So I was thinking about whether to stop doing Tot School posts, and instead move over to the Preschool link-up site since Peanut (5) has really begun to do better with his letters. Of late, however, we are really noticing a lot of regression since having to pull him out of Occupational Therapy a couple of months ago. Because of that, I'm spending the majority of my time with him focusing on big O.T. things and less time on letters, numbers, etc. I'll keep him doing Tot School until his sensory problems are more under control!! Here is what we did this week (along with reading books, lots of speech therapy homework, games, and such)
Monday:
So we're just about to begin our day and a transformer blows near our house. Since we do the majority of our work in the basement (where there are zero windows for natural light) I dragged upstairs what we absolutely needed for our day.
- Metronome work with Twister mat
I'm trying to work on some timing issues with Peanut. His timing is the worst I've ever seen in my limited experience, and I thought this might be a good way to measure where I should start. Umm, let's just say this was much to advanced! He can't cross the midline at all, and you would never know he was attempting to touch on the beat. Tomorrow, we back the train up a little! - Beanbag toss while on couch cushions. He lays on his belly and supports himself with his arms while tossing a beanbag into the target (a corn hole type thing)
- Dressing Pooh in a doctor coat with buttons. He's getting better at this slowly....very slowly. We then had to let Pooh play doctor for a good long time.
- Letter M page -- coloring in with markers
Pictures from Monday:
Ah, a stereotypical homeschool moment. School tends to only happen at our dinner table if the power is out.
Trying to toss it in one of the holes. The remains of Dr. Pooh is in the background.
Little Monkey (7) wants to try tapping to the beat as well. It was a struggle to get him to cross the midline too.
Tuesday:
We were at an appointment for our service project this morning. It's a ways from home, so it took up almost our whole morning. No formal Tot School today! Instead, I try to back up the Metronome work with just clapping with a beat. No go. Tomorrow we back up the train to the most basic level!
Wednesday:
- Metronome things first: I told Peanut we were going to play a drum game. Do like Mommy. Tap the table with the left hand, tap the table with the right hand. Do it in time with mommy. Eventually he got there. Whoa boy, this is going to take a while!
- Listening game: I say two sounds (letter sounds, like mmmm........sssssss) Are the sounds the same or different?
- Do a puzzle while on an exercise ball. He lays on his belly and supports himself by his arms. This strengthens his shoulders, which in turn will make it so we can strengthen his hands more.
- Beanbag pickup. He stands on our Disc-O-Sit (a rubber disc filled with air to make it more difficult to keep your balance). He squats down to pick up a beanbag, stands back up and tosses it to our target. This was something he did every week in O.T. to word on the vestibular sense. Pretty interesting results today. This was far more difficult for him than it was just a couple of months ago.
- Kumon tracing page. Curved lines. He was able to stay within the appropriate area even though it was working on curved lines! Much better, but you wouldn't know it looking at his worksheet now. Once he did all of the places, he zoomed his "airplane" (marker) around the "sky" (paper). Oh well, I know he was able to do it!
- Taking a little time to intentionally practice putting on his socks. Socks really give him a hard time and he's worked on this for quite a few months. He's getting better, he just tries to get out of it because it's difficult.
Pictures from Wednesday:
Why is it every time I try to take a picture of this he looses his balance on the ball?
Trying to keep his balance. Harder than it looks when you're standing on a wobbly, air-filled piece of rubber!
Baaaarrrellly staing within the white area! The next spot down he did much better.
Socks. Ugh, always a battle. But look, he's got them all the way over his heels and everything!
Thursday:
- Handwriting Without Tears page. He loved this one because he was working on the letter M. The page has a capital M and it is kind of like a maze trying to get the little mouse from the starting place to his cheese at the end.
- Stretchy bands (O.T. stuff to strengthen his shoulders & upper body) This boy is way weak in the shoulders!! He was a little frustrated, and it didn't go well since anytime I tried to get his body positioned just right & help him move his arms correctly I was being nagged by one of the other boys about helping with what they were doing. Any type of auditory interruption like that makes him need to start at the beginning with any type of instruction (especially when the interruption seems constant: "Mom. Mom. Mom I need help. Mom I don't know what I'm doing here. Mom are you coming? Mom. MOM." Seriously? Can't they wait ten seconds?!)
