Tot School - Letters R & S

Well, as has become typical for me lately, I have not been doing a very good job of taking pictures or of posting my Tot School on time - so here are two different weeks of Tot School, posted together once again at a random time of my choosing. :) Well, we did take the time to study R and S these last two weeks, and we had a lot of fun with it! I love that Natalie (14 months) is old enough to learn & explore the things we're doing (sometimes) right alongside Zachary (39 months)! :)

Well, I don't have a picture of our morning board from our letter R week, but our verse was "Remember your Creator while you are still young" and Zachary learned it well. Our Bible story was about Creation. :)

I made a simple slider out of a piece of cardstock to go along with our clothespin cards, and we've used it for two weeks now, but I have forgotten to take a picture of it - it is a card with two slits cut in it so you can slide the clothespin card into it & only see one letter at a time - Z enjoys using it to show me which baby letter matches the BIG letter on the card. :)

We also used our Wikki Stix with our #4 playdough mat to make a number 4! And we played with the Wikki Stix & let Natalie experience them, too - she really enjoys sitting at the little table with us & playing with the wikki stix! :)


Zachary took this picture of the 4 we made!

Z & Nat played with our Melissa & Doug sound puzzles - we have the vehicles & musical instruments - and they both love them! Natalie can't put them in the right spots yet but she has figured out how to cover up the sensors so the puzzles make noise. :)

We made an R with Red Rice! I dyed some rice red by using a recipe I found online with vinegar & red food coloring - Zachary helped me shake it up & then we waited for it to dry. Then we put plenty of Z's favorite - GLUE! - on the R collage page!

Then we sprinkled on the red rice! (Side note: I only had brown rice on hand, and no white rice, so I think the rice would have been redder if I had the right kind!)

We even got rice on our hands! :)

PLENTY of rice on the R.... :)

And then we shook the extra back into the bowl & I dumped the leftovers into a sensory tub with some dry beans that we play with sometimes! :) Here is our finished Red Rice R!

We played our Schoolhouse Math game that I found on this site. It is a cute board game - the cards say +1 or -1 (numbers 1-6) - and there's even a 0! Zachary really likes to get 0! :) He doesn't get the concept of plus and minus yet, so we just use the numbers & count forwards that many & see who gets to the end first. :) It was fun! :)


Then last week, we studied the letter S! Here is a picture of our morning board before an unfortunate incident caused our verse pocket to become detached from the board, so I couldn't get another picture! :) Z is putting the S is for Sit-ups card on the board. :) Our verse was 'sing a new song to the Lord' and we read a psalm for our Bible story! We discussed how God likes us to sing old songs to Him, but also to make up new songs for Him! :) Our song was Blessed Assurance, and I loved hearing him sing the chorus at other non-school times throughout the week, too! :)

On a side note, Z loves music! It is so neat how he picks up the tunes & the words to songs, even when he hasn't heard them very many times! We recently traded our car in for a van & it came with a subscription for satellite radio so we've been listening to the Christian station on there with the kids a lot lately! At one point during the week, Z was singing & stopped & said, 'You're listening to the Message on Sirius XM' which is the station we always listen to - it totally cracked me up! :) I also overheard him singing the chorus to a newer song we've only heard a few times on the radio called Seventy Times Seven, about forgiveness! I am so thankful that he loves music & it is such a blessing to hear him singing old & new songs to God! :)

Well, for our letter S collage, we used stamps & stickers of things that started with S! This was a really fun collage to make! :)

Z just really loves stamping...he must take after his mother... (I love stamping cards & scrapbooking, when I have time!) :)


Nat enjoyed taking the stamp pads out of the box & putting them back in. :)

getting ready to put on the stickers...

Here are the stamps we used - a snake, a snowflake, and a star! Z did a good job 'stamping in the lines'! :)

And here is our finished S! It looks so cheerful up on the wall!

We also made this paper chain, which I love! :) It counts down the days until our vacation, and now it only has 3 loops on it!!!! Z said this morning, "Wow, it is getting really short!!!" Woo-hoo!!! We are going to TN & getting together with my Hubby's whole family, and I can't wait! :)

Z played with his uppercase/lowercase matching puzzle this week & had a good time matching the letters & making the pictures look like they're supposed to! :)


We also played Potato Heads! :)

And Z looooves writing with wipe-off markers! This kept him busy 2 days in a row, for about 20 minutes each time...until the incident I mentioned in my previous post... :)

We also made this spider craft, which Z loves playing with! The legs are supposed to be made of felt, unfortunately, ours are made of construction paper because I had no felt! :( Felt would work a lot better - I think 4 of our legs are already taped back together! :) We also had to tape the eyes on because the glue would not hold them on! But it was a fun craft & really cute - I found it here and I was very thankful to have found an old film canister that I kept for some beads in my sewing kit!!!

I was excited to find this Clock Puzzle at our Dollar Tree store, for only $1 of course! We played with this one day & Z enjoyed it but Natalie kept trying to eat all the pieces, and some of them are small, so she ended up having to wait in her bed till we were done. :( This will be a 'Natalie's naptime' activity next time!

The kids watched Word World this week - I love this show & so do they, obviously! :) Actually, Nat isn't much for TV, she'll only watch for a second, then come find me. She does like when Elmo is on Sesame Street, but that's about it. :) Z watched Toy Story this week, though, for the first time (actually he has watched it twice now) and enjoyed that. :)

And I love this picture that Z snapped of me reading to Natalie! She loves to read books - for about 30 seconds per book! :) She loves her Curious George board books & can point to George if you ask her where he is! She also loves this big Elmo book, and another book by Sandra Boynton called Perfect Piggies - when we were reading it yesterday she made a piggy sound that was sooooo cute! :) And she can say 'oof oof' when she sees a dog! :) Although our neighbor's dog who always comes to our house & we tell him, "Go home!", she calls "Go". :)

To close, here are some cuuuuute pictures of the kids - I made these collages on picnik. Have I told you how much I love picnik lately??? :)

Here is Natalie - I love the precious face in the first picture, the yogurt face in the 2nd, and the general cuteness in the third. :)

And here's Zachary - somehow Mr. Potato Head time always evolves into dress-up....Natalie started it by putting the glasses on her neck, it was so cute. Then Zachary took some of his own pictures of himself (on the ends), and then I took one of him, too! :)

Well, I hope you enjoyed our random Tot School posting! We're taking a 3 week spring break to get ready & go on vacation & we'll be back with more random posts in April if all goes as planned! :) To see what everyone else has been up to for Tot School, head over to 1+1+1=1!