We had an exciting week this week! Zachary said his first Bible verse : "obey your parents". I have a video to post (it's up on Facebook, if you're my friend on there), but I can't get to it right now to put it up. It is so precious, he says his verse in the sweetest little voice. :)
I thought I would include a couple of our favorite learning toys in this week's Tot School Edition: first of all, these stuffed letters (just stuffed fabric) are the way that Z learned all of his uppercase letters before he was 22 months old. They are soft, and fun, and so adorable. I can't even tell you who makes them, because I got them from a garage sale (sorry!).
Here is Z demonstrating a Q. He likes to throw them around, and we sing a little song, "Q says qua, Q says Qua, every letter has a sound, and Q says qua" (which I apparently picked up from a LeapFrog toy at some point, it is sung to the tune of "Farmer in the Dell"). Z can tell you now which sounds some letters say, but not too many. He's got "J says juh" down, so that's fun. :) Lately we've been discussing what words start with the letter, too, he thinks it's hilarious, we'll have a whole conversation that goes, "Juh Juh Juh, Jelly....Juh Juh Juh Juice" etc. ad nauseum. :)
And this is how the letters usually end up before too long:
Here he is playing with his Mega Blocks, making a tall tower.
Some presents for Z & baby sister came in a BIG box this week, and the box was FILLED with a million packing peanuts:
So before we threw them out, we decided to have some fun with them. :)
Z played with his sand toys in the peanuts for a couple minutes...
Dump!
But his favorite part was throwing them in the air and yelling, "It's 'Nowing! It's 'Nowing!"
As I was working on his birthday cake one day, I kept hearing him having this little conversation about pizza with himself, and then I heard him say, "I need a can opener. I need a can opener." and he went and got it out of the drawer, and when I looked down, there he was - 'opening' a can of olives for his imaginary pizza. :)
Here is some music time with Daddy - each playing their guitars:
The most exciting part of our week was Saturday, when Z celebrated his 2nd birthday! (I can't believe it!!!) He got many presents, and we had a pizza party with friends, and a tractor cake! Here's a picture of him opening his Chuck the Talking Truck...can you tell how excited he is? I'll be sharing more about his (and my) favorite presents next week!
And here is the tractor cake, which I just have to share because I made it myself, and it was a lot of work, but I was really happy with the results. The little wheels are stacks of 3 Oreos, covered in chocolate. There are still 1 1/2 wheels in my fridge (and 3 hay bales, too, actually), waiting for the next time I need a snack. :)
For Z's birthday present from us, I made him an I Spy Jar (similar idea can be found
here). You start by getting your materials ready - you'll need rice, a container (recycled or new), a hot glue gun & glue stick, and some stuff to spy. :)
Then you layer rice with the spying stuff in the jar.
Another layer...
until it's almost full. Mine was too full. I ended up taking out 3 of the 4 monster trucks that I had put in, and a bunch of the rice, too.
Also, if you do this on your bed for some unknown reason, your bed sheets will look like this:
Here is the finished product:
I didn't take a picture of this part, but you're going to want to use the hot glue gun to glue the lid on VERY tight, so you don't have rice all over your house. Z may have to grow into this activity, he hasn't been overly thrilled with it so far...but also between the rest of his birthday presents, which he IS totally occupied by, he's been rather busy. :)
And, to begin his birthday celebration, Z decided to find a jar of Vaseline in his room, spread it on everything, and put at least a fourth of the jar in his hair. So it looked like he had gel in it all day. :) It was actually pretty cute. :)
Looking forward to getting into the Christmas spirit for Tot School this week...after we get through the busy beginning of the week (lots of dr. appt's today & tomorrow!)
Check out more Tot School activities over at
1+1+1=1!
Here's Z, gleefully pushing the button. Hearing him sing along to the alphabet song is hilarious, his version always goes something like, "Z, K, T, L, B...next time, sing with me" :)
Another great toy that I was planning to buy for him, so I was thrilled when he received one, is a classic shape sorter. He loves 'playing shapes', and is getting pretty good at all of them, except pentagon & hexagon give him a run for his money. :)
Also, hearing him say 'pentagon' and 'hexagon' is pretty much totally adorable. :)
We made salt dough Christmas ornaments this week. I got the recipe for the dough here, and it was pretty easy to work with. I would definitely use it again. Here is Zachary cutting out some ornaments - he LOVES using cookie cutters, so he had a great time with this part. :)
I didn't get any pictures of them before or after they were baking, not sure why, but some of them turned out kind of puffy and weird. I may have rolled them too thick. Also, I completely forgot to punch holes in them, I mean, they ARE ornaments and all...so I ended up having to hot glue some ribbons on them for hangers, a little extra effort, but it worked out just fine.
He was more interested in painting on his tray, so we did a few together (mostly me), and then gave up. :)
Here are the ornaments we painted:
And though Z was reluctant to paint them, he LOVED hanging them on the tree. He loves seeing the projects we've done hanging around the house, it really thrills him. :) He was pretty excited to show them to Daddy when he got home, too.
We made cake balls this week, together, which was a lot of fun. You can get to the recipe by clicking the link. Here's Z crumbling up the cake with me. :)
And here is the finished product:
We also made candy canes this week, courtesy of No Time for Flashcards. She started with painting a candy cane on brown paper, but I just started with a red paper candy cane.