- "What" cards from Super Duper, Inc. I just love that company. They've got so much great stuff! These cards are very much like some of what we've been working on in speech, but I bought these from someone in my homeschool loop for $5!
- Mailbox craft. The Mailbox from Blues Clues. He was proud as always. Nope, didn't get a picture :(
- Continue to work on the metronome beats before our speech homework time. Going a little better today, but I'm still not moving on to more than one beat per side.
Friday:
Speech homework & helping make lots of holiday goodies for a Christmas party we're having here Sunday night. Also, before doing speech, we did the metronome beats which went better today. Maybe next week I can move to clapping. I may be stretching it there, but we'll see.
Pictures from Friday:
Oh, I wish I had pictures of our time in the kitchen. 
Kids dipping pretzels in chocolate... and them up to their elbows. Sprinkles scattered all over the counter & floor. Peanut dancing to Jingle Bell Rock. My kitchen looked like both a candy store and a bakery threw up. But they had fun, and we have lots of goodies for our party. Tomorrow we just need to decorate the cookies and make more finger jello.
Since I'm sure I won't be updating any other time this week, here's wishing everyone a great Thanksgiving. Here's a look at our thanksgiving project this year, our Thankfulness tree:
Each leaf is one thing we are thankful for. The tree is surrounded by bible verses about giving thanks to God, which was their copy work last week :) We didn't do this every day, but the kids understand more now that we've been given SO much, and it all is provided by God.
And now, off to my cleaning & filing. I'm supposed to be thankful for that too 
or visit this weeks post HERE.
We're officially on Thanksgiving break!! 
*insert gleeful dancing here* I wasn't very focused this week on what I was doing.....honestly I was daydreaming far more than I should have about what I'll be able to get caught up on over our break. Still, I managed to do official Tot School four days this week, with a very, very light 5th day. So light I probably shouldn't even count it.....and yet I will.
Monday:
- ABC-123 page
- File folder game: Falling Leaves
- extra time with speech homework
Tuesday:
- File Folder Game: Harvest Patterns
- Ladybug stickers on letter L page
- Classifying/sequencing: Little to Large
Pictures from Tuesday:
"I did it!!" is what he's saying here. This is the first time Peanut has been able to do an ABABA sequencing exercise and not have a problem with it. He topped that stunt farther down the file folder by doing an AABBAA sequence! We were all sooo excited!!
Little to Large. These are from a pool noodle, they'll make great star paint stamps when we get to the letter S!! Can't remember whose blog I swiped this from. Whoever you are, I thank you. Oh, and he's also letting all of you out there in blog-land how many stars he counted.
Little Ladybugs on the Letter L.
Wednesday:
- ABC-123 page
- Lacing blocks onto a shoestring (He finally figured out how to do this!)
- Apples: Little to Large
Pictures from Wednesday:
See the steely determination as he figures out how to get that little string through the hole.
Sequencing apples, little to large.
Thursday:
- Handwriting Without Tears page
- Little Hands to Heaven page -- Letter review
- Make a Ladybug craft
Pictures from Thursday:
Friday:
- Played with play-doh
- Went to the river front park with cousins & got to visit with Aunt & Uncle we don't get to see very often......okay that was really mommy :) Peanut played with his cousins.
Really, this was a great week for Peanut, and I didn't even realize it. He was able to sequence from little to big, string the blocks onto string, and complete patterns he hadn't been able to do before. Three things he's not accomplished before now. I guess that's a nice perk of blogging all of these things. With the business of this week, these accomplishments didn't stick out to me before. What a nice way to begin our vacation.
Also this week, our little Peanut turned the big 0-5! When did my baby boy get so old? We celebrated with the necessary balloons:
Presents:
And his very favorite birthday cake:
It seems I am updating about twice a "semester", even though we don't do semesters around here. I'd love to update more, but this type of post takes a while, and I just don't have the time :( Here's a quick update on what we've done over the past couple of months.
Reading:
Both boys have finally made it through that blasted Level 4!!! It took us, I don't know, nine or ten months. I'm not absolutely sure without looking it up. It is considered the whopper of the system and we're SO glad we're past it! Both boys are early in Level 5 and concentrating on Suffixes & Prefixes. Their reading is going very well. Now we just need to get their speed up, and we'll be feeling fine!
