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!