This is the little man on the first day of school.

Kaleb had fun playing with the dress-up emotion bears. I asked him to make one look like Daddy {apparently Daddy wears his underwear to work…but at least he goes happily!}.

While we were sitting at the table working together, Kaleb sat with us and had fun coloring.

The lacing bugs were a big hit since we’ve been having fun with bugs and the great outdoors this week.

Laurianna loved being able to help Kaleb pouring water. She would ask him to pour the water into a specific colored cup {Mommy got smart and put a towel under it this time!}.

Kaleb was so VERY excited with the caterpillars that we have in our house. The little aquarium was at his eye level for all of 3 minutes before we found him carting the poor things around the house. Needless to say, it was moved up to the counter and out of reach from grabby-boy. This is a picture of the first chrysalis we have – two more to go!

Some of the other things in Kaleb’s boxes this week:
~ 4 piece puzzle
~ letter and magnet board
~ color sorting cards
~ paper clip matching
~ little blocks

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

There are actually 12 boxes on the shelving unit, but the four big ones on the bottom are for the other kids if they have bulkier items. Besides, filling 12 boxes for him would be a LOT to do in one day. :) Depending on what is in the boxes, I might only put four out at a time and then pull the other four out after snack time.

Here’s a close up of one of the boxes. I posted the little Nemo number tags in my Preschool Workbox tag post last week.

Kaleb had fun lacing the beads..and Mommy likes them since they keep him busy for a little while. :) For those of you who have asked, you can find the beads on Amazon.

Every time I upload pictures I notice that binky in the boy’s mouth. Funny how we’re so used to it being around all.the.time at home, and I only really notice it when we take pictures.

I took all of our shapes off the wall to reorganize our ‘school area’ and wanted to find out what shapes Kaleb knew. He could name several {circle, star, square} but had trouble with the other names, so we played a game together. I put all the shapes on the floor and called out a shape name and he stood on that shape – and yeah for Kaleb! He knew them all {receptively}!! :) Now we’ll just work on the naming {expressively}.

This is probably one of my favorite pictures from the week. Kaleb has watched the Letter Factory dvd this last week and when I opened up the freezer I found the letter ‘C’ sitting on the shelf. When I asked him what was in my freezer, he pointed to the ‘C’ and said, “C-c-c-Cold!”

At the end of the week we took a ‘field trip’ to a local park that the kids love. This is the picture that just makes me smile!

Although I didn’t post pictures of everything we did, here were a few of the other things in Kaleb’s boxes this week: stacking buckets {and knocking them down}, bike riding {he’s pedaling on his own now!!}, coloring, alphabet matching, color sorting, leap pad, and his leap frog dvd.

Hope you all had a great week! Can’t wait to see what you are doing in your Tot School time! Don’t forget to visit Carissa at 1+1+1=1 for some more Tot School posts.

Tuesday: 4 pc. block puzzles, 4th of July shaker, 4th of July hat
Wednesday: star painting/stamping, Wii, color card sorting
Thursday: Children’s Museum with grandmother so Mommy could CLEAN
Friday: building w/ colored blocks, scrunchies on a stick, coffee filter ‘fireworks’

Some of our pictures {and from the looks of it, you’d think Kaleb only wears orange, eh?}

The 4th of July hats and ‘sparklers’ we made were a HUGE hit with all the kids, but Kaleb kept his on the entire time we watched the parade. Some foam sheets and duct tape is all it takes to make kids happy!

Our cookie cutters get so much use {HA!}, so we pulled them out this week along with our red and blue paint to make some star prints/stencils with all the kids. Kaleb was MOST thrilled to paint…he loves, loves, loves it and cries every time we put it away {while Mommy rejoices that the mess is cleaned up!}.

We’ve been playing Wii carnival and Kaleb was given a remote this time and did great on the horse races…no, we’re not raising a future horse racer…but he was too stinkin’ cute flapping that remote up and down as fast as he could!

I have some great colored building blocks and we had fun seeing how tall we could stack the blocks before Kaleb chose to knock them down. He also imitated building arches with me…his, not so much an arch.

Kaleb’s favorite game {and he’s getting rather quick!} is putting scrunchies on a stick from one of our other games. I love it because we name colors as he does it and he also get to work on some fine motor skills.

That’s it for this week! Don’t forget to visit Carissa at 1+1+1=1 for some more Tot School posts. If you are participating I’ll hopefully get a chance to stop by and visit you too!

At homeschool convention I found a cute little Oreo matching game. I think it’s cute. Kaleb is not so impressed. He matched a few cookies and then moved onto other things.

Playdough, however, is always a winner!

I pulled out a Scrabble Junior game that I had picked up at a yard sale, spread out the board and started handing Kaleb letters to try to find on the board. In all honesty, I didn’t think that he would be able to do it at all.

He proved me wrong, but after about seven letters got a little bored {even though Mommy wanted him to keep going!}.

He had much fun playing outside this week since the weather was gorgeous!

We’ve been watching a robin and her babies in the tree above our play area….I found Kaleb on the porch trying to see the babies through the railing.

So cute to see the little mouth up above the top of the nest!

Rick took a day off to work on our porch steps and Kaleb was cracking us all up with his imitation of the saw. It took us a little bit to figure out what he was doing, but we think he does a pretty good imitation {warning: you might want to turn your speakers/volume down, ’cause it really does sound like a saw!}.

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

a) plan intentional activities with Kaleb
b) have them staring me in the face to ensure Kaleb doesn’t just get ‘Mommy leftovers’

That said, here’s how I broke up our week:

Monday: water pouring, Nemo book; watercolor painting
Tuesday: 2 pc puzzles; hair scrunchis, Wii
Wednesday: tp ramps & cars; veggie/fruit cards; nature walk
Thursday: alpha puzzles; foam shapes; sandbox time
Friday….well, umm….I was getting ready for my own birthday party and baking a cake. {grins}

And here’s the FUN stuff ~ the pictures of how it played out.

Kaleb LOVED pouring water from the mini-pitcher and into the cups. We have a kid’s Tupperware set that is now one of his favorite things to do. Next time, I will be a little wiser and let him do it on the deck where the water mess isn’t an issue {for me, not him ~ he could care less!}.

I pulled out the letters of Kaleb’s name with our alphabet puzzles and we had fun playing with those together and {trying to} name the letters.

Kaleb matched shapes {and named circles and triangles) with our foam shapes and cards.

On one of trips to the dollar store, I bought a pack of hair scrunchies and we used a peg from our ring toss game. Kaleb had to stretch the scrunchies over the edge of the peg and slide them down. We also used them to work on naming colors ~ we’ve got green and blue down pat {and I’m sure it’s no small cooincidence that his favorite binkies are green and blue…}

Everyone wanted to be a part of the toilet paper tube ramps with little cars. Once we were done making ramps, the cars moved on up to the big slide and went flying down the BIG ramp!

And this is a little man intent on playing football…for all of 4 seconds or so. Covered in sand from the freshly cleaned sandbox.

Before I forget, I posted my ‘Tot School’ planning form if you want to use it {graphics are courtesy of Carissa at 1+1+1=1). Click on the thumbnail graphic to print it off.

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