wordless wednesday

future doctor??

hmm..based on this face? maybe not:)

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

Noah is 13 months old.

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

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

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

Theme: Fall/Halloween

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

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

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

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

The Scarecrow and the Spider by Todd Aaron Smith

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

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

Theme: Orange

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

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

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

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

Additional Stuff

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

on my mind...

This week tends to be a bittersweet one for me, so I've had a lot on my mind...

Mine and Jimmy's second anniversary was on Tuesday, the 20th:)

That's definitely the sweet part!

I had some beautiful flowers delivered to me Tuesday afternoon after he went to work, and we went to eat at Kobe's (a Japanese steakhouse) on Wednesday night. Usually we go to the beach for the weekend at my aunt's condo, but he has been working overtime this week while another manager is getting married themselves. But we still had a nice anniversary this year, just more low key:)

The bitter part of this week is missing my Pawpaw. His birthday was on Wednesday, the 21st, and he passed away two years ago tomorrow (Oct. 24). Yes, that was only four days after our wedding, but his death was incredibly unexpected. We were very close, and I miss his so much...especially this week...

Of course, I do have this little stinker to cheer me up:)

tot school

Noah is 13 months old.

Featured Color: Orange

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

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

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

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

Theme: Fall

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Miscellaneous Tot School

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

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

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

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

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

That's all for this week!

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