.little moments.

goodbye from here..

2010-07-17T15:39:00.002-04:00

Well, I've decided to no longer post on this blog. I'm really enjoying keeping a separate daily photo project going at {365 moments}, so you can keep up with us there if you'd like. I may still share Tot School and activities like that from time to time on the new blog, but I just don't want the responsibility of that right now.

I do hope that you will continue to visit us at the new blog! So see you there:)

a new project

2010-06-23T23:00:00.001-04:00

The idea of documenting an entire year of your life through pictures is nothing new...the whole project 365 thing has been around for a while. I've really been wanting to do this, especially as Noah is growing and changing every day.

So I've started a separate blog called {365} moments that I'll be *hopefully* starting tomorrow to do it! I'm really excited, and so hope that I'll be able to keep up with everything. I think it'll be fun to come up with new picture ideas every day and to see how different our lives are one year from now. I'll still be doing tot school and such here though!

Feel free to pop over to the new blog...or not. I'm doing this one just for us:)

tot school - letter s

2010-06-20T22:00:00.001-04:00

Noah is 21 months old.

Well..here we are again! We're all moved and settled back in pretty well now, but still decided to keep tot school kind of light this past week. Given Noah's recent attitude changes, I think we'll be keeping the activities light for a while until I can get a better control of his behavior. It certainly it improving, but slowly. I have to remind myself that this is a completely normal stage and that I have to choose my battles wisely. Overall, I can't complain...even at his worst behavior moments, Noah is the best little guy I could ever ask for:)

Letter Ss

Ss is for snake, spider, silly, sort....

Noah LOVED making his Ss is for snake picture this week. He did great connecting the glue dots.

He also really enjoyed making the snake colorful with paint. Apparently this kind has purple eyes..

I also made Noah an Ss is for spider picture after seeing it on No Time for Flashcards. I say I made it because I did make it..the whole thing:( Noah absolutely refused to help with it, but I thought it was too cute not to finish.

We pulled out the playdough and made snakes, spiders, and more.

We also got a little silly with the playdough and made snot. Yes I just typed snot....hey, it went with the Ss theme!

Noah worked on sorting pasta. Actually, he enjoyed pouring practice much more than the actual sorting, but at least he was happy:)

We also spent lots of time outside enjoying the sunshine! On Wednesday, our life group (bible study) at church finished up for the summer with a pool party and potluck. Jimmy had to work, but Noah had an absolute ball playing the pool with the other kids (there were 9 kids there, from Noah at 21 months up to the two teenage girls). I didn't get any pictures at the party since I had to be in the pool the WHOLE time with Noah, but he sure was worn out! He didn't even wake up for me to put on his pjs!

Otherwise this week, we pulled out some old favorite activities found in the move...like pipe cleaners into a spice container.

Another fun thing we've been doing lately is working on learning the beat with music. Noah LOVES the Seeds Family Worship music, so we've been using that to pat the beat on our bellies, dance, and praise God all at the same time:)

Noah has a new-found love of coloring since we've set up an art table in his room. He especially enjoyed making Father's Day cards for Daddy and Papa:)

That's it for out week! See what others are up to in tot school and share your own ideas at 1+1+1=1!

love you daddy...

2010-06-20T11:25:00.000-04:00

i love you daddy!

tot school - letter x & random

2010-06-07T01:15:00.004-04:00

Noah is 20 months old.

I will apologize upfront for my lack of pictures this week. Despite me never seeming to have the camera around, we finally really had a great week of tot school:)

Xx is for x-ray

For Noah's letter page, I tried to tape off a negative space painting to look kind of like an x-ray of a hand. We painted the whole black construction sheet with white paint using a pipe cleaner...

Certainly not the prettiest page in our letter book, but Noah enjoyed making it:)

I printed off x-ray cards from Chasing Marcus and Noah enjoyed going over those all week. He has known his body parts for a while, but seeing just the x-ray pictures was a new challenge for him!

I also made a face "puzzle" for Noah to review the parts of the face. **Please don't laugh at my VERY lacking artistic skills!!** It was also a good opportunity to review that we have two of some things. Noah put this picture together without any help..I was proud of his placement!

Sorry this picture is sideways..can't get it fixed.

Noah also worked on a more difficult puzzle to review body parts. (Sorry I forgot a picture!) I think it has 6 or 8 pieces and they are not the chunky-style he usually works with. Those were getting really easy for him, so a $1 Target find was a perfect way to test his readiness to move up. He did really well with the new puzzle by the end of the week, though he is still having trouble fitting the pieces together exactly.

Finally, we made Xx's out of bones:) Not real bones...I cut different sized bone shapes out of cardstock and Noah had to match up their lengths, then make Xx's. This was a big hit, so I hate I didn't get a picture:(

Other fun things Noah did this week included:

*Coloring a birthday card for his Papa (my dad)

*Play outside...A LOT! He worked on learning how to peddle his tricycle, splashed in his water table, and helped his Granny pull weeds in her flower beds.

*Read LOTS of like-new books (I switched around his book basket)

A couple of other things around here...

*Thanks a million for the behavior advice last week! As you can see, Noah was much happier this week, although the twos are here to stay:) I'm really working on choosing my battles and keeping his routine as predictable as possible...the latter especially seems to do wonders with his attitude.

*We're moving again! Actually we'll be moving back to my great-grandmothers old house that we lived in last year. I'm SUPER excited...while the move out was necessary at the time, we just aren't happy in our current place. We are beyond thankful that we have the opportunity to move back to such a wonderful (albeit small!) place. Hopefully things will go smoothly and we'll be settled in completely by the end of the week.

That being said, who knows what our tot school will look like next week. If I have anything to share, I'll be here, but if not, we'll be back asap when we get settled back in. Hope you all are having a fabulous summer so far, and we'll see ya when we see ya!

See what others have been up to in Tot School and share you own ideas at 1+1+1=1!

tot school & help needed!

2010-05-30T22:45:00.004-04:00

Noah is 20 months old.

I debated not to even worry with posting this week for Tot School. We've adjusted back to our regular routine after our Disney vacation just fine, but we haven't really gotten back into the groove with Tot School just yet. I'm hoping to get back to our usual routine starting tomorrow.

We didn't do anything specifically planned, but there was lots of fun with playdough! We reviewed colors & matching and worked on shapes with it, and had some imaginative play making foods too.

Noah played LOTS with his MegaBlocks and Duplos this week too. He loves to build "BIG uns" and then "cash it":)

He has also reunited his love affair with our old Guitar Hero controller. John Mayer and Elvis concerts must be played daily so Noah can jam:)

Sorry all of those pictures were from the same day, but we have seriously and officially reached the terrible twos! Noah has been fiercely defiant the past four or five days, totally disobeying even the simplest things and throwing MAJOR fits when he doesn't get his way. While I know this is to be expected at this age, his independent streak has started to worry me because he is rebelling against safety precautions (like holding hands in public, staying out of the street, etc). I've prayed and prayed for God's guidance, and I'm hoping someone out there can offer some seasoned parenting wisdom on how to not suppress Noah's needs for independence while helping him learn obedience and keeping him safe. Thanks in advance for the help:)

My apologizes for such a poor Tot School post, but we'll be back to our regular activities next week...Lord willing Noah behaves!

See what others are up to in Tot School and share your own ideas at 1+1+1=1!

we're home!

2010-05-21T16:10:00.000-04:00

We drug back into NC on Wednesday afternoon after a very full week of fun at Disney World:) I'll spare you the majority of the 582 pictures I took...but here are a few of my favorite memories from the trip!

Jammin' with a street band in Animal Kingdom..

Swimming at the resort..

Honey I Shrunk the Kids play area in Hollywood Studios..

Meeting all the characters:)

Noah was SO excited to meet each and every character there! I was so happy that he wasn't afraid of them....to our surprise, he just loved and kissed on all of them:)

Breakfast at Chef Mickey's with all of Noah's favorites:)

My favorite meal of the week....Le Cellier Steakhouse in Canada at Epcot. SOO yummy:)

My second favorite meal of the week....San Angel Inn in Mexico at Epcot:)

Dinner at T-Rex in Downtown Disney...my vote for coolest atmosphere:)

Since our FAVORITE RIDE EVER (Rockin' Rollercoaster in Hollywood Studios) was closed for refurbishment after we were only able to ride it ONCE, mine and Jimmy's favorite ride of the week was Expedition Everest at Animal Kingdom

Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger Spin...Noah's very favorite ride of the week:)

Kilamingaro Safari (sorry for spelling!) at Animal Kingdom..

Festival of the Lion King show at Animal Kingdom..

Spectromagic Parade at Magic Kingdom..

Wishes fireworks show at Magic Kingdom..

Noah's FIRST haircut! Rex, the barber, was amazing with Noah and was so clever to keep him occupied with the stickers:)

Showing off his new big boy haircut!

My favorite family shot of the week:)

Hope you had a lovely week last week too! We're all still resting back up, so I'll see ya when I see ya:)

tot school - letter o

2010-05-09T19:30:00.000-04:00

Noah is 19 months old.

Letter Oo

Oo is for octopus & ocean!