Math:
Big Man (9): Still doing well in the Delta book of Math U See (division) He's also learned things like finding the average of a list of numbers, and how to find the area of any number of shapes. Some of them I don't ever remember learning. Maybe I did.....but it sure seemed new to me!
Little Monkey (7): Cruising right along in his 3rd grade Abeka book. Abeka drops multiplication and drills division for a good long time. They come back to the more advanced multiplication later this year. Why they set it up like that, I don't know, but Little Monkey is still doing well so we're not going to rock the boat!!
Grammar:
Both boys are still doing alright. Big Man still has a lot of diagramming to do *yuk*, but it's all stuff he had last year so far. So far, so good. Also, he seems more solid this year on the definitions of the parts of speech. Check that, some definitions. He still struggles to remember a few of them, but he is doing better than a few months ago. Little Monkey says he likes grammar..........."because it's the shortest thing I do all day." Gotta love him.
Handwriting:
Big Man: Has finished all of the lower case cursive alphabet, and seems to be doing pretty well with it. He's now started learning upper case. He really likes cursive, and I like that there aren't any reversals Typing is also going well, he's up to a whopping 7 words a minute. I probably should make him do this every day, but I don't.
Little Monkey: Well, after a little more than 3 years, I think he has the print alphabet down as well as he can do it. Stinkin' dysgraphia. Anyway, to his utter delight, I've moved Little Monkey on to cursive. He has learned lower case "a" and "b' so far. It's cute how he's always leaning over trying to peek at Big Mans paper to see how to form an upper case letter. We'll see how this goes. He could be on cursive for a very, very long time!
History:
Um, we've done a ton of history things since my last update. I'll just hit the highlights:
- Learned about Helen Keller. Watched The Miracle Worker, learned some sign language, & tried doing an obstacle course blindfolded & no auditory help.
- Learned about the invention of the car & airplane: Henry Ford & the Wright Brothers. They had a great time building paper airplanes with Daddy & seeing which folds would make the plane fly farther.
- Had a "Great Disasters" week: the 1906 San Francisco earthquake & the Titanic. Our trip to Tennessee came in handy here. I knew the Titanic was coming up, so I made sure we spent some time at the Titanic exhibit at the Wonderworks museum. "How long can you keep your hand in freezing water" was the exhibit. The water was the same temp. as the water the Titanic was in when it sank. Big Man made it the longest, keeping his hand in for a mammoth 19 seconds. For the earthquake, we watched a great documentary then built different types of homes: graham cracker, lincoln log, & lego. Then we made an earthquake and saw which ones withstood the shaking the best.
- World War I. Mostly they enjoyed looking through the different books with pictures of items/daily life. We learned about trench warfare, and daily life of the soldiers. War Game was our favorite book from this week.
- The Roaring Twenties, Charles Lindberg, Walt Disney, 20's & 30's entertainment, the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl. This was not all in one week, of course, but over a few weeks. They seemed to really enjoy this time period, and we did a bunch with it. They especially liked learning about what people did for entertainment during this period. I've listed some of it in the Art update below, but besides that we also listed to the original broadcast of The War of the Worlds. They were just about as fascinated as I was watching the documentary: American Experience: Surviving the Dust Bowl. This is an outstanding show, highly recommend it if you don't know much about this time. The Great Depression also sparked quite a bit of interest. I spent way too much time on this, but I created a file folder game called How Depressing! They seemed to love it, and it really sneaked in a number of skills like cementing depression-era facts, math, and budgeting. I set it up kind of like PayDay, but with Depression twists, like You're Fired! spots, Winter Comes: do you have money for winter coats?, and such. Here's a picture:
I will change this when we play it again. They had no idea how much food to buy to last their family a week, so I think I'll make pre-made grocery cards and they'll choose from that. It was funny while we were playing to see how they were thinking, seeing as they were the husbands during the game. Big Man bought everyone in his family a coat except himself "because you have to take care of your kids and your wife", while Little Monkey didn't buy anyone a coat "because it would cost too much of my money"! The little miser.
