The big news this week is PEDALING – all by himself!! :) Kaleb finally figured it out and has been riding around the backyard and taking rides with us too.

I have some two piece puzzles that match ‘what belongs together’ (i.e. socks/feet, toothbrush/toothpaste, etc…). I only pulled out 4 puzzles so that he wouldn’t get overwhelmed/confused. We won’t mention the fact that I can only find six out of the many puzzles…since there are at least six puzzles missing their match.

We pulled out the ring toss game to match colors and also play. Kaleb didn’t want to try it from a distance, so we just sat nearby and played for a bit.

Kaleb loves the emotion bears. He has so much fun dressing up the bears (and matching/making outfits), but was so funny to watch imitating the different emotions that the bears show. He kept pretending that it was Daddy – and for some reason kept making Daddy cry all the time.

We pulled out the lacing beads and Kaleb did great naming several of the shapes (circle and star). He LOVES the stars!! We’re still working on the names of the colors though!

The lacing beads served a double purpose and we ended up building towers with them too (with the eventual knocking down of said towers – doesn’t every toddler??).

We did other activities too this week, but ended up our week celebrating all the HOT weather (90’s) with a water gun fight. The kids got the little guns while Mommy and Daddy got to use the super soakers. By the end of the afternoon, Kaleb was s-o-a-k-e-d because he kept asking to be hosed by the soakers. :)

That’s it for this week! I’m off to plan for this week since I found some fun puzzles at a yard sale!! Don’t forget to visit Carissa at 1+1+1=1 for some more Tot School posts.

Kaleb has been disappearing and reappearing with tubs of his school toys and telling me what he wants to do {i.e. dumping it all over the floor and then pulling me to ‘come’}. This next week I really want to plan 3 specific activities to do with him each day ~ ahead of time ~ and let the rest of the day go where he leads/directs.

I found some mini building blocks at a curriculum sale ~ which Kaleb happily ripped out of the box to play with for approximately 6.3 seconds.

After his unenthusiastic response to the blocks he discovered his sister’s purse sitting nearby and decided that looked like more fun. Since it technically involved snapping and ‘fine motor skills’. Besides he was having fun.

Another fine motor opportunity presented itself when someone under the age of 8 left a pair of scissors sitting out and Kaleb found them. Even though I didn’t set up this as a teaching time, he was practicing those cutting skills ~ and it was just a coloring book cover.

We pulled out a bunch of our bug lacing cards to do too ~ attention span was fairly short again, but he did do a bit of the grasshopper before moving onto other fun things!

Our biggest learning experience this week involved REAL bugs…of the mini ant variety. Kaleb has been freaking out every time he sees a tiny ant. Literally. Screaming like a girl ~ hysterically. While it’s been pretty funny, it was also getting a little old because the ants just don’t want to go away. We finally taught him that he can squish them ~ you know, since he’s BIGGER than they are and all!

Here he is showing us one of the ‘crickets’ {as he calls them for some reason}:

And here he is in full action ~ hunting and killing.

The ant-killing feat alone makes this week a total success in my book.

Oh yes, Amen!

Kaleb is also really starting to talk up a storm and pull so much together. One giant run-on generally ~ but hearing him talk and talk in that sweet little voice is just precious!! And along with the talking, he is becoming so much more of a little ham to go along. His facial expressions just crack us up {and the little stinker knows it!}.

Don’t forget to visit Carissa at 1+1+1=1 for some more Tot School posts.

Kaleb started actually pronouncing his ‘s’ this week – so his ‘yea’ turned to the sweetest little ‘yes’ (or really a ‘yeth’). Just to cute. He is coming into his goofy personality more and more, making us laugh at every turn.

I pulled the plastic eggs apart and Kaleb spent some time first matching the colors and then matching tops and bottoms of the eggs together.

We pulled out two bags of pom-poms and an egg coloring tray (all Dollar Tree) and used the tray to sort the pom-poms by color.

Then Kaleb used some chalk eggs to draw on black construction paper.

I made a paint swatch matching card using nine different colors and clothespins. It took Kaleb a little bit to get used to opening the clothespins (and keeping them open), but after help on the first few, he figured it out and matched them all.

Kaleb pulled out the shape matching/sorting puzzle and wanted to work on it, so we did! :)

We pulled out the paints this week too – and used q-tips to paint a few pretty pictures.

After reading this ABC post on Totally Tots, I printed off the coconut tree template and stuck it on our dishwasher for Kaleb to play with. Kaleb had fun picking up letter and trying to name the letter or color.

That’s it for this week. Don’t forget to visit Carissa at 1+1+1=1 for some more Tot School posts.