We've had a fun week learning about the ocean & the animals that live in it...especially the octopus:)

Noah really enjoyed all of the printables this week! He even asked to do some on his own, so you know they were a real hit. They came from Confessions of a Homeschooler and the Ocean Tot Book from 1+1+1=1.

I continue to be impressed with his patterning skills...I think I need to move onto something harder for him.

He did really well with all of them, though. I think his favorite was the number cards. He loves playing with the mini paperclips:)

Our books for the week were:

Squishy Turtle & Friends

Rainbow Fish

We made just two art projects this week because we ran out of glue and I kept forgetting to get more...oops!

We made his letter page and a toilet paper roll octopus (not my original idea, but I've seen it several places). He was SUPER proud of both of these projects!

Noah enjoyed playing with his ocean puzzles, especially the magnetic "fishing" puzzle:)

It was also VERY warm here this week, so we spent several days outside and playing in the water.

While he played a bit with the ocean animals I put in his play sink, he most liked dumping the water over his head:)

This was my favorite picture from the week!

That's about all for this week...I kept it light because I've been finishing up my nursing finals and (more importantly!) packing for Disney! We won't be here next week for tot school, but we'll have LOTS of pictures from our trip when we return. Enjoy your next couple of weeks, and a (late) happy mother's day to you all:)

Share what you're up to in Tot School and see other's ideas at 1+1+1=1!

disney days

2010-05-04T08:00:00.000-04:00

We are officially into the single digits in the countdown to our Disney trip:) We are all about to die with excitement! To get me even more in the mood (like I need any help!), I thought I'd share some of the details of our trip just in case you may be planning on visiting Disney World in the future or are just curious what we will be doing. If not, sorry...I feel the need to share so I don't spontaneously combust:)

Our trip - May 13-19

We chose this time to hopefully miss the summer vacation crowds. Ideally we would have gone earlier (like end of April), but with my nursing school, I can't take time off. We're leaving the night after I finish finals, so this is the earliest we could go. I hoping its a good time!

Oh, and it is my, Jimmy (husband), Noah, and my mom going on this trip. We are beyond excited for Noah's first visit...we know he won't remember it, but we will:) Also, my mom has graciously offered to watch Noah for us when we want to do rides and stuff own our own, so Jimmy and I are excited to have a little alone time as well.

Our travel plan - driving our own cars all the way

We opted not to fly for 1)the expense, 2)no car rental, and 3)we can bring more stuff there & back. We'll be traveling down in the middle of the night so Noah will sleep and traveling back right after lunch so he will nap for at least part of the trip (pray that this will work!). Yes, we'll have to pay to park each day we visit the parks, but we're willing to do that for the convenience of no rental car, no waiting on the Disney bus system, and no having to lug Noah's carseat around.

Our resort - Disney's Caribbean Beach Resort

*photo from allears.net

We chose to stay on the resort for several reasons (convenience, extra magic hours, etc), but we didn't want to spend a fortune, so we chose a moderate tier resort. We've heard wonderful things about this resort from many different people, so we're super excited about it!

Meals

We chose to purchase the dining plan this trip, and that is something we are super excited about! Jimmy and I were very unprepared when we visited Disney for our honeymoon (we waited to make reservations when we got here), so we really researched our options and decided to go with the plan so we could eat everywhere we wanted and not worry as much about the price. We also made our reservations WAY in advance. Here are our plans for meals:

May 13 - Dinner @ Coral Reef Restaurant (in Epcot)
May 14 - Dinner @ San Angel Inn (in Epcot)
May 15 - Dinner @ Boma (in Animal Kingdom Lodge)
May 16 - Breakfast @ Chef Mickey's (in Contemporary Resort); Dinner @ SciFi Dine In Theater (in Hollywood Studios)
May 17 - Dinner @ Le Cellier (in Epcot)
May 18 - Dinner @ Sanaa (in Animal Kingdom Lodge)
May 19 - Lunch @ T-Rex Cafe (in Downtown Disney...NOT ON DINING PLAN!)

We're planning on having breakfast in our room, using our quick service credits for lunch, and using snack credits whenever. We'll also have to purchase Noah kid's meals, but they are very reasonably priced.

Extra Stuff

*I'll spare you the plans on which park we'll be visiting each day. I'll just say that we do have the park hopper option on our tickets, and plan on doing one park in the morning and one in the evening. Typically, the evening park coincides with our dinner reservations, but we just prefer to switch it up halfway through the day like that.

*One other fun thing we'll be doing our first day is getting Noah's first haircut at the Mainstreet Barbershop in the Magic Kingdom. They make it all very special (with "first ears" and a certificate and such), so that's something I'm personally very excited to do.

*Otherwise, we plan on taking it easy that week:) I'm not so crazy that I plan the order of the rides or anything, but we already know which attractions, which shows, and which parades and such that are at the top of our list. That is one benefit to having been before...you know what to expect, what you want to do again, and what to skip this time around.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask away:) I'm certainly no expert, but I've spent LOTS of time planning and researching this trip because I enjoy it and I want this to be an extra special one since it will be Noah's first time there. You know I'll have a million pictures and stories to share when we return too!

tot school - letter f

2010-05-03T15:45:00.000-04:00

Noah is 19 months old.

Ff is for Farm

We kept it kind of light again this week since my semester in nursing school is winding down, but we still had fun learning about farms and farm animals!

First, Noah made his letter page. He did the gluing, and it was a good opportunity to talk about shapes as well with the barn. He loved making the fingerprint animals, and even though they don't really look like their supposed to, it was good to talk about their colors and what sounds they made.

I made a bingo board of farm animals for Noah to work with. We didn't really play the actual game, but it was great reinforcement on what the real animals look like and what sounds they make. I knew Noah knew all of his animal sounds, but I didn't realize he didn't know what many of the animals actually looked like! He knows all of the animals on the board now though:)

Otherwise, Noah played with his many farm-themed toys throughout the week. The megabloks farm set has long been a favorite..

He also loves the leapfrog fridge magnet set...especially the songs it sings:)

We also worked some more with his Kumon sticker/gluing workbook. He has moved onto the gluing exercises now...

We did a couple of vegetable pages, and the horse page. He did so well with the horse!

Other activities Noah did that I didn't get pictures of were:

*Read our many farm books...including Barnyard Dance, Moo Baa LaLaLa!, Farm Babies (no link...it is by Charles Reasoner), John Deere Farm 123, Touch & Feel Tractor, and Old MacDonald Had a Farm

*Watched our Brainy Baby Animals dvd

*Did Starfall letter Ff

That's all for our week! My exams start next week, but I'm planning on a regular week of tot school. And if you haven't noticed our Disney countdown...its down to 10 day!!! Woohoo! I'm hoping to do a short tot school week with all Disney themed activities the week we leave (just fyi).

Share your own ideas and see what others are doing for tot school at 1+1+1=1!

tot school - letter I (better late than never!)

2010-04-26T23:50:00.000-04:00

Noah is 19 months old.

Geeze...sorry this is so late. We are just not with it around here lately...I'm in my last two weeks of the semester for my nursing classes (2 clinical days, 3 tests, and a research paper this week alone!) and Noah just hasn't been himself lately. I think it must be all the pollen and such, but he isn't sleeping well, isn't eating as well, and just isn't his happy self all the time. Thankfully there are only 16 more days until we head to Disney, so that's my saving grace at this point:) I think a vacation will do us all a lot of good!

Anyway..onto our pitiful excuse for tot school this week. Ha! I tried...I really did. Noah just wasn't into things this week. But that's okay. It happens, so we'll just keep on keepin' on until next time:)

Letter Ii

Ii is for ice cream!

I was excited for this week because let's be honest..who doesn't love ice cream?! Apparently Noah! We tried ice cream field trips twice and even tried a little at home one night, but he just doesn't like the temperature. Silly boy:) Maybe that's why he wasn't too into these activities?

Noah did actually seem to enjoy making his letter page. He helped with all of the gluing and did the pink and red paint...I painted the cone. I'm really proud of how far his gluing has come!

I saw this ice cream I on The Poe Family a while back and thought it was too cute:) I painted the cone part again, but he did the purple (with some help/coaxing), red, blue, and brown paint, and even put the cherry on top:)

I made a sorting game using this coloring sheet (found through Google). Noah has suddenly developed a love of coloring with crayons, so he enjoyed helping color the ice cream. He did really well with the sorting too (when he would actually participate)...

I printed these out from here. We did color identification with just the papers, and using playdough. I didn't get a picture, but we played ice cream shop...

I would "order" using the papers and he would match my order with the playdough. He liked this game early on, but not later in the week...

Noah also color sorted his pompoms using the ice cream papers from above using this tray. He was NOT into this though...he just wanted to throw them around the room..

I also thought we could get creative with ice this week for the letter Ii. Noah has enjoyed "painting" with ice in the past, so I had the brilliant idea to add food coloring to the ice cube tray. Well duh...of course the ice totally stained our hands for three days. Not my shining moment in planning...I guess that's what I get for trying to plan stuff while totally stressed out. Noah did make a pretty picture that day though...it is shown below.

Because I was a slacker in planning, I didn't have anything ready for Earth Day either. Ugh...so I pulled out some coffee filters and water and Noah made coffee filter earths at the last minute that day. I actually got a picture of him!