Science:
We're plugging right along with science. We've learned about potential vs. kinetic energy, Newton's 3 laws of motion, and the energy of atoms and molecules. We've done experiments along the way with each thing. Now that we've moved into learning about electricity, they have more interst and can see the applications of these things they've been learning. The next few weeks will be fun as we begin to do some things to show how to move the electricity, make solar machines, etc.
Art:
I've fallen off the wagon when it comes to studying certain artists every month. We made it through Degas and Cezzane with a little Monet thrown in ;) I'll get back to it eventually, I've been sidetracked working them through a little of Drawing With Children. I know tons of homeschoolers love this book, but I'm not its biggest fan. I do like how it shows you the 5 elements of shapes, and what you can do with that information once you've practiced it a bit. What I don't like is the lack of any type of schedule or guidance through the chapters. Would it kill them to give me a few examples of warm up exercises I could make copies of? About how long am I supposed to stay on one concept as opposed to another? I don't know and I'm not proficient enough in the art department to feel like I can wing it. This is why I decided this summer I would combine Drawing With Children with the Artistic Pursuits book we already owned. I have liked the variety of learning about Artists Using Shapes (Artistic Pursuits), then working with the 5 elements of shape (Drawing With Children). It's just been more work for me than I'm used to doing for art thus far. I'm getting the hang of it a little bit at a time, and the kids seem to be enjoying it. Also, we were able to apply it to some history lessons:
Combining art and history. We've been learning about the twenties & thirties. One week we focused on the entertainment of the decade with Walt Disney and the first cartoons with sound. We made little flip books of a ball bouncing, then we took the skills we've been learning during our art time and used the elements of shape to create Mickey Mouse. Big Man's (9) mouse is on the left, Little Monkey's (7) is in the middle, and mommys mouse is on the right :) We were quite pleased with ourselves. Peanut (4) was beside himself with excitement because Mickey Mouse rates right up there with Blues Clues. They had a much bigger respect for the amount of work that went into Steamboat Willie (which we watched on You Tube, along with some other very early Disney cartoons) after doing our projects.
P.E.:
A little P.E. time before we begin our day It looks like they are just standing there, but they are all mid-bounce.
There's enough P.E. going on around here I thought I should give a recap on that too! Both Big Man and Little Monkey continue to take Karate, although not seriously enough to test for a belt. Big Man has joined a swim team which he loves very much! He has practice three evenings a week, and one swim meet a month.
This is how he did at his first big competition:
Not the best picture, I know. He did really well, especially for a first-timer. Both ribbons were for team relays he was in. He placed 4th in both of the individual races he had. His coach says he has the best freestyle form on the team. Big Man was very, very proud of that. We're just glad he has found a sport he loves so much AND is good at!
One more week before our Thanksgiving break. Woo Hoo!! Boy am I ready for a "break". We're going to be outrageously busy cleaning (and cleaning out), filing, and planning for our holiday season. We are all looking forward to it SO much!
or visit this weeks post HERE.
Life is busy, busy, but I'm trying to make time to update!! This week was the Letter K week. It's a letter in his name, so he already had it down. We still did a few fun things with it though.
Monday:
- Flashlight Tag: A great visual tracking game. We sit in a dim room with flashlights. I shine it on a spot & he tries to make his flashlight beam touch mine. I slowly drag it away and he tries to make his beam "hold on" to mine. Then it's his turn to be the leader.
- Cut Play Doh: I combined this with our speech homework time today. He cut a piece of playdoh and placed it on the correct answer to whatever direction I was giving him.
- Key imprints in playdoh.....because this week we worked on the letter K :)
- Visual discrimination sheet, printed from EyeCanLearn website
Pictures from Monday:
Showing off the Playdoh he cut.
Tuesday:
- Handwriting Without Tears page
- Kumon Sticker Book page
- Sorting letters onto matching letter card
- Jump Start computer game
Pictures from Tuesday:
We also use these cards for an M&M game. If he tells me the correct letter he gets an M&M. If he gets it wrong, mommy gets the M&M Chocolate has milk in it, and milk is good for you, so M&M's are a health food. Work with me, people!!
