Tot School - Letter H

Another busy week, but we attempted to fit in a week of school! :)

We focused on the letter H this week - I forgot to take a picture of our morning board, but our verse was Cast all your cares upon Him, because He cares for you. - 1 Peter 5:7. And our song was that 'old' chorus 'I Cast All My Cares Upon You...". I need to update sometime soon on Z's sight words, too - he knows quite a few - I feel like his sight words should be boring because they're just flashcards, but honestly if I forget to do them, he asks me to, so I won't refuse that! :) He is regularly recognizing them in books, too, so that's really fun! :)

So, I did a terrible job of actually taking pictures of our school activities this week! It was like pulling teeth to get Z to do much school this week, though, honestly - all he wanted to do was write with wipe-off markers and play Starfall!!! So we did a lot of those things!

We did make an H collage with little hearts - some are stickers and some are confetti that we glued on:

We also used the stickers & confetti to make a card for a friend who had a birthday this week.

We played this adorable Pilgrim Counting Game that I found on Musings of Me last week:

You pick a number, put it on the Mayflower, and then count out the corresponding number of pilgrims to ride on the Mayflower! Z really loved this, and we'll be playing it again this week!

One pilgrim!
After we played it, I glued the page into a file folder with a plastic bag 'pocket' for the pieces, to keep it all organized. :)

We also used one of the Pilgrim pre-writing sheets (found on the same page at Musings of Me) - with a page protector and wipe-off marker, of course!!! :)

We used our triangle shape viewer this week:

Of course, you have to put it in front of your face.

Apparently it works better this way:

The bottom of the lace thing is kind of a triangle... :)

There is a triangle on top of the school house.

Also, just a mom-to-mom warning - if your triangle is laminated, the edges are probably quite sharp! If your child loves his triangle shape viewer, and begs to take it to Walmart with him, and you let him, and then he pokes himself in the eye with it, it could really hurt, and a lot of crying could ensue in the middle of Walmart while everyone stares at you and wonders what you did to your child. Just a heads-up for anyone who may be using the shape viewers!!! :) (I think his eye feels fine now!)

Zachary used Daddy's iPad to play this tracing game quite a bit this week - he loves playing the iPad, and I love a bunch of the educational games that Carisa from 1+1+1=1 lists here as her favorites! This one is the iWrite Words, but not the Lite version, I bought the whole version for $2, because he likes it so much!

Z played some pretend play this week - he likes to use this egg tray to pretend to make eggs. :) Notice the oven mitt! :)

He is such a helper! Natalie was fussing for some more food while I was getting Z's lunch ready & I turned around and found this!


Of course, then there was the day I found this....

(notice how she's shoveling them into her mouth as fast as she can...) :)

Even though it was cold & rainy, we managed to get outside several days this week, if only for a few minutes at a time! When we play outside, Z likes to run away across this little field across from our house, and then run back as fast as he can. It is so cute. :) Here he is on his way back...

When I'm frustrated with him, I like to watch him run far away like this because it reminds me how little he still really is! :) (and cute too!)

He jumped on the trampoline that is currently in front of our new house:

And here's Natalie out on a walk in the hiking backpack!

My Tiny Tot

Wow, Natalie will be 11 months tomorrow - it doesn't seem possible!!! She is growing so fast, standing on her own for a few seconds at a time, eating everything in sight (literally, food or not), and she talks! She says, "da-da" and "bah-bah"! "Da-da" means Daddy, Mommy, or I like that! "Bah-bah" means Bye, Hi, and Let's go!

She decided to take up reading this week! :)

Seriously, I highly recommend anything from Priddy books, but this touch & feel book that Natalie's reading in the picture has been a favorite of each my toddlers from the time they were 9 months old!

Natalie was actually using the mallet to play the xylophone this week, so that was adorable! Of course, she stopped while I was getting my camera...

And...this pretty much summarizes the stage she's in:

Oh, yes, everything we own is scattered on the floor, and she is already climbing!!! Crazy!

Here she is, communicating to me that she is ready for breakfast: (this action is usually accompanied by shrieking)

Well, that's been our week! We're within a couple weeks of moving into our new house (we think), so once we get that taken care of & get through two birthdays and Christmas, and January starts, we might have a normal week sometime in the future! :) We are hoping to go ahead with letter I this week, at least as much as we can. I may set aside some of our 'weekly, regular' activities, because of Thanksgiving, and because of Z's reluctance to do some things this week, I'm afraid some of the weekly stuff may be getting boring. And he keeps asking me to 'just play toys' with him, so we may do some less structured things this week. :)

To see what everyone else is doing for Tot School this week, head over to 1+1+1=1!