He actually had fun with this one...he LOVES the rare times we use markers, and he thoroughly enjoyed dumping the water bowl on the table even though the dropper was right there:) He also wanted to keep going after the coffee filters were gone, so we used construction paper too.

On the left is the colored ice picture. Then, all the marker/water pictures & earths. I think they turned out quite pretty:)

So yeah...my apologies for a less-than-stellar week here. I'm really going to try and get it together for the rest of this week, but no promises:) If I'm not here next week, look for me the week after to be back to normal. If I don't end up on a psych ward by the end of my week of tests and papers that is! Say a prayer for me please:)

See what others are up to in tot school and share your own ideas at 1+1+1=1!

tot school - no school

2010-04-18T21:15:00.000-04:00

We decided to take the week off from any organized tot school activities this week. I spent most of the week catching up on nursing assignments for my own school, so we didn't do anything really planned. Mostly Noah played with some of his learning toys (puzzles, blocks, nesting toys, etc) and we reviewed the letters we've learned so far, but nothing else special.

We'll be back next week with our regular stuff! Enjoy your week...lucky me, I get to be home with Noah all day 5 out of the 7 days this next week:)

tot school - letter k

2010-04-12T18:35:00.000-04:00

Noah is 18 months old.

Letter Kk

Kk is for kite!

Well...Noah has been sick AGAIN, so this was a short (but fun!) week. He seems to have inherited both my terrible seasonal allergies, and affinity towards croup. Ugh! Thankfully, he's much better now after another round of meds. But anyway, these activities were definitely done in spurts when Noah was feeling up to it. Still, we had a great week of learning fun:)

Noah really, really enjoyed making his Kk is for Kite picture for his alphabet book. He marked on the kite with a black marker while running around the room for about 30 minutes before I could coax him into gluing the pieces down. He loved that too:) So this was an all around hit!

Noah also made a tissue paper kite using some leftover tissue paper from Easter. Gluing the tissue paper was a new challenge for him since it is so thin and sticks to your fingers, but he still enjoyed it!

Not sure why this came out sideways, but anyway...he also helped to lace the "string" for the kite's tail.

Another lacing activity...I homemade this one:) We worked on numbers, lacing the correct number of bows on to the kite tails. Noah LOVED this one! He has gotten very good at lacing after this week too.

Kite patterns from here. Noah did really great with this set..even the three colors one! I was very proud:)

Big/little Kk matching from here. Noah did great with this one too...

Finally from here, color matching kites. Noah really did great with all of the printables I had for him this week, which was a rare and happy treat:)

We also did a few kitchen-type activities for the letter K, including playing in the pots and pans, making yummy "treats" in his play kitchen, and washing dishes in his outdoor sink.

This was a great opportunity for pouring practice...

And practice drinking from a regular cup. He did great for a while, until he got silly and poured water everywhere!

Some other random activities we did this week included an alphabet review tray. I separated all of the parts of his alphabet eggs I made last week (and added Kk) and he had to match everything up.

This was WAY hard for him, but he did well with help. I'll probably continue to use it too as review for all of the letters we've learned.

Noah LOVED this spring window clings from the Target dollar section. He played with these forever!

Noah also did the flower shape sorting activity I shared last week for more spring activities. I didn't do any of the other things I had planned because he wasn't feeling well, but I'm hoping to use them later.

Finally, Noah got some new, harder puzzles from Target as well ($3 for a 3-pack!). He amazed me with these! His favorite by far is the body parts puzzle, but the weather one is a close second:)

That's all for our week....sorry I was a bit late on getting it up. With all of the sickness (I had a sinus infection over the weekend too), we've been dragging our behinds around here!

See what others are doing for Tot School and share your own ideas at 1+1+1=1!

tot school - letter e

2010-04-05T14:40:00.002-04:00

**I went back and added the specific link to the flower shape printable since I was being asked for it...just know that it originally came from Childcare Land.

Noah is 18 months old.

Noah was pretty sickly the first half of the week, apparently from some virus. He had a 101+ fever for two days and just wasn't himself. Even after that passed, he was still on the mend for most of the week. But we still managed to have a fun Easter week!

Ee is for Easter!

Our activities for this week had to do with all things Easter & spring! Since Noah wasn't quite himself, I'm going to continue some of the activities (especially the spring things) on into this next week.

Our books for the week were:

Here Comes Easter! by Caroline Jayne Church

BIscuit's Pet & Play Easter by Alyssa Satin Capucilli

The Story of Easter by Patricia Pingry

I love how Noah's letter page turned out this week! I painted Noah's palm and two fingers (index & ring) white, then he painted the noses and ears pink:)

Noah liked making the handprint bunnies so much, we made an Easter card for my brother, sister-in-law, and nephew that live in Michigan with handprint bunnies too. I didn't get a picture of it, but it was cute:)

In other Easter arts and crafts, Noah made bunny ears:) He got to use white glue, which is always a hit!

But good luck getting the ears on his head! I got the idea from No Time for Flashcards, but Noah was NOT going to wear those ears for me, so no picture of the finished product.

Noah also made a footprint chick (I cannot find where I got this idea from...please let me know if it was you!). He LOVED this craft! He did every bit on his own (with a little help on making the feet), but he was very proud of his picture. And he made it into an Easter card for his Granny, who loved it too:)

Of course Noah played with eggs ALL WEEK LONG and had so much fun with them. We did several egg hunts all week long in our yard, but unfortunately I didn't get pictures of them. He would get SO excited when he found an egg, and would shout "yay!!!" and throw it in his basket...it was priceless:)

Otherwise, he loved scooping and transferring his eggs with this shovel..we also worked on matching and naming these sports eggs.

Noah got a water table this week, and he was a big help putting it together (with LOTS of supervision!) :)

I thought he would enjoy all of his eggs being in the table, and I was right! It was great coordination work to have him scoop the eggs into the little cups.

Noah did SUPER with these egg printouts from the 1+1+1=1 Easter Tot Pack. He loved sorting them, and also did very well with simple patterns.

I found this egg matching activity here (scroll down the list)...Noah didn't play with it much (I'm going to reuse it again this week), but he did well with it when he did.

I saw these alphabet eggs all over the place last week, so I knew we had to made some. I got some jumbo eggs at Walmart, wrote the letters we've done so far on the outside, and filled them with the pieces from Noah's M&D magnetic alphabet puzzle book. Noah LOVED these, so I think I'll keep them out all the time and add to them as we do more letters. They're great for reviewing!

Spring

(We'll be continuing the spring activities next week too)

Our only book for spring this week was:

Welcome Spring by Jill Ackerman

This is an activity we'll be reusing next week as we continue doing spring themed activities. Noah has finally started showing some interest in shapes, so I printed this shape matching activity from here(THIS IS THE SPECIFIC LINK NOW!). Noah did great with it and really seemed to enjoy it!

Noah made a spring tree, painted using a q-tip. Even though we had pink paint, I knew he would love the mix the paint himself. And he did:)

He had lots of fun with this picture, and I thought it turned out great!

Last, Noah made a paint & sticker collage. First, he painted using a cotton ball clipped on a clothespin. I wish a had a picture...it was great fine motor work for him to clip the cotton ball, then dip it in the paint and make dots. I got the idea for that here, and it really was fun for him. He also loved these stickers...they were from Target a few weeks ago, and they have little wiggle eyes:)

Bible Lesson

After reading The Story of Easter and out of his board book Bibles, we made this cross picture by painting over painter's tape. We made this picture on Easter, and since Noah was sleepy and kind of cranky, his cousins Abby & Ian (age 6 & 5) helped us finish it:)

I decided to keep the real Easter activities minimal this year just because I didn't think Noah would really get it. I know any teaching I do for him is important, but it can be hard to come up with activities that he'll understand. At this point, we mostly read a story, make a picture/craft, and pray. I'm excited next year to get some resurrection eggs and do more with him on the real meaning of Easter!

That's it for our week! See what others are doing for Tot School and share your own ideas at 1+1+1=1!

easter pictures

2010-04-03T23:35:00.002-04:00

At lunchtime today, we headed over to my Mimi's house to take some Easter pictures. My Mimi has always had the most beautiful yard...growing up, she won "Yard of the Week" from our local paper countless times. Even though she lives in a different house now, her yard is still gorgeous, so I knew I wanted to take some Easter pictures of Noah with all the lovely flowers:)

Noah looks so much like my Pawpaw in his little caddy hat:) Oh how I wish Pawpaw could see him...

Noah has been sick this week (apparently a virus?), but I think these pictures turned out so great!

Mimi loved the flower Noah picked for her:)

And since Noah is going to be our future rock star, I thought some pictures with his guitar (matching no less!) was definitely in order...here is my favorite:

Here's wishing you all a wonderfully blessed Easter tomorrow!

"He is not here; he is risen!"

Matthew 28:6

tot school - letter u

2010-03-28T22:20:00.001-04:00

Noah is 18 months old.