Wednesday:
- Cutting paper with mommy (I was actually working on something else, but he kept busy snipping the extra scraps of paper)
- Jump Start video game -- have I mentioned that he LOVES this game? Today he really just messed around on the game, making the music play or sending the little boy down the slide. I didn't really care. :)
- Memory Game
- Hi Ho Cherrio Game
- Playing around with the Barton letter tiles. He was upset he was the only person who didn't get to "play with those things". Who am I to argue? We played around with the tiles for a while reviewing letters. Then he stood them up like dominoes and knocked them all down :)
Thursday:
- Paint with Kool-Aid
- Little Hands to Heaven -- letter K Hide and Seek page
- Key and Kite grid game
- Numbers puzzle
Pictures from Thursday:
A fun little grid game. This one had pictures of keys, we did another one with pictures of kites. Roll the dice and put that number of glass beads on the grid. Keep going until it's filled. Amazingly simple, shockingly appealing to him.
Painting with Kool-Aid paint. Let's just say we won't be doing this one again!! Once he realized this was really kool-aid he wouldn't keep his fingers out of it. It stains horribly, so he's now walking around with orange & purple fingers. At least he was in a dark shirt so if he dripped, it didn't show. (Oh, and purple kool-aid for some reason makes dark gray paint. Not the prettiest color to choose.)
Friday:
- K stamps on letter K page
- Kite craft
- ABC-123 page
- lots of outdoor time since it's a wonderfully beautiful day :)
Pictures from Friday:
He just had to hang his kite on our letter wall!
I always forget to mention that in addition to these things, we also have speech therapy homework, (which I try to do every day but one) and we play lots of games & read books. Next week we'll be on our way to the letter L. Almost halfway through the alphabet
Most of my years as a mom has been spent acquainting myself with the toys boys love. Many of you may understand some of the love-hate that can go with that whole process. Take, for example, the plain and simple Lego. I love the hours of entertainment my boys have with their thousands and thousands of Legos of every size, shape, and...I'd say color, but most are standard issue Star Wars gray and black. The hate part of these toys is what happens to my vacuum cleaner when it has finally sucked up just one too many Legos. *sigh*
So, on to the topic of this entry: Bakugan. I won't begin a debate on the merits (or lack thereof) of the game itself. I'm just talking about the little plastic balls that turn "critter" when they are rolled. Moms who have these things in their homes know they are a combination of Happy Meal meets Transformer meets card game meets bowling. (At least, that's my take at this point.) Lucky me. These have been in my home for a very short time, and they have wreaked more havoc than I'd like to admit.
First, these things are small. They are pocket-sized and, for some bizarre reason, thoroughly entertaining and enthralling to a boy. Maybe this is why they seem to be everywhere I look? They appeared under the covers at bed time, so they had to disappear. When they appeared at the home schooling table, they disappeared. When they appeared at home school group, they disappeared. When they appeared at church--you got it--they disappeared! (Sensing a theme here?)
Home school group was Friday, and I confiscated the "critters" right before I left town for a ladies trip to Springfield, Illinois, for a Beth Moore conference (another topic to be sure). Well, wouldn't you know it--the little buggers ended up in my leather tote bag the whole time and continued to roll out of my bag repeatedly, causing them to expand/explode at various times when I was not in the mood. I can't even count the number of times I put the critters back into ball form at the hotel on Friday night! I would close one, and another would explode. See? These things really are everywhere I turn!
Today the critters were confiscated before service (all six of them). My Dashing Hero determined I should be the keeper of the critters in (where else?) my leather tote bag. This wouldn't be a problem if I weren't carrying my Bible, pen, and other necessary church things in my bag. Between worship songs and sermon, it was bound to happen. The leather tote toppled...and out came six little balls out of my bag. Yep. They exploded all over the aisle, popping like popcorn all over the floor.
Moms watching knew I had recently confiscated them, I'm sure.
But, really! Really? What did I do to deserve this moment in life? I would have left them in the middle of the aisle, but I knew people would probably be tempted to punt them in the direction of the stage thrust to score a goal...or maybe that's just me.
*sigh*
Boys and their toys.
Well duh is my reaction to this article:
No Chairs: Students Get "The Wiggles Out" on Exercise Balls
And yet, there are still people that give me a wierd look when I tell them about letting Little Monkey do this:
Sometimes little boys just need to wiggle, even during math :)
or visit this weeks post HERE.
