tot school

Noah is 13 months old.

Featured Color: Orange

We started a new color for our "color of the day/week/how ever long I decide" :) I chose orange to go along with all of the fall/Halloween things we've been doing. We started the week off with another color hunt; here is what we found...

clockwise from the left: foam number puzzle pieces, Thomas trains (Rusty and the Halloween caboose), pumpkin Pezdispenser, horse pieces from the Fridge Farm, tiger/cheetah Little People animals, Tonka Chuck truck, foam pumpkin sitckers, color & fruit/veggie flashcards from Homeschool Creations, mini book with orange cover, fake mini pumpkin, orange pompoms, orange puzzle piece

Noah came back to his color box again and again this week. I just let him explore the different things how ever he wanted. The only structured thing I attempted with these materials this week was working on recognizing the pictures in the flashcard sets as well as some very basic matching with them. Noah did will with the recognition, but he just isn't ready for matching yet. But we'll try again later:)

I plan on continuing with the color orange through the end of the month so that we can get our fill with Halloween stuff. Then I think we may move onto brown? I want to keep the colors seasonal as much as possible so I can do seasonal/color-specific crafts...but I just can't seem to get excited about brown. But I want to save red for closer to Christmas, so I think brown will be the color for November.

Theme: Fall

I made Noah a sensory box of fall items. I borrowed this idea from Crunchy and Green via The Roger's Family Blog:) I had some silk leaves, mini fake pumpkins/gourds, and pinecones left over from my fall decorating that I added to his box.

Noah really enjoyed this activity! He particularly liked chewing on the stems of the pumpkins/gourds....not exactly what I had in mind, but whatever works!

He also enjoyed dumping everything out of the box and then filling it back up again. I tried to help him recognize the words pumpkin, gourd, leaf, and pinecone. He knows pumpkin really well now:)

Noah is slowing learning the parts of the face. He knows eyes, nose, and mouth and sometimes ears so far. I had originally planned on doing some kind of art project with these jack-o-lantern pieces, but ended up using them to reinforce the parts of the face!

Usually Noah will only point to the parts on other people's faces, so this was a different way of seeing what he knew. He did fairly well for the first few tries and really seemed to enjoy it:) This will be an activity I'll do again for sure.

I also wanted to let Noah do some free drawing/coloring with fall colors (especially orange). I have personally found that highlighter comes off of things easier than regular markers or crayons! Plus Noah doesn't try to eat highlighters, so they tend to be our medium of choice.

Even so, Noah was much more interested in fitting the caps of the highlighters on, off, and together. So this art project turned into fine motor work:)

We also continued reading the same books as last week. I have added the Shelfari application to the sidebar like I've seen several others do. I'll update that as we change the books in Noah's reading bag. But we didn't make it to the library this week, so we've only got those several fall/Halloween books that we've bought for Noah to read for now.

Miscellaneous Tot School

I have wanted Noah to try pompoms in a formula container for a while, and I finally found our old formula container this week! He loves working with pompoms, and this was no exception...but he did have to really concentrate on getting the pompom into that small hole:)

MegaBlocks are always a big hit with Noah:) He especially loves his farm set he got on his birthday. I always try to reinforce animal names & sounds when he plays with this.

Noah also got a BIG present from his Granny (my mom) this week...his very own Thomas the Tank Engine train table! This was originally going to be a Christmas gift, but she decided to go ahead and give it to him. Of course he had as much fun playing in its boxes as playing with the actual table:)

The room we use as Noah's playroom is actually a sun porch addition to our house and it isn't heated, so the table is being kept in his room at least for now. It has been really nice having it there because he will wander in and out of his room on his own now, playing independently with his trains:)

I am also putting his other Tot School items on the table now for the cold months. He is doing really great with that as well. I actually like putting the things on his table better because he doesn't have the option of pulling every toy and book off of the shelf like in the playroom. Less mess=happy mommy:)

That's all for this week!

------------------------

Be sure to see what others are doing for Tot School and share your own ideas at 1+1+1=1!!