We really had a fun week! We learned all about the letter Uu and the weather...I'm not sure why I chose this letter, but I knew I didn't want to keep going in order so we could be sure and do Ee Easter week. So anyway, we learned about Uu and had lots of fun with it:)

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Uu is for for Umbrella

(...and weather, even though it doesn't start with a U:) )

Our only book for the week was Itsy Bitsy Spider by Katie Toms...we never made it to the bookstore or library for more. But we read our book a lot and did the fingerplay about a million times this week. This has always been his favorite fingerplay, and he got very good at doing it along with me by the end of the week.

I printed two activities from Home Grown Hearts (here) for the letter Uu and umbrellas. Noah had a hard time with the letter sorting since the upper and lower case look alike. I tried to help him see that the lower case u has a little tail, and that seemed to help a bit. Mostly, though, he liked playing with the raindrops:)

Noah did great with these! I didn't do all of the colors provided and I also decided to not individually cut out each rain drop...mostly because I was too lazy to cut that much:) We had not reviewed colors like this in a while (since we did color boxes several weeks ago), but Noah still knew every color no problem and really enjoyed this activity.

We did LOTS of art projects this week, and Noah was very into all of them:) First, we made our letter page...

He gets frustrated with glue sticks (I guess he thinks they're like markers and gets upset when the markings disappear), but I was out of white glue that day. He still did most of the gluing on his own, and LOVED making the raindrops with paint. He also boycotted coloring the umbrella despite my encouragement except for a few stray purple marks.

Even so, Noah was very proud of this particular letter page and talked about it a lot over the week:)

Next, Noah made a rain cloud...idea on this post from The Shafer Family (LOVE that blog!). We used rice to fill up the paper, so Noah got to practice using a funnel. He loved that, and it was great pouring practice.

He also really enjoyed gluing on the cotton balls...using white glue of course:)

I love how this one turned out, and Noah did as well. He loved shaking it around, making the rain sounds.

This one didn't turn out as cute as I hoped, but it still got the concept across. Noah made a windsock (idea here) using construction paper, tissue paper, leftover stickers, and a pipe cleaner. Even though it wasn't the prettiest thing we've ever made, Noah enjoyed hanging it different places to "test" for the wind. We had fun making our own wind and blowing the streamers when we were inside too!

Last, Noah made a handprint sunshine. I try to incorporate at least one handprint activity in each week just because Noah has come to love making handprint art:)

Other Uu/umbrella/weather activities we did this week that I didn't get pictures of included...

*Starfall letter Uu...these are always one of Noah's favorite activities!

*Rainy day walk around the driveway using our umbrellas:)

*Pretending to make it rain in the bathtub

*Warm clothes/cold clothes sorting with a few lingering winter items in Noah closet

Finally, earlier in the week, we had beautiful, really warm weather (unlike the cold & rainy weather today) and really enjoyed the sunshine:) Noah learned to climb up on his outdoor castle on his own (kind like a mini rock wall for the foot part)...

...and learned how to go down the slide by himself.

He was QUITE proud of his accomplishment:)

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That's all for our week! See what others are doing for Tot School and share your own ideas at 1+1+1=1!

wordless wednesday

2010-03-24T12:15:00.002-04:00

Noah loves to put stickers on his nose...

I have no clue where he learned to do that, but it sure does make me smile:)

tot school - letter d

2010-03-22T15:25:00.000-04:00

Noah is 18 months old.

First, sorry I'm late in posting this. I woke up Sunday morning with my left eye in terrible shape! I think my contact may have scratched my cornea or something, but I was miserable all day long and couldn't stand to look at anything bright (like the computer). Nonetheless, here I am with our week!

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Letter of the Week: Dd

Dd is for dragon, dinosaur, & dancing

Books for the Week

Dizzy Dragon by Roger Priddy

T-Rex & Friends by Roger Priddy (no amazon link)

How Do Dinosaurs Love Their Dogs? by Jane Yolen

Oh My, Oh My, Oh Dinosaurs! by Sandra Boynton

I was on Spring Break from nursing school all week, and though I had several clinical days scheduled, we managed to get in lots of fun Dd activities!

Noah did SUPER with his letter page this week! I was going to do a dino page, but saw this dragon-D (from here on No Time for Flashcards) and knew we had to do it:) He glued everything almost completely on his own, and even "helped" me write dragon on the bottom. I think it turned out great!

Noah really enjoyed all of the dinosaur activities for the week. I'm amazed at how well he does with the upper/lower case matching activities from here at Confessions of a Homeschooler.

I made our own simple pattern activity this week too just to see how he would do with it. I just searched for some cute dino clipart on google and made these on Word. This was one of his favorite activities of the week, and he asked for it many times! He did really well with it too.

Noah made a clothespin & shape dinosaur (from here at No Time for Flashcards) as well. He has loved these mini clothespins, so I thought this was a perfect activity for him. He didn't do as well with the gluing though....he would rather take the top on and off of the stick. And we named him Steggy because that is what they call the stegosaurus in T-Rex & Friends:)

I've seen this done many times now, but I think the first place I saw the dino digging sensory box was here on Chasing Marcus. I didn't get quite as fancy with the molds (since I had no modeling clay), but Noah didn't mind. He LOVED this sensory box...

...and he LOVED that I filled the box with instant grits:) I caught him many times licking the dinos then sticking them in the grits to sample the "sand" :)

Noah also enjoyed these stickers from the Target $1 section. They all had wiggle eyes, which Noah thinks are hilarious:) The sheets had more than dinosaurs on them, though, so we picked out all the dinos first, then I let him play with the others too.

Noah also learned how to roar like a dinosaur this week:) He has really taken off with animal sounds and mimicking in the last couple of weeks, so I'm excited for when we go to Animal Kingdom at Disney in a few weeks to see his reaction to the animals up close!

The letter Dd would not be complete for Noah without some dancing in there! I have honestly never seen a child love music so much. So we danced and played with his little instruments many times over the week (like always).

Miscellaneous Activities

I felt pretty unfestive for St. Patrick's Day...all Noah made was a handprint 4-leaf clover. He loved it though...he has really gotten into making good handprints for pictures now that we've practiced a lot:)

Otherwise last week, we spent a TON of time outside. The weather was gorgeous almost all week long, so Noah did a lot of Tot School outside, played on his castle, and practiced riding his trike. I'm so excited for summertime to get here so we can spend even more time outdoors...Noah just eats it up:)

And I know I didn't get a Bible lesson in...I was conflicted on the verse to use, but I'll make up for it this week.

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So that's it for us! See what others are up to in Tot School and share your own ideas at 1+1+1=1!

my hubby rocks:)

2010-03-16T23:50:00.000-04:00

I don't really listen to "popular" music. Typically, my music of choice is praise/worship, Christian kind of music. I don't really think there is anything wrong with listening to music that isn't "Christian"...I just tend to not like mainstream music very much.

The one exception to this is John Mayer....and its a BIG exception! I have loved John Mayer since his first album years ago, and I have wanted to see him in concert for forever. His tours haven't really come to my area, though, so I've been out of luck.

Until my oh-so-sweet hubby happened to see about a week ago that he was coming to Greensboro, NC (about 1.5-2 hours away) on March 15. And being the amazing man he is, surprised me with tickets!

We had a wonderful evening together, just the two of us...and about 12,000 other Mayer fans:)

(I have video, but I can't get it to load on my computer)

My hubby was quite skeptical about going...he isn't John Mayer's biggest fan. But he truly had a great time. I know this because he put all of my John Mayer music on his iPod this morning:)

Michael Franti & Spearhead was with John Mayer on this tour. Neither my hubby or I had a clue who they were. I didn't take any pictures of them, but he was quite energetic. But not bad....just not our style of music (we're not into reagae...sorry I can't spell!). He seemed to be a very nice guy and went into the crowd to see & dance with a disabled child, and even invited the other kids in the audience to dance on stage with him.

The only downside to the night was the umm...not-so-shy couple next to us that spent the evening groping and dancing on each other. They really made us uncomfortable after a while, but we did our best to ignore them. Our section also seemed to be completely full of high school girls. So if the music didn't make us deaf, their screaming and shrieking definitely did. But I won't complain...we had great seats and could see really well.

Really, I thought that John Mayer was amazing. I was a little nervous about how the whole experience would be since I've only ever been to Christian music concerts before, but I really did enjoy myself. And even if you don't like him, you have to admit that he is an incredible musician. He was super entertaining and funny too. The show really did exceed my expectations!

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So, my point of sharing this was:

#1)record the memory for later, and

#2)take time to do fun stuff with just your spouse.

So often I get caught up in trying to be a good mommy, a good nursing student, and all my other responsibilities that being a good wife can fall by the wayside. But taking the time to do things alone with my hubby and focus on our relationship needs to be a priority if I want all of my other roles to be fulfilled too!

Take time this week to do something alone with your husband....your husband will thank you, your children will thank you, and YOU will thank you:)

tot school - letter Cc

2010-03-14T18:15:00.000-04:00

Noah is 17 months old.

Even though we got started a little late with all of our themed tot school this week (our printer was out of ink!), we still managed to have a full, fun week of learning:)

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Letter of the Week: Cc

Cc is for caterpillar and cookies

Books for the week:

The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle

The Best Mouse Cookie by Laura Numeroff & Felicia Bond

For the second week in a row, Noah was a little less than interested in our art projects:( He only glued the eyes and two of the Cs on to our first picture...but it was a good lesson in connecting the dots.

