Tot School

Well, we 'sort of' had school this week - we did our circle time several days, focusing on the letter I. I forgot to take a picture of it, but we'll be doing I again this week, since we're moving into our new house and finishing up the little things up there, so I'll post about that next week. :) This week was crazy, with Thanksgiving, and a couple of days where we worked really hard and had lots of volunteer help on the house, we didn't actually get in very many 'formal' school activities! But I did take pictures of what we did. :)

On Tuesday, we had to go to Buffalo to pick up some flooring for our house, and so I decided that while we were there, we should do something fun as well! It was too windy for the zoo, so we went to the Buffalo Museum of Science for the rest of the day. It was a blast!! They had lots of interactive exhibits, and Zachary loved everything, but there were even a couple of places for Natalie to play, and she loved exploring, too! :)

In the first room, which was mostly geared towards preschoolers, there was this big water table! The water flowed from a whirlpool at the top to the big basin at the bottom, and then went back up in a tube to start over. Z loved playing in this!


Here he is putting some toys in the whirlpool at the top to see if they will float down:

And here he is pumping the old-fashioned water pump which was at the bottom:

We saw some dinosaur bones! He loved this part!

And here's how Natalie spent most of the day...lounging in her stroller... :)

They both LOVED this interactive exhibit about 'simple machines'. Z spent at least 20 minutes putting the balls in the bucket, using the crank to pull the bucket up, and then dumping it out. We arrived at the museum at about 11:00 or so, and after we went through the big 'preschool' room downstairs, we stopped for quick lunch, then went upstairs to this exhibit, and we were the ONLY people in the entire room - it was wonderful. Z ran around and tried everything, spending as long as he wanted to on each thing - it was so great. So, next time you plan a trip like this - maybe arrive later in the day - that way you miss the big rowdy school groups, since they usually arrive first thing in the morning! :) Anyhow, all that to say, we were the only ones in the exhibit, so the kids played for a long time uninterrupted & it was really fun. :) This ball part was Natalie's favorite - she just LOVED it, and crawled around squealing - it was too cute! :)

This is one of those air-powered tubes that sucks a ball in, like they have at the bank - we spent a lot of time here, too! :)

using a magnifying glass...except not really...this part was neat, but more geared for older kids, so we sped through & went back to the simpler parts. :)

Here is Zachary making his shadow in the 'space' part of the museum:

And drawing with window crayons:

And here they are enjoying the 'toddler' section of the museum - Z loved the toys in here, and Natalie had a good time here, too. :)

So, we did do just a few 'school' activities at home this week! We played with our Pilgrim Counting Game again from Musings of Me, and we sorted our Pilgrim Hats by size, so those things were fun.

We colored a fall headband - both kids had a lot of fun with this one - found this at Making Learning Fun! Notice how nicely he is almost staying in the lines with his blue person! I haven't seen him color this well before! :)

The finished product: could he be any cuter? :)

Then we did our letter I collage. I is for ink this week! My idea was for him to draw with different colors of ink pens on the I, but he pointed out that dot markers (which he loves) have ink in them, too, so could he please dot his ink on? So of course, following that logic, I had to let him. :) So we dotted our I with ink. :)


My Tiny Tot

Natalie colored for the first time this week - a headband! :) Mostly she alternated between trying to eat the crayons and trying to eat the paper or crinkle it up to hear the crunchy sounds it makes, but she did get a little bit of crayon on the paper, so I considered it a success. :)


Her finished product: (the yellow to the left of the girl is her coloring, the rest is mine). :)

Natalie wearing it! Please try not to keel over from ALL THE CUTE in this post! :)

Finally, Natalie is getting to be such a BIG girl - here she is demonstrating how to drink whole milk from a sippy cup! She still nurses, but we're introducing whole milk as well, and she is doing GREAT - much better than her brother did at this age for sure! She also eats a lot of different 'real foods', which makes mealtime much easier! We are still supplementing with baby food, but she especially loves bananas, chicken nuggets, toast, any cereal, and yogurt!

To see what everybody else did for Tot School this week, check out 1+1+1=1!