct area.

He also played more with pompoms in his old formula container. He really enjoys this fine motor activity! I try to reinforce colors with this too..

Finally, Noah has seriously been enjoying the Brainy Baby Animals dvd we won from Carissa's 1000 Subscribers giveaways. He especially loves to dance to the songs:) I'm so excited we won that particular giveaway...I'm planning on adding more Brainy Baby products to our stash soon!

That's what we've been up to this week! See what others are doing for Tot School and share you own ideas and experiences at 1+1+1=1!