He was much more excited to play with the marker! He helped color in the Cc and made several of the legs. I got the idea for this picture from Ramblings of a Crazy Woman via Totally Tots.

I tried using mini clothespins for with these caterpillar number cards (found here) this week, and Noah did much better! He really loved the pincher work, and did super with numbers 1-3. I think its time to add a few more numbers now:)

Noah also had a two caterpillar snacks this week! I don't have pictures...again. Sorry! I don't bring the camera into the kitchen usually, so it isn't typically handy during snack time. Anyway, the first was shared here and the second I made using circular crackers, nutella, and raisins. I thought the banana one was much cuter, but Noah liked mine better:)

Overall, I think Noah enjoyed the cookie activities much more than the caterpillar ones! He was much more agreeable in helping with this picture, and really enjoyed filling in the circle with paint (we used cotton balls to dab the paint on this time) and gluing on the "chocolate chips."

He also really enjoyed some pretend play with baking cookies:) Using playdough, Noah had a ball stirring up the dough...

And making the little balls to put on the "pan" to bake. We played with these for hours over the week, and he loved every minute of it:)

Noah also enjoyed flattening out the dough balls and using cookie cutters on them, but I didn't get pictures of that either. Geeze...I need to get it together!

Other Cc activities this week included...

**A little outdoor play with chalk...this was the first time Noah had played with sidewalk chalk, and he was totally enthralled! I'm so ready for spring to really get here so we can spend more than 15 minutes outside at a time!

**Watched the Starfall Cc video. He really liked this one and even did well identifying the letter a as well at the end to spell c-a-m-p!

**Learned Cc animal sounds. He did great with "cluck", but refused to learn "meow". He already knew "moo." Noah also reviewed his other animal sounds...so far he knows cow, dog, chicken, pig, sheep, horse, lion/tiger, and elephant (complete with the nose wave!).

Bible Lesson

2 Corinthians 5:17a

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation"

This was the perfect verse to use for this time of year, as well as given the caterpillar stuff this week and butterfly stuff last week! I was also inspired by Carisa's Easter printables, but for some reason the writing on the pdf files weren't showing up correctly. So I made my own bible verse paper, and used similar ideas.

We talked about the bible verse all week, and I tried to tie in how caterpillars turn into butterflies is like how God makes us into new creations in Him. I doubt Noah really understands any of this just yet, but I think it is so important to begin Bible lessons with little ones really early.

Noah also made a craft (inspired by one of the printables) to go along with his verse. First, Noah made a caterpillar out of big pompoms...

We talked then again about becoming a "new creation" and then made the caterpillar into a butterfly. Noah LOVES to fingerpaint, so making handprint wings was right up his alley:)

He also decided that my Bible verse page was a little plain and needed some paint as well:)

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That's all for our week! See what others are up to in Tot School, and share you own ideas at 1+1+1=1!

tot school - letter b

2010-03-09T01:00:00.001-05:00

Noah is 17 months old.

I had a SUPER crazy week last week in nursing school, so my apologies on being a little late in posting our stuff. But, we still managed to get in a TON of fun tot school even with my crazy to-do list:) I am really loving having a letter of the week....Noah is doing really will with it, and it making planning activities easier!

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Our letter for last week was Bb!

Bb is for butterfly, bee, bear, and bubbles...

I am really itching for spring to get here, so I was happy that Bb had lots of springy things to focus on:)

Our books for the week were:

Benny's Garden by Genny Haines (couldn't find a link....this is a pull-the-tab book about a bee; lots of bee/butterfly pictures)

Brown Bear Brown Bear & Polar Bear Polar Bear by Bill Martin Jr./Eric Carle

Bubbles Bubbles (Sesame Beginnings book)

I must be honest...Noah was not very into making his letter page this week. He was really against holding the black marker ad scribbling away, so I made the stripes and colored in most of the top myself. I think Noah was hoping to paint, but I didn't have any black finger paint, so I colored the tip of his finger with the marker and let him smear a little before it dried....that made him a little more happy:)

Noah did, however, help me glue the B and b down, as well as the wiggle eye and wing. He really does will with glue too.

Here is out finished alphabet page...I think this one turned out so cute:)

We also made coffee filter butterflies. Again, Noah was NOT into coloring with the markers, but he was amazed at how the colors blended with water. He carried that dropper around for two days after we made these:)

In keeping with butterflies, I printed more letter activities from Confessions of a Homeschooler. I LOVE the letter ideas there....so cute and fun! Here, Noah had to sort B from b....he did really well with this when he would sit still long enough to do it:)

Noah also worked on sorting large, medium, and small butterflies. He really enjoyed this activity and went to it on his own a lot over the week.

I also printed off the butterfly number cards. These clips were from the Target dollar section a couple of weeks ago, and they're really too hard for Noah to do on his own, but did pretty well in helping me clip the correct numbers on to each butterfly (we only do 1-3 for now).

I didn't get pictures of any other Bb activities we did, but I'll share a list of those things now....

*Watch Starfall Bb over and over and over....the "big brown bear" always seemed to scare Noah a little though!

*Pull out some of the Brown Bear tot pack activities from 1+1+1=1. Noah enjoyed doing the heads & tails and size sorting activities, and did both very well!

*Played with bubble wrap! Noah thought this was really fun, and I intended on doing some bubble wrap painting, but never got around to it.

*Took a BIG bubble bath! About once a week, Noah gets to take a bath with the whirlpool jets on, and I put extra bath gel in that night so he would have lots of bubbles to play in. He had a ball, and especially loved making beards on himself and Daddy:) I hate I don't have of the beard pictures, but Noah can get a little splash-happy in the tub, so valuable electronics are best kept away!

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Bible Lesson

I decided to combine last week and next week's letters to talk about caterpillars turning into butterflies to focus Noah's Bible lesson. The verse will be 2 Cornithians 5:17....Totally Tots just did a lesson on this verse, so I'll be using some things from there as well. I'll share what we do with next weeks post!

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Misc. Tot School

Noah is always doing additional learning activities throughout the day, and this week was no exception. He kept himself busy with puzzles, other books, animal figures, and more. But I wanted to share his latest sticker pages from his Kumon workbook. Noah put all of these stickers on by himself. I told him the names of the stickers, and only that mittens go on your hands...everything else I let him decide where it should go. I was SO proud at how well he did!

I was also super proud at these pages....I didn't prompt him except to say "let's choose the [red, green] sticker" when he picked them off the page. I did reinforce the shape name after he stuck the sticker down.

I was really amazed at how well he did matching the sticker to the blank space because he has not shown much interest at all in learning shapes so far.

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That's all for our week! See what others are doing for tot school and share your own ideas at 1+1+1=1!

tot school - letter a

2010-02-28T22:25:00.000-05:00

Noah is 17 months old.

We began two new long-term themes this week....Letter of the Week, and a weekly Bible lesson! I've been itching to start both of these, but have been waiting for Noah to be interested in letters & to have the attention span for a real Bible lesson. Happily, Noah did super this week with both new themes:)

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Letter of the Week - Aa

I made the focus on ants & apples for our Aa learning. Here are Noah's two art projects of the week...

Noah did every bit of the gluing on the apple tree picture by himself! I was quite proud & impressed:) He did go a little crazy with the glue though...

He also really enjoyed making the ants page. I took that idea from the Totally Tots ABC page. He always enjoys finger painting, but this was a good opportunity for listening (only make dots), practicing counting (1-2-3 dots), and learning "A" versus "a."

I made some other counting cards to work more with numbers while still keeping with the apple/ant theme. He did okay with these...I think they bored him:) But I set it up with big pompoms to correspond to the small pompoms.

Noah shocked me with these! I printed these Aa ants from Confessions of a Homeschooler hoping to review colors with Noah. He has consistently been identifying his colors for about a month, but I still thought he would enjoy these. I set out a few at a time, with one as a guide...

But Noah decided that these needed to be sorted into "A" and "a" piles instead of by color! I think he got this from doing the Starfall "Aa" page where you sort the apples at the end, but I was very impressed! He eventually did sort them by color too.

That is all the pictures I have for our letter activities, but some of the other things we did included:

*Reading Alpha-Bite! by Charles Reasoner and Chicka Chicka ABC by Bill Martin Jr.

*Starfall "Aa" many times (Noah points, I move the mouse/click)

*Having an "Aa" snack day! This one was very fun, and I hate I don't have pictures! Noah had apple juice, apple chips, apple sauce, and our own version of ants on a log...pretzels with hummus and raisins. I call them ants on a twig:) I wanted to make this a picnic, but our weather was just too cold.

*Watching the Leapfrog Letter Factory dvd

*Doing our ABC puzzle book (from Melissa & Doug)

I think Noah did super with all of the Aa activities! I am really looking forward to continuing learning his letters:)

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Bible Lesson

I began our Bible lessons focusing on (part of) Philippians 2:15 - "shine like stars in the universe."

A little back story...I have a list of several scriptures I pray for Noah, and Philippians 2:14-15 is one of them. This is actually one of the verses Carisa was inspired by for Raising Rock Stars too! Anyway, since I have felt it was time to begin having a Bible lesson with Noah each week, I thought focusing on a verse I already pray for him would be a perfect place to start!

