TOT SCHOOL: WEEK 2 RECAP

I've decided to split our tot school days into two parts. In the mornings, we focus on the letter, colour and Bible verse of the week, and in the afternoons we will focus on our weekly theme. I also discovered an awesome website call Days of the Year which essentially is a guide to all the world's weird, funny, wonderful and bizarre holidays. When I can, I'll try to incorporate some of these special days into our curriculum. 

For week 2, we focused on the letter B, the colour blue, John 6:48 ("I am the bread of life"), and textures (our theme of the week). We celebrated Greenpeace day, Dot day, and Play Doh Day. Take a peek into our to school week!

One of the first things we did this week was make our baby cookies! We made some that looked like Bb's, and one that was in the shape of a boat.

We read all week from his "Baby's First BLUE Picture Book" book! This book was mine when I was a wee toddler, and I love they way he loves it. (He also wore a blue shirt, as you can see!)

Thaddeus explored hard and soft textures with a coffee bean and Play Doh sensory bin. He continued to talk about this all week long!

He sorted soft and hard toys in separate bins. Georgie, his monkey, gets a snuggle and lands in the soft bin! I wasn't sure how he'd do with this, but after demonstrating to him, he proceeded to sort the entire basket of toys. Throughout the rest of the week he continued to knock on different objects and tell me if they were hard or soft.

For Dot Day, we tried a bunch of activities involving dots, like these frozen yogurt dots. He LOVED them! We made them again and again! 

Thaddeus also painted his very own dot!

 When you think of the letter "B", you can't help but think of bees! We celebrated Greenpeace Day and signed the petition to protect the bees by banning bee-killing pesticides and chemical-intensive industrial agriculture and promote ecological farming. You can too! We also made this super cute craft! It was the first time that Thaddeus used a glue stick!

And since our theme of the week was textures, here you see Thaddeus exploring a slippery sensory bin made with egg noodles and ice cubes.

We did another sorting activity where Thaddeus had a bunch of colourful toys in the big bin in the middle, and he needed to separate the blue toys from the rest. Again, he surprised me with how focused he was! He needed a little help focusing at the end, but he eventually got through the whole box!

And we took Thursday and Friday really easy. We still talked about the colour blue, how different things around the house and outside felt, and sang our Bible verse all day long. See you next week as we head into week 3 of Tot School!

RECIPE: BABY COOKIES

"B" is for Baby cookies! Our tot school letter of the week is B, our colour focus in BLUE, and our theme is TEXTURES (more on week two of tot school coming at the end of the week). Making baby cookies was one way I thought to combine all 3! Thaddeus helped pour the ingredients, mix the batter, and of course, eat them up. He was so excited when I surprised him with some "B" themed/shaped cookies!!

However, only the big B survived the scrape off the pan.

But thankfully so did the boat!

Big B, little b, what begins with B? ... Baby cookies!

Check out that excitement!

Big B baby cookie

Both of my kids love these cookies, they are super healthy, super easy and only have 5 ingredients! I hope you enjoy this recipe!

BABY COOKIES

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INGREDIENTS

1 1/2 C oats 2 ripe mashed bananas 1 C applesauce

1 tsp vanilla extract 1 (heaping) tsp cinnamon

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DIRECTIONS Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper. Mix all ingredients together in a medium bowl, and arrange on prepared sheet. Bake 20-30 minutes. ❥ I usually only bake them for 20 minutes, because then they stay really soft and chewy, which is better for Juliet as she's only 8-months-old right now.

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  EAT & ENJOY!

PIZZA NIGHT

Friday night is pizza night. It's our little family tradition, and this week Thaddeus got in on that tradition by making his own pizzas! Half way through our first week of tot school, I discovered through instagram an awesome totschool blog who planned year-round "themes" for her daughter's tot school curriculum. I love this idea and I'm going to incorporate her weekly themes into our tot school. Last week's theme was SHAPES, so we took pizza-making as an opportunity to talk about circles! Needless to say, it was a total hit! Thaddeus was so excited to get to do it ALL by himself - a very very important part of being 2! 

He's always helped me spread the sauce on our pizzas, but it was much more fun to do on his OWN pizzas!

He also had fun counting his pizza circles!

Look at the concentration in his eyes!

Dump all that cheese on there!

Perfect!

This week's theme is textures, and today we had a lot of fun exploring the differences between soft & hard. We're also focusing on the letter B, the colour blue, and our weekly Bible verse is John 6:48 "I am the bread of life". Stay tuned for more photos!

OUR TOTSCHOOL ADVENTURE BEGINS

First day of TOT SCHOOL! What a handsome hippo!

As you know, Mark is a school teacher. However, we're still not 100% sure that we will send our kids to public school. We might, in fact, in some form or shape, homeschool! I've slowly started doing some research on what homeschooling could look like for our family, and while doing so, came across "Tot School" (Pre-pre-school at home). Basically all it is, is intentional learning through play and reading. Super basic, every day learning with purpose! You can learn more about what it is by visiting our "Tot School" page. Anyway, as you can see we're going to give it a go. Here are some snaps of what that's looked like for us this week!

Exploring letters learning about magnets, while working on fine motor skills.

Simply using a metal pan and some scrabble magnets!

Our colour of the month is red, and this little activity was Thaddeus' favourite. I don't have a printer, so I've been making all his activities by hand. All we did here was make some circles, and stick some red-themed stickers in the middle of them. Colour recognition and fine motor skills!

This was simply a handy little fine motor activity to keep him occupied while I unloaded the dishwasher. I wrapped a bunch of toys in tin foil, and he unwrapped them. Then we found all the red ones (our colour of the month). But his favourite part was finding "Stega"!

Totschooling is easy when you have a cute little helper!

Our letter of the week is "A", and our colour of the month is red, so we originally tried making some apple (A!) stamps by dipping and stamping half an apple, but it was much too slippery. So finger painting it is!

He loved it, of course!

His finished piece!

Here you can see some of the activities we did to learn more about the letter A and the colour red.

Every month we are going to focus on a certain colour, and every week we will be focusing on a different letter. We are following along with "Songs for Saplings ABC", an awesome album designed to teach Scripture to little ones. Our verse this week is Psalm 17:8 "Keep me as the apple of your eye", which coincides with the letter A! I'm so thankful to have found Songs for Saplings. It's the perfect tool to use for our totschool year.

Seriously, cutest helper in the world right here! This also counts for a late 8 month picture!

Just wanted to share that I made him stand on his change table to get this pic. Heehee!

I also put a bunch of hats on my head so he'd look at me and smile. SUCCESS!

Follow our totschooling adventure here on the blog and on instagram! Be sure to check our TOTSCHOOL page where I will keep track of all our totschool posts.

NANA & PAPA ARDLEY VISIT LLOYD (SUMMER 2015)

Nana & Papa visited this summer, and here are a few snapshots of our lovely time together!

I wish I had taken more pictures! Next time for sure.