I let Z use some glue...
and stick on some cotton balls for the stripes.
This project was absolutely perfect for his attention span and craft level. He often gets bored with longer crafts & I end up finishing them myself, so I was excited to find something that was just right for him. :)
So, we had lots of fun with tot school activities this week, but we were also able to take time to relax as a family (always important)! Z should be meeting his little sister some time in the next week (I HOPE!), so we will have some fun pictures to post of that soon!!!
For more Tot School ideas, head over to 1+1+1=1!
And we wouldn't want that all to go to waste, right? So here's the perfect recipe to use it up, and make some delicious treats in the process! This recipe is completely not mine, it is totally stolen from Bakerella, who is amazing. If you've never visited her blog, it is a real treat - every one of her pictures is beautiful, and she gives easy step-by-step directions for every gorgeous confection she comes up with. Anyhow, she makes these great treats called Cake Balls (and cake pops, which is what I set out to make, but I couldn't find any sucker sticks). 
Next, you combine the cake crumbs with the frosting, at a ratio of one box of cake mix to one tub of frosting. I estimated that we had about 2/3 of a box of cake mix worth of cake left over, so we started with about 2/3 of a tub of frosting, and mixed them together, with our hands.
I enjoy decorating cakes, it would be fun to do as a hobby someday, but I am by no means an expert, or even very good at it. I was happy with how the tractor turned out in spite of my decorator shortcomings. :)
I read a tip about adding a 'crumb coat' of frosting, thinned with water, all over the cake - then you leave it sit or put it in the fridge for a while & it hardens up & you can just decorate right over it, and not worry about crumbs in your icing. So here is the cake with the crumb coat:
It actually didn't work that well for me. I think I added too much water to the crumb coat, because crumbs still kept getting caught in the top layer of frosting. 
Here is Z demonstrating a Q. He likes to throw them around, and we sing a little song, "Q says qua, Q says Qua, every letter has a sound, and Q says qua" (which I apparently picked up from a LeapFrog toy at some point, it is sung to the tune of "Farmer in the Dell"). Z can tell you now which sounds some letters say, but not too many. He's got "J says juh" down, so that's fun. :) Lately we've been discussing what words start with the letter, too, he thinks it's hilarious, we'll have a whole conversation that goes, "Juh Juh Juh, Jelly....Juh Juh Juh Juice" etc. ad nauseum. :)
And this is how the letters usually end up before too long:
Here he is playing with his Mega Blocks, making a tall tower.
So before we threw them out, we decided to have some fun with them. :)
The most exciting part of our week was Saturday, when Z celebrated his 2nd birthday! (I can't believe it!!!) He got many presents, and we had a pizza party with friends, and a tractor cake! Here's a picture of him opening his Chuck the Talking Truck...can you tell how excited he is? I'll be sharing more about his (and my) favorite presents next week!
And here is the tractor cake, which I just have to share because I made it myself, and it was a lot of work, but I was really happy with the results. The little wheels are stacks of 3 Oreos, covered in chocolate. There are still 1 1/2 wheels in my fridge (and 3 hay bales, too, actually), waiting for the next time I need a snack. :)
For Z's birthday present from us, I made him an I Spy Jar (similar idea can be found here). You start by getting your materials ready - you'll need rice, a container (recycled or new), a hot glue gun & glue stick, and some stuff to spy. :)
Then you layer rice with the spying stuff in the jar.
Another layer...
until it's almost full. Mine was too full. I ended up taking out 3 of the 4 monster trucks that I had put in, and a bunch of the rice, too.
Also, if you do this on your bed for some unknown reason, your bed sheets will look like this:
Here is the finished product:
I didn't take a picture of this part, but you're going to want to use the hot glue gun to glue the lid on VERY tight, so you don't have rice all over your house. Z may have to grow into this activity, he hasn't been overly thrilled with it so far...but also between the rest of his birthday presents, which he IS totally occupied by, he's been rather busy. :)
Here Z is experimenting with painting his body:
I got him some navy beans (the dry kind), and he has REALLY enjoyed scooping them into ice cube trays and muffin tins with different spoons:
and of course pouring them out of the bowl:
But he was pretty excited about the finished product. We traced one foot and two hands of his for the body & wings of the turkey, then I cut out some feathers in different colors & we glued those on the back. We added eyes & a waddle & beak and some feet at the last minute for cuteness. :) He doesn't get into craft projects very much while we're doing them, but for the following week, he looks at what we made and says, "We made a turkey! (or pumpkin, or whatever)" so that makes it worthwhile even if I do the whole craft myself. :) 
The day before Thanksgiving, we made a pumpkin pie together! Z helped with the spices as you can see, actually he dumped in all the ingredients as I measured them.
Here is our finished product. There should be three hearts on the top, but Z was possibly a little TOO helpful in pushing the hearts into the pie filling before it was baked. :)
It snowed one day this week, so Z was excited to put his boots on and go outside and 'walk in the 'now'. Here he is enjoying it. :)
Next week, my tot school post will probably include some pictures of Z's birthday party, because he turns TWO YEARS OLD on Saturday - I can't believe it!!! These two years have FLOWN by!!! :)
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