I made a little paper for Noah to use during our lesson, and I explained how Jesus wants us to be his light in the world. I used a flashlight to help illustrate this concept...Noah loved playing with it!

I also explained how when Jesus lives in your heart, his light will shine from inside you for all to see. Then he practiced making his light shine:)

Then we had to sing This Little Light of Mine! We HAD to keep using the flashlight too:)

We talked about letting our lights shine all week! Noah also made a picture of a shiny star (made with foil) to help him remember to shine like a star:) He did all of the gluing on this one too (obviously!), and it was great shape reinforcement!

I cannot encourage everyone enough to do a Bible lesson with your children each week! It has been such a blessing to me this week to see Noah learn about God...I am very excited to continue this each week!

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That's all for our week! See what others are doing for tot school and share your own ideas at 1+1+1=1!

wordless wednesday

2010-02-24T14:46:00.000-05:00

tot school - no theme

2010-02-22T14:20:00.000-05:00

Noah is 17 months old.

We had another low key week again. I couldn't decide on a theme to follow, so our tot school activities included playing with some of our "learning" toys, lots of books, a playdate, and even some outside fun!

While Noah read a MILLION books this week, he got an awesome Look & Find Mickey Mouse Clubhouse book for Valentine's Day, and has been glued to it all week long:) I am so impressed with how well he does with these already too! He always identifies Mickey and Goofy, usually will find Minnie & Pluto, but Donald & Daisy are still hit or miss. He does pretty well finding the objects too.

Noah also got his first workbook for Valentine's Day:) He got a Kumon sticker & gluing workbook and has had so much fun with the sticker pages! Here are a few of the ones he's completed so far...

Jimmy (daddy) said the fish page was his favorite since it looks like the blue fish is dead. Haha!

I dumped all of our pompoms together to make a new sensory bin....a less messy one finally:) Noah still loves spooning/transferring, and the different sized pompoms was a good challenge for him!

Noah has finally started showing interest in letters! Yay! I'm so excited to begin a letter of the week next week:) He can do this alphabet puzzle book completely on his own now!

He had lots of fun with his other puzzles this week too. I spread them out on the floor, and made it a puzzle race. Noah thought this was hilarious and loved running from puzzle to puzzle:)

These stacking & nesting blocks are still one of Noah's favorite toys. He is getting much better at stacking too, and is up to five blocks now.

We had a fun playdate with one of my best friends this week! Brittney and I went to high school together, and her son Conor is almost 9 months. We had a blast playing with trains, Noah's kitchen, blocks, and even had a little dance party:) This was a change up for Noah, though, as he doesn't play with kids younger than him very often. This definitely proved a good learning experience in self-control and sharing. Noah still has a ways to go though:) And sorry for no pictures...my camera was MIA for the afternoon (it was in my car!).

We also had a yummy dinner at Applebees! Noah was quite testy, hence the paci:) But the camera was found!

I so wish these guys lived closer then 45 minutes away! I miss Conor's chubby cheeks:)

Sunday was the most gorgeous day! It was warm and sunny...almost spring-like! We took full advantage of the opportunity and spent some time outside after church. Noah played on his castle...

He got in some tricycle practice:) He actually peddled a little on his own too! But mostly there was lost of pushing from daddy..

Noah also had fun with my mom's dog. He absolutely loves to take Patch on walks, so this was the perfect day for it:)

So all in all, a pretty quiet and simple week, but we still had lots of fun! Share your own ideas and see what others are up to in tot school at 1+1+1=1!

tot school - valentine's part 2

2010-02-14T22:45:00.000-05:00

Noah is 16 months old.

We didn't have the best of weeks around here...Noah just wasn't into the activities I had planned. Actually, we redid everything from last week, with just a few new things added in, but even his favorites from before seemed to fall flat this time. So I don't have a ton to show, and nothing is super creative or anything. But that's okay...sometimes weeks are like that!

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Noah made several new art projects this week to give away as Valentines for our family. I let him have totally free reign with the finger paints (I usually somewhat supervise), and he had a blast! He used several different tools for painting throughout the week, including his hands, pipe cleaners, and various utensils. He did such a great job not slinging the paint everywhere too....he has a tendency to get a little wild when he gets going with some things (paint included).

Here is one of the pictures he made for my mom. I helped him make some good hand prints, but he painted a page on his own to make the base, as well as put the stickers on himself following my directions. Granny loved it by the way:)

He made several other Valentines, including another super cute "flower bouquet" for Mimi (my grandmother), but I forgot to take pictures of those before they were delivered. Everyone really loved their keepsakes though!

This homemade book was an idea from April Showers. I LOVED this idea, and thought it would be a great way to review names and colors. I used the book several different ways:

**lay the pictures out and let Noah find the different people/colors (point to them, put a marker on them, etc)

**ring clip the pages together and have him flip to find the different people/colors

**match colored objects to the colored hearts (this was hard for him, I think because of the other pictures)

This particular page with my parents' dog was his favorite page:)

I tried using smaller pieces of pipe cleaners for Noah to put in a spice container. He did so well with this, and really loved this activity! He also enjoyed trying to take the top off/on of the container (as the picture shows), but he hasn't mastered twisting rather than pulling the tops yet.

I also thought Noah would enjoy spooning some different objects this week. Giant sweetheart candy was not a favorite though. The hearts were hard to scoop up into the shaped spoon, so he preferred to transfer the candy with his fingers. This did prove to be a good opportunity for color review, but Noah had a bit of trouble with the pastel colors.

If you can't see in the last picture, Noah got a MAJOR boo-boo this week. He slipped on the hardwood in his jammies and face-planted into a rocking chair. The bottom part where all the bars and screws and such are. He got a BIG pop knot over his eye plus a scrape.

But he was a trooper! And he proudly displayed his battle scar at church this morning too:)

Crazily enough, we got our THIRD snow hit this weekend. More is predicted over this week too. This is so unusual in NC...talking to my brother in Michigan, we've actually gotten more snow this winter than he has! We're all pretty tired of it honestly. Noah wanted nothing to do with it when we ventured out Saturday morning...

I'm right there with ya buddy! I'm desperate for flowers, green grass, and sunshine!

And one last picture....I'm really trying to allow Noah more autonomy and decision-making opportunities. On days we're home, I'm beginning to let him choose his clothing. This was one particular ensemble he chose this week...

Actually, he just chose the Aerosmith t-shirt and his hat, but I thought long sleeves and pants were in order since it is February:)

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See what others are up to, and share your own ideas for Tot School at 1+1+1=1!

noah update (16 months)

2010-02-10T07:00:00.000-05:00

I haven't done a general update on Noah in a few months, so I thought that would be fun. Probably not for you, but I love being able to record all of the little things and how he's progressing. Feel free to ignore this post...it is mostly just for me:)

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Noah will be 17 months old on February 16. He is about 33 inches tall and weighs about 31 pounds. He comfortably wears 2T clothes and a sizes 6-7 in shoes. His growth has really slowed down compared to how he used to be, but he is still progressing as he should. I think at his last well visit he was in 97 percentile for everything, which is a big fall from the consistently well over 99 percentile for many, many months!

Winter has not been kind to Noah. He has been sick quite a bit this season, which was a new experience! He has always been extremely healthy, but has had 3 ear infections, croup, and a nearly continuous cough/runny nose all winter. Noah has stayed his spunky, silly little self throughout it all. Still, we will all be VERY glad when spring arrives!

Cloth diapering has sadly been put on hold. After the latest round of sickness, in combination with our move, Noah developed a nasty rash that just wouldn't go away. After trying everything I could think of to treat the rash/fix the diapers, I ended up switching to Seventh Generation diapers just to see if it would make a difference. The rash cleared up in a day, which makes me think the cloth diapers were mostly the culprit. So (for the time being hopefully) Noah is in the "healthiest" disposables I can find.
**But just in case any CDing mamas are reading this, do you have any suggestions for getting Noah back into cloth?

Noah is probably the best toddler-age eater I've ever seen! It scares me to think of how he'll be as a teenager...he already about eats us out of house and home! He very rarely doesn't like something, and has many favorite things but I won't list them all because there are so many. Here is a sample of a typical day's meals:
Breakfast: breakfast grains and yogurt
Morning Snack: cheerios
Lunch: pasta wee-one, half a banana or cup of applesauce
Afternoon Snack: pretzel sticks and hummus
Dinner: small portions of whatever we're eating (usually some meat/chicken, two veggies, and a grain)
As you can see, I'm a BIG fan of the website Weelicious! The recipes there are healthy, easy, and great for the whole family. I cook quite a bit from there, and have only found one or two things we all haven't loved. I highly recommend it:)

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On to Noah's development...
Noah's language development is great! He is just beginning to really mimic things after we say them ("parrot" talk), but his vocabulary impresses me already! Here is a running list:
Words he says consistently

Hey/hi/hello

Bye (with a wave)

No no no! (with a finger wag!)

Oh yeah!

Uh oh

Yum-yum

Good (guh)

Yuck

Milk (mik)

Drink (dink)

Bite

Book

Dada

Mama

Granny (a-nee)

Patch (atch)

Pete (eete)

Train (rain)

Mickey Mouse (me-ee)

Mine

I read

Look!