I'm back in the swing of things...mostly. This week was much more on track than I have been, however I was still overly busy with some things that made our Tot-School time be cut back a little. If you were to ask Peanut (4) if he did his boxes some days this week, he would tell you no. What he didn't realize (insert sneaky giggling here) was that some of the "games" he was playing with mommy were his boxes for that day. One thing I wasn't good about this week was pictures. I only have a very few (sorry grandmas!)
Monday:
- Button practice with felt pieces. *Woo Hoo! He was able to do these without much of a problem. This is a HUGE step forward for him*
- J letter page: J is for Jellyfish
- ABC-123 page
- Book on Tape
Pictures from Monday:
He loved this one so much. He had to tape it to our letter wall right away.
Tuesday:
- Handwriting Without Tears page & sand letter J
- Kumon Sticker Book page
- Math U See page
- Jump Start video game
Wednesday:
- Letter jump game (where I hold up a sand letter & he jumps on the matching letter that is taped to the floor)
- Cutting page (not as good he has been...we need to do more of this)
- Make a jellyfish (with clear contact paper, glitter, & yarn for tentacles) I forgot to take a picture once it was finished. Bad mommy!! We are hanging it in his bedroom window to catch the sunlight :)
Pictures from Wednesday:
He's loving the glitter here! We had to shake a *little* glitter off to get the contact paper to stick
Thursday:
- Vision therapy website Eye Can Learn Explanation is toward the end of this post.
- Buttons: putting a giant stuffed Pooh into a doctor dress up coat with simple buttons (this was harder than the other buttons he's worked with)
- Letter Bingo (with Daddy)
- Hit the Ball game -- I didn't know what to call this one. Just call me creative.
Pictures from Thursday:
Yes, that's a dog toy. I have it hanging from a string. He has a Nerf Sword. I was gently swinging it and he had to hit it with the sword. It's a visual coordination builder. Hard to take a picture while doing this, though!
Friday:
- Kumon coloring page
- Handwriting Without Tears page
- Vision Therapy website Eye Can Learn (doing something different today)
- Developing the Early Learner page....kind of
Developing the Early Learner is a workbook put out by Sonlight. It works on some visual skills we're trying to develop in Peanut. Unfortunately, it's all in black and white. Peanut has really bad visual discrimination when it comes to black and white drawings. So, I took the general idea from the workbook (which picture would go with the first picture: i.e. picture of a match. which would go with a match, a campfire or a forest) and I used pictures from the internet (thank you again Google!) to piece together my own worksheet. He did quite well. If you did the same thing, but with black and white pictures, he wouldn't have any idea what any of the pictures were supposed to be. 
Why is a Vision Therapy website now being included in our days? Well, welcome to this weeks rant! We found out last weekend that we have gone over the allowable number of therapy visits for 2009. Since we can't afford a couple of thousand dollars per week, Occupational Therapy had to be stopped immediately. Since O.T. was also supposed to be doing some eye exercises in hopes of avoiding all out vision therapy, I'm frantically searching for things to do at home. I don't feel very comfortable with this, since I know nothing about vision therapy. The sensory therapy I am comfortable doing at home since we've gone through this before with Little Monkey (7). I just need to make sure I am consistent about putting together weekly plans. My at home O.T. things we've done thus far have been under the direction of our therapist, but I don't get that luxury now! I'm scouring the websites I know about as well as the books I have to put together things to keep Peanut moving forward with his sensory problems.
As far as vision things, I've found a couple of resources I'm excited about. One is the Eye Can Learn website. It has a few things that I know Peanut needs help with, and you do it right online. It's very neat, and even the older boys have tried their hand at some things. No one wants to be left out if there's fun to be had! The other resource I'm looking at is a book from Amazon. Developing Ocular Motor and Visual Perception Skills is a workbook written for O.T.'s, etc. to help them put together treatment activities for children with certain diagnosed vision problems. This is EXACTLY what I was looking for! However, with a $43 price tag and us with a multi-thousand dollar payment coming up (thank you insurance for going a month before letting us know we were out of covered visits!), I have to wait on this book until I have a couple of Amazon gift certificates. I'm chomping at the bit to get this book, but I know we're close to getting a couple of those gift certificates. I'm trying my very best to be patient!
