tot school - thanksgiving time:)

Noah is 14 months old.

Finally I feel like we had a good week of Tot School! We focused on Thanksgiving and the color brown along with some other general activities. I think we will probably go ahead and move into Christmas things now too. I've already got all of our Christmas decorations up, plus I did most of our Thanksgiving activities this week because my brother & his family from Michigan are coming for next week. Our actual Thanksgiving week will probably be short on structured school time, but I know Noah will have LOTS of fun with his cousin Peyton (age 7) and his other cousins he sees all the time:)

Now..on to this week!

Color Theme: Brown

I wasn't very excited about using brown for our special color, but once I started looking for things to put in Noah's color box, I realized there was actually a lot to use!

He had lots of fun exploring all the things we found over the week, but he especially liked the pine cone:)

Some things we included in the color box (besides the pine cone) included a small teddy bear, some ribbons, several Little People animals, a brown cow puzzle piece, train tracks (from his Thomas collection), MegaBlok pieces (like a fence from his farm set), and color cards from Homeschool Creations.

Finally, Noah enjoyed reading Brown Bear Brown Bear by Bill Martin Jr./Eric Carle to go along with his color theme. This is his absolute FAVORITE book, so this was a hit:) Brown was also an easy color to tie into our Thanksgiving themed crafts & books!

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Seasonal Theme: Thanksgiving

I had several crafts planned for Thanksgiving. First, Noah made fingerprint indian corn.

I got this idea from Susana at My Family My Forever...the post is here. We started without the paci, but I quickly learned that paint looks tasty, so the paci went in. Thank you, Crayola, for making nontoxic paint! Noah had fun making the prints on the corn, but had more fun mixing the paints together in the plate:)

Noah also made a picture using Thanksgiving themed foam stickers.

Here are the finished projects, proudly displayed on the fridge:)

The other craft Noah did I am proud to say I came up with all on my own! Not that its all that exciting or creative, but I think it turned out rather cute! And if you've seen something else like it out there, I promise I didn't steal it from anyone:)

I took a half-sphere of floral foam and painted it brown. Then I let Noah stick feathers in it. He had lots of fun exploring with the feathers...this was the first time I have used any with him.

He did a really good job getting the feathers in the foam, but wanted to keep pulling them out again. That made some yucky places in the foam (since it was painted), but I just filled those places in with extra feathers.

Add in some wiggly eyes and a paper beak and viola! A little turkey made by my little turkey:)

Ignore those spots too...Noah got a little aggressive with the foam and I didn't feel like touching up the paint:)

Noah also read some Thanksgiving/fall themed books this week. Actually, he only read one Thanksgiving book because that is all I could find....ANYWHERE. There are plenty of Christmas books to go around, but I literally only found ONE Thanksgiving book in all the stores in my area. So, what he did read included:

My Thanksgiving Prayer by Crystal Bowman

and some fall themed books we've read before...

Welcome Fall by Jill Ackerman

The Scarecrow and the Spider by Todd Aaron Smith

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General Tot School

We spent the first half of the week staying at my parent's house while my mom was out of town. My dad is disabled and needs someone with him all the time, so we were happy to stay over and help out:) Noah always enjoyed time at Granny and Poppa's house, so this was great:)

He had lots of fun playing in Granny's kitchen while I cooked dinner at night. I made spaghetti one evening, and let him play with some of the extra pieces.

He LOVED sticking the pasta in an empty pepper container. He did extremely well with this too...I never helped him at all!

He also started breaking the pasta off inside the container and made a little maraca:) I love it when he can occupy himself!

Noah also played with lots of other things this week, but probably his favorite thing was his alphabet puzzle book. He doesn't put the pieces back in, but he loves taking them out:) It is also great for learning new vocabulary. He can identify most of the pieces by name when asked.

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Life School

One other fun thing we did this week was visit Build A Bear. We did some Christmas shopping at a mall in a nearby big city, and we just couldn't resist letting Noah make a special Christmas moose:)

Silly me, though, didn't have my camera! But, Jimmy and I were SO proud of Noah! He had to wait in line, and he was so very patient. When it was his turn, he was polite and let the person have his moose to stuff without any issues (he sometimes throws a tantrum when you take things from him). Actually, he was very good the whole day! Don't you just love it when your child acts as sweetly in public as you know they can at home:)

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That's it for our week! See what others are up to at Tot School...hosted by Carisa at1+1+1=1!