Football (foo-ba)

Words he says on occasion

Papa

Mimi

Hug

Done

Ball

Booger (boooooooooger..SO funny to hear this one!)

Go go go!

Truck (ruck)

Broom

Blue (boo)

Green (geen)

Red (reh)

Even though Noah's has a large vocabulary for children his age, the majority of his non-stop talking is grunting and pointing. I'm really working on getting him to say what he wants the first time rather than having to drag the words out of him. I know it will come in time though. But, Noah understands language amazingly well. He is very good at following even complicated directions when using words he is familiar with.

Gross motor skills are progressing nicely for Noah. He is getting much more coordinated in running and climbing, which are two of his favorite things to do. In fine motor skills, he amazes me. He demonstrates so much skill in doing tot school activities that incorporate these.

Noah's "knowledge" (for lack of a better word) is growing by leaps and bounds! He seems to know several colors pretty well (red, green, and blue) and really enjoys color activities. Noah is very interested in numbers, and loves to read number books, but doesn't "know" them yet. He does do number correspondence well on occasion, so I think he at least understands the concept of numbers. He hasn't shown any interest in letters and very little interest in shapes. But I know all of this will come in time:)

In practical life skills Noah is very proficient at using a spoon and fork (and LOVES to use them). He loves to make choices, particularly with his cups and utensils. He is beginning to show interest in making choices in clothing now as well, but he doesn't seem too interested in independently dressing himself. He does help a lot to get himself dressed though.

Tot school continues to go VERY well! I absolutely love doing these activities with Noah each week, and he really seems to love them too. He knows where the activities for the week are kept, and often asks to complete his favorites. Usually, I try to spend at least 15-20 minutes a day on the activities I have planned for the week; we don't tend to do these daily...4 days a week is about the average. Really Noah does tot school type activities all throughout everyday, but I try to spend this focused time on those things I have specifically in mind for that particular week.

Some of Noah's favorite tot school activities include pouring, small spaces activities, spooning/transferring, and art projects/crafts. He usually does very well with matching, and also loves to stack and nest things. He also does well with drawing/scribbling, though these aren't a favorite activity....he far prefers to use paint over markers or crayons.

I have seen so much progress in Noah in doing these things with him consistently, and am so proud of all he has accomplished in such a short amount of time!

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On to some of Noah's favorite things...

His favorite shows/videos are Thomas the Train and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. At this point, the two are actually pretty evenly matched. He will occasionally watch other Playhouse Disney shows, and has other learning videos he enjoys, but Thomas and Mickey are really the only two that he will sit and watch all the way through without losing interest.

Noah loves to mess in the kitchen drawers. He has a strange affinity towards kitchen utensils and loves to carry them around for hours on end. It is not unusual at all to find a random spatula in the bathroom at the end of the day!

Noah loves to be affectionate! He gives BIG bear hugs and open-mouth, sloppy, spity kisses...much to our delight:)

Noah still loves his paci. We are beginning to lose the paci during the day as much as possible. I'm okay with it at night for a while longer, but I definitely think it needs to go whenever he is awake! I think this contributes to his tendency to grunt/point first rather than use words to communicate. We'll see how it goes though...I think Noah will rebel on this one!

Noah doesn't really have a "lovie" like a bear or blanket. Noah's lovie is my hair. Though he can and often does go to sleep on his own, he goes to sleep best whenever he is snuggled up to me and can rub my hair.

Noah LOVES to talk on the phone. Anything and everything even remotely resembling a telephone in the house becomes one for him to babble on. He also loves to wear his daddy's phone belt clip....Noah thinks he is very big when daddy lets him borrow it:)

Noah loves to help us clean. He makes a beeline for brooms whenever he sees them and will happily sweep until you direct him otherwise.

Noah (unfortunately!) loves to throw a tantrum. Okay, so he doesn't really throw them that often....but when he does, watch out! He is a screamer. Enough said. He has most definitely inherited his daddy's temper and my lack of patience, so I think we'll be in for a long road with tantrums. . But he is usually easy to calm down. I just hope he'll stay that way!

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Noah is such a precious and sweet little boy:) His little personality is absolutely infectious and immediately commands attention whenever he enters a room. He captures hearts wherever he goes, and is going to be a heartbreak someday! And even though he can try my patience at times, I am so proud of his independence, knowledge, and abilities!

I feel so incredibly blessed to have this special little man in my life!!

tot school - valentine's part 1

2010-02-08T00:30:00.000-05:00

Noah is 16 months old.

I have to admit, I had not been looking forward to Valentine's Day activities very much for some reason. I guess because Noah is a boy, I figured he wouldn't be into all the pink and hearts and such. But I am so glad I decided to do this theme for two weeks because Noah has been having such fun with it all!

Noah has especially enjoyed is Valentine's books so far. While he does always enjoy the books I pull to go along with our themes, he usually goes back to his favorites in the book basket by the end of the week. This week, though, he has been completely content to stay with the Valentine's ones! And Noah doesn't normally wear bibs, but he found his special birthday bib on that day and insisted on wearing it ALL DAY LONG:)

Here is what he has been reading:

Bright Baby Hugs and Kisses by Roger Priddy

Elmo Loves You (no amazon link...got it at Walmart)

Where Is Love, Biscuit? by Alyssa Satin Capucilli

Happy Valentine's Day, Mouse! by Laura Numeroff

Guess How Much I Love You by Sam McBratney

Last week, Noah discovered an intense love for spooning/transferring. When I saw these heart ice cube trays and heart measuring spoons in the Target dollar section, I knew they would be perfect for tot school! This has been one of Noah's favorite activities this week...he has even asked to do it several times:)

I tried to reinforce color with this one too. He has got red, blue, and green down pat, but I just grabbed a handful out of our big container, so no real thought went into the particular colors used.

Noah also enjoyed playing with these jumbo pompoms this week too. I intended this to be a sweeping exercise (another Target dollar find), but as you can see, he preferred to scoop them up in a spoon:)

I printed this "Achy Breaky Heart" matching game from File Folder Fun. Noah wasn't too interested though...

He only did the green one, then toddled off. Oh well...I'm going to try it again this week.

Noah had fun with red and pink playdough this week. Notice the heart spoon? Yeah...those have hardly left his hands this week!

He also enjoyed playing with the playdough containers. I used this as another color matching activity too..

I made Noah a rice sensory bin this week too. I put the jumbo pompoms in it, another heart cookie cutter, and the smaller measuring spoons. This has been his other favorite activity of the week....he has spent a lot of time transferring the rice into different containers, hiding/finding the pompoms, and so forth.

Onto our art projects for the week...

Noah kind of came up with this first one! I had paint set out to do something else, and he brought the pink paint and a pipe cleaner to me, asking me to let him paint with it. I happily obliged:)

He had lots of fun with this one..here is the finished picture.

I printed this magnet page from Making Learning Fun and intended on letting Noah use his Tadoodles markers to stamp the circles. He had been itching to use some of the glitter foam hearts I bought though, so I let him decorate the page with those instead.

I did try to help him match up some of the heart pictures to the stickers. He did okay with that, but really preferred to put them where he wanted:)

The last project we did I am so excited about...I think it turned out so cute! I saw something similar to this last week, but I cannot remember where, so I apologize for that. They used a cut out footprint, though. Anyway, we worked on this for a couple of days, and Noah enjoyed every minute of making his very own little love bug!

He is getting much better about letting me make footprints. He also put all of the heart "spots" on and glued the eyes down by himself (I just moved the eyes a little closer together). He also enjoyed playing with its antenna. I definitely think we'll be making another one to give to his Granny as her valentine:)

So that's it for our week! See what others are up to, and share you own ideas for Tot School at 1+1+1=1!

tot school - noah's ark & animal sounds

2010-01-31T16:00:00.002-05:00

Noah is 16 months old.

We have had SUCH a fun week! Noah has been quite partial to his animal sounds books lately, so I made that one focus this week. Our other focus was Noah's Ark. Obviously this went well with the animal sounds, and my Noah loves his Noah's Ark things because they share names:) Finally, in hopes of doing more with numbers, we worked a lot with the number two since it also went well with the Noah's Ark theme.

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Growing up, my mom was very in to Noah's Ark and kind of made that her theme in her living room. Her tastes have very much changed since then, so she let Noah have this old wooden Noah's Ark set she used to have as decoration. I remember playing with this as a kid too, so it was fun to see Noah enjoying it as well:)

Noah made several Noah's Ark art projects this week. First, he made a handprint rainbow. I was so proud of Noah too...he chose the order and glued all the prints down by himself! He doesn't tend to do well with gluing paper to paper, so this was an accomplishment:)

He had fun playing with his rainbow all week, especially when we read..

Noah also made a handprint dove. My hubby was very skeptical of this art project, but I think it turned out pretty cute! Noah did especially well gluing the wiggly eyes..

He also enjoyed helping me "pat down" the beak and olive leaves since they were too small for him to glue on his own.

The last artsy thing we did was made a pipe cleaner rainbow. I will definitely admit this looked better in my head! I painted an old pepper container blue, hoping that would represent the sky, then Noah was to put the different colored pipe cleaners into the holes.