Lastly, the younger boys wanted everyone to see their pumpkins:
Big Man has decided he's just about too old for Halloween. I have a suspicion that it's the influence of his best friend (whose family doesn't go Trick-or-Treating). He is going out for candy this year, but has announced a few times this week that it is his last year. We'll start the night at a party given by someone at church, then go hunting for some candy, then we may just end up back at the party :) I'll be glad when Halloween is done, I can't keep myself out of those Kit Kat bars I've got in the top of my closet! 
Blue Thumb is offering their training, "Let's Give Nature A Hand Workshop" Sat Nov 7 10-2 Lunch provided There is a fee of $10 per student to cover materials Location Tulsa Co Conservation Dist 5401 S Sheridan Rd #201 Tulsa, (by the Farm Shopping Center) The flyer says Experience a variety of educational models and tools that are available for you to check out and use with groups, both children and youth. We love this program and volunteer as we have time. Mom's with older teens this is a great chance for your kids to learn to do presentations and help the planet at the same time. This is all about taking care of our planet! Be sure to register to reserve your spot 280-1595 Space is limited. :-)
or visit this weeks post HERE.
I've been bad, bad, bad about keeping up with Tot School these last couple of weeks. Our whole family has been down with a wicked case of Cooties. Sick the week before our trip, sick for two weeks (and counting) after our trip. At least we weren't sick the week of our vacation! This is going to be one looooong winter if this keeps up! Because of this, I haven't really been good about keeping track of our Tot School times either Anyone who knows me well knows that this has the potential to send me into a tizzy. I am a slightly-obsessive record keeper. Do the papers get filed weekly? *snort* NO! But my planning binder where I keep the records of what we've done on a daily basis is always up to date....except a couple of places in Peanuts section now. Instead of a comprehensive list like I usually do, I'm going to give a fairly quick round up of our last few weeks.
His very, very, very favorite new thing? I don't have a picture of it, but Jump Start Preschool--Advanced is his newest love. My darling hubby and I had talked about finding a computer game that would supplement Peanuts learning. He very much enjoys computer games, but our old educational games won't work on the computer we had to get earlier this year. He. Loves. This. Game!! It reinforces his shapes, colors, numbers, letters, sequencing, etc. He eagerly sits down to play this, even when he's not in the mood to sit and do a Tot Box. I've made it a reward he gets to do after doing a couple of boxes with mommy.
Big news for us around here: we've officially filled up the first row of our alphabet wall;
That's A - G, and what isn't pictured is our additions of H and I. He's really doing great with his letters lately. H was a letter he was already very solid on, so we worked on the sound for it as well. I'm excited to report that he seems pretty solid on all of the letters we've covered so far. He still has days (or moments) when he forgets a letter I think he knows well, but those moments are becoming fewer
The reason I use a tray for some of our crafts:
Oh yes I did. That's glitter people. Green paint and gold glitter on our letter G. Some of it even landed on the letter:
I think he enjoyed himself. Surprise, surprise, Big Man sneaks in to "help". Just get it on the tray, boy!
He loved gluing the foam hearts onto his letter page. He really got into doing the breathy H sound while smashing the heart on the paper.
We tried out a couple of new file folder games. The one above is a math game with fall leaves. The picture below is what I've dubbed the "Owl Alphabet" game. He very much enjoys it when I put the owl letters in a paper bag and he has to pick one, say the letter, then find the matching letter on the tree.
Again, you can print these games yourself with a free membership at the File Folder Fun website. If I had 24 straight hours of free time, I could get a whole bunch printed and made. Ahh, a girl can dream, right?
Also, every week we've been adding another letter to our tape letters on the floor. Below, we were playing a game where I held up our sand paper letters and he had to tell me what letter it was then run to the match:
He decided he wanted to take the match with him and jump on it too. That was alright by me, it's one more way of getting in more sensory input.....this time with his feet!
We also spent some time doing math activities:
Other Alphabet activities:
And some O.T. activities:
I was surprised how much more Peanut enjoys this toy now that he has a little more strength in his hands. I haven't brought it out in forever. I assumed he just didn't like it, but apparently it was just too tiring before!
Nuts and Bolts of varying sizes. Peanut enjoyed this, although the smallest ones were too much of a challenge for him.
Well, there you go. Hopefully now that things are beginning to get back to normal around here I'll get back to my more organized routine. Of course, the holidays are right around the corner.