All for the sake of my children. {grins}

I found some great things for Tot School {ok, and lots of other things too} but first up this week was the sugar shaker and some candles on a stick (both from the Dollar Tree). Kaleb was oh.so.excited to play with these over and over again. And later in the week I found him trying to climb up my wall {literally} to get the container again – ‘More! More!’ Thanks to Carissa for her lovely idea, although I didn’t make it in time to get those cute little hearts that she has.

We were blessed to have amazing weather early last week and took a walk at a local park with all the kids. Kaleb spent most of the time in the backpack but had some time at the end to explore and poke around at the end of our walk.

Kaleb wanted to join in when Zachary was playing in a tray of rice, so he jumped right up and worked his way in. We moved him to the floor with a little more rice, some bowls and spoons and he had a blast pouring, stirring, dumping, transferring – and making a MESS of rice all over the floor. Because nothing says ‘this is fun’ like dumping 3 or 4 cups of rice all over the kitchen floor. Especially when you are super-excited about using the dust pan and the broom!

Since Kaleb enjoyed the rice so much, I filled a large plastic tub with a HUGE bag of rice, added some funnels and toys and let him play on the deck a few days later. Just a quick note: when you hide the container of rice, be sure to do it better than I did and avoid your own bedroom, or you might just find a few cups of rice in your bed when you are ready to sleep. Just sayin’.

Kaleb runs to the table every.single.morning and says ‘Paint? Paint?’ and I finally caved said yes. He painted his own beautiful watercolor. And then dumped the bowl of water all over the floor and table. And stained his hands and mouth blue when I turned my back for two seconds. You’d really think I would know better with our fourth child.

I pulled out our color matching cards to use this week (just three colors at a time) and Kaleb had a great time naming the pictures and putting them on the right color piles. The boy loves to sort.

And don’t tell any of the other kids in the house, but Kaleb got to play on the laptop when we were alone! We went to the FisherPrice website (you can read more about the site at Totally Tots) and he had a blast playing the counting game and the alphabet game for a little bit. Next time we will move to the computer downstairs so there isn’t so much banging going on, but he was thrilled to have a turn!

I asked Kaleb if he wanted to play a game this week (just me and him) and he pointed up to our game shelf and kept saying ‘Who! Who!’ so Horton Hears a Who it was! We hid the little clovers all over the living room and then ran around trying to stick them on his Horton mask. Listening to his little giggles was just too sweet.

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

There were quite a few things that we did during our Tot School time this week that were repeats of last week’s post, but we did branch out a little bit too. Since Kaleb is no longer taking a morning nap (please allow me to grieve this point *sob*) there was no way that I could avoid having him using the easel along with us.

And he was THRILLED.

And by thrilled I mean of the paint-splashing, scream-your-head-off when Mommy confiscates the paintbrushes kind of thrilled.

But it made for some wonderfully cute pictures of him doing his best to paint a marvelous picture.

Watching him paint was so sweet – he would close his little mouth when he dipped his brushes and then the mouth remained WIDE open when painting. Too.stinkin.cute.

I also received a Noah’s Ark to review this week and he had so much fun pretending with me. Hearing him name some of the animals (umm…the ostrich isn’t too easy, really) and make noises along with them is fun.

We spent time using playdough too – making snakes and trying to make shapes together. Kaleb loved using the molds we have for our playdough to make different designs and creatures.

A few weeks ago I picked up these stacking rings (I have no idea what else to call them) at a yard sale, so all the kids had fun playing with them. Kaleb had trouble actually getting them together, so we also tried sorting them by color and had him hand us the colors that we asked for…we’re still working on learning our colors, even though he is sorting like a pro!

That wraps up our Tot School highlights for the week! Don’t forget to visit Carissa at 1+1+1=1 for some more Tot School posts. She is also working on a new site, so stay tuned to see what she has planned! You are going to LOVE it!!

Tot School was a little scattered this week since Kaleb started acting very tired and lethargic on Wednesday and then that night began complaining that his ear hurt. We’ve never had one this young actually TELL us what was wrong with them, so at first we didn’t really give it much credit. But it was so sweet (and sad all rolled into one) – he kept putting his little hand on his ear, leaning his head to the side and saying “hewrt, hewrt” in that cute little toddler voice. And sure enough he had a double ear infection.

Although we weren’t quite as focused, we did get a few things squeezed in to our days. I pulled out a bunch of my teaching supplies from years ago and actually hung them up! When I use tape on our walls it leaves a nasty residue, so I finally bought some of the 3M adhesive tabs to hold up the shapes and colored crayons. And Kaleb LOVES them. He’s been running over to the wall and naming colors, not the right ones, mind you, but at least his naming colors!! I pulled out some of the smaller crayons I had and he would hold them up to the matching crayon on the wall and repeat the color after I named it.

We also spent some time doing puzzles this week again. We’re using the 3 part alphabet puzzles and only doing a few at a time so that it doesn’t get too overwhelming for him.

He pulled out his stacking cups (Discovery Toys) and also his big buckets (Tupperware) to stack inside each other and also have fun stacking in a tall tower and then know down…or see if it would fit in his mouth. While it’s great to strap him in at the table, it’s also hard because those little arms can only reach sooooo high!

Since I don’t have as much to share this week, I did want to share what my overall goals for Kaleb were this year:

• Identify basic colors
• Identify body parts
• Identify 3 shapes
• Sing ABC song and identify key letters (K for Kaleb, M for Mommy, D for Daddy)
• Identify animals and the sounds they make
• Sing a few simple songs (Twinkle, Twinkle, ABC’s, Jesus Loves Me)
• Count 1-5, then 1-10 if mastered
• Sort items by color, type and size
• Know difference between big/small
• Understand prepositions on/off, in/on/under
• Copy circles and lines
• Put together simple puzzles

Be sure to head over to Carissa’s at 1+1+1=1 for some more Tot School posts and ideas.

We pulled out a few of the newer Christmas toys this week for the little man to play with, so he was rather thrilled. I apparently underestimated him when buying some of the toys (sigh), since he has already ‘mastered’ some of the puzzles. But as long as he enjoys doing them and playing with them, we’ll keep using them!

Although we have the smaller leap pad, Kaleb isn’t quite up to it yet so he has another toy that is similar and does alphabet and counting – just the basic things. Since he is becoming more interested in singing the alphabet he is more interested in this one now. Another day he lugged it around the house with him and let his sisters push him around in the laundry basket while he played along.

Kaleb is also loving his stringing beads and figured out how to get them on the string all by himself this time! He actually did quite a few and then dumped them all over the table.

He then started stacking the square blocks and building a tower. He was so thrilled with himself!

We also pulled out the colored bears for sorting this week to see if he could continue to sort the four colors, which he did! Yeah, Kaleb!

Kaleb has been having fun discovering the difference between hot and cold. We freeze our gogurts and so he sits at the lunch table saying “Cold? Cold?” while squeezing his gogurt. Then later he runs over to the stove asking, “Hot? Hot?” He’s got it down now!!

Laurianna also had fun trying to teach Kaleb how to play Go Fish. We have some great cards from Alphabet Alley that are nice and thick (you can read more about them here). Love them!!

Years ago I bought a cd from Discovery Toys called Sounds Like Fun. Every now and then we’ve been playing it and Kaleb LOVES the alphabet sounds song on the cd. Here he is at the table singing along and raising his apple in the air while singing “Apple, apple, ah, ah, ah.” (If you don’t have this cd, I’d highly recommend it!!).

Be sure to visit Carissa at 1+1+1=1 for some more Tot School posts! Have a great week!