He liked putting them in and out of the holes, but no one got that it was supposed to be a rainbow. Plus, the paint kept chipping off the metal container. So this was a bust...but oh well, that happens!

We played ALL of Noah's many toy animals this week, going over their sounds and unique characteristics. Here he is waving an elephant nose:) These are some of his favorite animals to play with...they're from Playmobil 123.

This activity evolved out of another. I had initially meant to make a sound wheel like on Chasing Marcus (found here), but I didn't have a brad to connect the two pieces. So I made the animal page into an animal sounds bingo kind of game.

Here is a close up....I used the egg pieces as markers because I had them out already.

The animals covered up are a sheep, a horse, and a chicken. Unfortunately, Noah was more interested in fitting the egg pieces back together. At least that was good for matching and find motor skills:)

Noah had lots of favorite books this week. Many of them I've shared before, but they fit for our themes. His favorite animal sounds books included:

Moo, Baa, La La La by Sandra Boyton

Biscuit Visits the Petting Zoo by Alyssa Satin Capucilli

Polar Bear, Polar Bear by Bill Martin, Jr. & Eric Carle

Barnyard Dance by Sandra Boynton (not totally animal sounds, but it has some)

His favorite Noah's Ark books included:

The Day the Rain Came by Allia Zobel-Nolan

Noah's Ark by Lucy Cousins

Inside Noah's Ark by Charles Reasoner

I made two number pages this week focusing on the number two. Nothing special...Noah was just supposed to find matching objects and count them into the circles.

Same concept here, just with small objects...

Noah did really well with the small set! Not so much with the big set...he just wanted to play with those pieces. But, he had a blast using this shovel to transfer the pieces.

Actually, spooning ended up being a BIG thing this week. Noah has done fairly well in feeding himself with a spoon for a while now, but he hasn't shown interest in spooning objects for tot school. That definitely changed this week! Though I only have pictures of him using the shovel, he has used lots of different utensils, spooned lots of different objects, and used lots of different containers for the transferring.

This has most certainly been a favorite of the week!

Noah's other favorite activity has been all the SNOW! We've basically been snowed in all weekend; it started Friday around 5PM, snowed all night, and continued off and on all day Saturday. All total we have nearly a foot of snow on the ground, which is a LOT for our area of NC!

Noah has been a little sickly this week with a cold, so I haven't let him go out in it, but I did bring two big bowls full inside at my mom's.

Noah literally played with these for TWO HOURS STRAIGHT! That is unheard of for him!

We did a ton of stuff in those two hours though: transferred, scooped, made different shapes and snowmen, tasted it, talked about how it was cold & wet, watched it melt...it was a GREAT two hours of fun playing and learning!

I just wished we would have been doing our snow activities this week!

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That wraps up our week! See what others are doing for Tot School and share your own ideas at 1+1+1=1!

tot school - beloved thomas:)

2010-01-24T09:40:00.000-05:00

Noah is 16 months old.

Our theme of the week was trains...specifically of the Thomas variety. If you read here at all, you are surely well aware of Noah's dear love for all things Thomas. So most of these activities are much less "planned" than usual. I opted instead to take things he loves to do already and make them a little more learning-focused. And for once, nearly every activity was thoroughly enjoyed....go figure:)

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What would a week be in this house without some Thomas videos? Noah knows exactly where the Thomas video stash is kept (in the drawer under the TV) and often takes it upon himself to rummage through the drawer, excitedly wave the chosen video in our face, then take us to the TV because HE WANTS SOME THOMAS RIGHT NOW! so he can dance a little:) Probably his favorite video right now is Hero of the Rails. He also really enjoys listening to his Train Yard Tracks cd. Seriously, Noah is a little dancing maching:)

Want to know a secret? That's not even Thomas on the tv haha! It's some Playhouse Disney show Noah watched for exactly 5 seconds (long enough for me to catch this mid-dance shot) before he lost interest. I'm quite happy to say that Noah rarely sits still long enough for a full TV show or video. The only exceptions are Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and Thomas. And he still is usually up dancing around or playing with something while watching. I'm so thankful he doesn't sit and watch like a zombie like some kids do! Still, I try to limit his tv time to one Thomas video and one Mickey Mouse Clubhouse episode a day.

On to the activities...I saw an activity similar to this last week, but I forget where. Honestly, I had planned it before I saw the post though....great minds like alike, though, whoever it was:) Noah had to match the train to its corresponding color "station."

He did it pretty well, and really seemed to enjoy it. I also added in a little gross motor work by moving the trains to the other side of the room...he had to run and match the trains up. He liked that, as he likes anything that involves running:)

Another color matching activity...I set out several trains that have coal tenders and Noah had to match them up. Again he did pretty well...much better than I anticipated!

The coal tender matching prompted an easy lesson in magnets. Though he's seen this a million times, the fact that the trains stick together still amazes Noah:)

We talked about lining up the trains, discussing long and short. I also tried to reinforce colors a bit more. Noah really loved this activity because battery-powered Thomas was in the front and he was able to chase around the long line. He is still working on getting the concept of lining them up end-to-end.

We also discussed big and little...but I wish they made more trains in the big size besides just Thomas because Noah really enjoys the two sizes.

Noah had fun making a sticker collage...

He also enjoyed doing a pompom picture...

I helped him match the correct colors, but he did most of the gluing on his own. I just moved them all a bit closer together after he was finished. He also had fun making little dots and swirls in the black spaces....I just really need to get some dot markers!

Otherwise, Noah worked on the train color book from the 1+1+1=1 Thomas tot book, but I didn't get a picture of it, and Noah didn't finish it. Honestly, Noah doesn't like to color. Crayons seem to frustrate him for some reason.

I also made my own version of the Thomas mini book from 1+1+1=1, and Noah enjoyed looking at that. I decided to make my own version so that I could put some of his other favorite trains in it (like Hiro, Stanley, and Victor). I also hoped that I could do some matching/name identification, but Noah wasn't interested, so I don't have pictures of it either. It looks very similar to the one of 1+1+1=1, but if you'd like to use any of the other pages I created, I'd be happy to send you the file!

Noah did a lot of free play with his train toys this week. Besides his Thomas trains, he loves his Little People zoo train and spent a lot of time with it. You can also see his other Little People train/blocks/shape sorter toy in the picture, which he enjoyed as well. He has gotten quite good at shape sorters now:)

Of course, Noah enjoyed many books this week. Though he literally went through every. single. book. in his book basket at least six times this week, I did try to set apart his Thomas books. They include:

Engines All Day

Thomas and Friends - "a baby fingers book"

All in a Day's Work (couldn't find a link...it is a sound board book)

and a set of four I found in our antique mall...Thomas the Tank Engine Shapes and Sizes, Colors, Counts to Ten, & Coming and Going (no link again...I think they're out of print)

So, that about wraps up our week! I had planned on doing some other art projects with Noah, so I may do them next week. Otherwise, I think we'll be focusing on animals and animal sounds...Noah has been SUPER interested in that lately.

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See what others are doing for Tot School and share your own ideas at1+1+1=1!

tot school - more with snow

2010-01-17T23:45:00.000-05:00

Noah is 16 months old.

This has been one CRAZY week! Between finishing moving, beginning my spring semester of nursing classes, and Jimmy being transferred to a new store (he is a grocery store manager), we've had FULL schedules! Still, we managed to get in a few Tot School activities along the way.

Basically, I continued with the snow/snowmen/winter theme from last week. There were several activities we did not get to last week, and some that Noah really enjoyed...plus I figured I didn't need to add more to my plate in trying to plan anything new:)

One major activity we did was a sensory experience with ice. Noah had a TON of fun playing with some ice cubes.

He stirred them a bit (with his little clapper instrument?!)..

He also enjoyed transferring them in and out of the bowl, into my hand, etc...

After a good bit of play, I pulled out some construction paper for Noah to make "ice art." I have seen people make "water art" before (meaning they paint construction paper with water, let it dry, then do it again), but I thought it would be fun to try with ice cubes.

Noah had trouble holding the slippery, half-melted ice cubes, but still seemed to enjoy it:)

The other art project Noah did was make a snowy scene. First, he made a tree with his hand/arm print. Then, he made falling snow with his fingers. Last, he glued on some of the snow (cotton balls) on the bottom....I made a guideline first, and he did great staying below it with the few he actually glued himself.

Noah had more fun playing with the extra *snow* this week too. He loves to "fill and spill" things, so he really enjoyed himself with the cotton balls and plastic cups.

He also LOVES to stir....and his utensil of choice on this particular day was a hairbrush:) This was fun, though, as the cotton balls stuck to the bristles. Noah had fun picking the cotton pieces out later.

Some other activities we did that I did not get pictures of included...

Snowflake matching from My Montessori Journey

Collecting Snowballs game from Making Learning Fun (amended to be a easy number activity)

A homemade mitten lacing card...which was a TOTAL flop:(

and more of the same activities we did last week.

Overall, the week ended up being a fun one for tot school, even if everything else in our lives was totally stressful! Thankfully, everything seems to be calming back down, and we're all looking forward to getting into our new routines.

See what others are doing for Tot School and share your own ideas at 1+1+1=1!