Tot School - Letters P & Q

~Zachary is 38 months old~
~Natalie is 14 months old~

Well, we've been busy & the kids have been sick, so school hasn't been quite as organized as usual, but we have pressed on and learned about the letters P and Q! So here are the ideas we found & the fun things we did!

We talked about things that start with P, and we colored a pig and a puppy, since they started with P.

Natalie decided to do her own little project of dumping out the crayons &
putting them back while Zachary colored. :)

We also played with pom-poms, just for fun, but I don't have any pictures of that. :) We also played with lots of puzzles & made pudding for a snack. :)

We used our consonant cards - we use these every consonant week, so we are getting a little bored of them - I thought of a new game to play with them to keep Z's interest a little longer. :) Out of curiosity, how do you do your tot school? If your tot is bored with an activity, do you make them continue or let them move on to something else? I have toyed with the idea of setting a timer for the 'educational' games & activities I have planned, so he focuses on them for 5 minutes or so...is this asking too much of a 3-year-old?


He matched at least one picture with each letter - he's getting VERY good at beginning sounds! :) He'll often say, "I want to do something that starts with M. Mmm, Mmm, Mmm, music time!" :)
We made some Valentine's cookies "for Daddy" (but really for us, too). :) Z had fun icing these & eating Twizzlers, especially since he was sick & felt so nasty. (He ended up having a nasty cough and an ear infection like Natalie & starting antibiotics last Friday - he's feeling much better now!)

We did some cutting practice!

Then we made a 'penny P' collage - starting with plenty of glue, of course.


Then we added some pennies.

Voila, our finished Penny P!

I made prayer books with cardstock and binding combs for each of the kids, but haven't printed out the pictures of our family & friends to put in them yet. Our verse for the letter P was Pray about everything, so this went along with that.


Here are our supplies for making vinegar heart prints:

We painted the white construction paper till it was very soaking wet with vinegar.

Then we stuck on red tissue paper hearts, till they were all soaked & stuck on the paper.

Then we let it dry, and voila! See anything? Not really. I'm not sure if we used the wrong kind of paper or tissue??? The prints are there but not very strong. :(

So that pretty much sums up the letter P! Well, this next picture sums up that week, too - my little sicky on the couch watching Word World! :(

Then, this week, we focused on the letter Q! Here is a picture of our morning board:

Z especially loved this week's song - Patience (Herbert the Snail) from the Music Machine's Fruit of the Spirit CD. :)

We used scrapbook paper scraps to make a quilted Q collage.

We dot-painted an Elmo number page from Making Learning Fun. Notice Natalie pretending to dot-paint? :)


Natalie came up with her own idea for the dot markers. :)

We also played with playdough on our Q playdough mat, but I didn't get any pictures of that. And we played with plastic bags filled with shaving cream - we felt them & wrote letters in the shaving cream. We used our clothespin cards with wipe off markers for a fun twist (again, we've
done this activity each week, so it is getting a little less exciting at this point, trying to spice it up a little). He was supposed to circle the letters, and I made him point out which letter matched each time, but then he just wanted to draw on it. He said he was drawing a 'Happy Valentimes'. :)



Natalie played with the clothespins! :)

Zachary enjoys wiping it off as much as writing, almost! :)

They played with tools together...

Zachary colored in his big coloring book. Natalie colored some, too, but I didn't catch it on film. :)

Our unit for the next few weeks (till we go on vacation at the end of March!!) is animal habitats, so we watched this Sesame Street video about that, and made a diorama from a diaper box that we can use to dialogue about habitats & what animals live there.


Z has asked to color on this every day - I hope it's something that we keep updating & playing with! :) He put his moon & clouds & birds up here because apparently this was the sky -
this is on the top of the inside. :)
We painted with Q-Tips for the letter Q! Natalie painted...

And Zachary painted!

Natalie painting some more...

Ewww - this stuff doesn't taste good! :)

We played with pom-poms and our Dot Numbers this week - so fun! The kids LOVE
pom-poms, I seriously could not get them out often enough for them, so this is a
great game- we counted the dots & put the corresponding pom-poms on them, and
then we threw them at each other. :) This picture was obviously taken later. :)

Natalie has done a few new, fun things these weeks - besides running around like crazy & not just walking anymore! :) She is sharing more, especially with Mama, so that is fun. She also yells for fun & says "Ma-ma, Ma-ma..." whenever she wants something, it is so cute. :) Here's a picture of her sharing with me. :)

And she wore her first ponytail last weekend! It lasted about half a day till she ripped it out & wouldn't let me touch it again, but it was SO cute, don't you think??? :)

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

Tot School - Letter O

Well, here it is, a random time to post my tot school! But this week, I totally have an excuse. My kids have been sick for ten days now, combined, and it is rotten!!! Natalie has never been sick before, other than a cold, so she was rather miserable, and she had an ear infection, and has been on antibiotics, but is now feeling better, but still needing more attention than usual. Zachary just got the cough this weekend, but he was up several times for two nights in a row this week with his cough - croupy the first night, a little better the next, and finally slept through last night - what a relief! I took him in to the dr. this morning, and he also has an ear infection, so he's on some antibiotics now, too, hopefully he will feel better soon!!!

So, now that you've heard my childrens week in health issues, let's get on to the tot schooling, shall we? I've really given up on organizing & planning any structured activities for Natalie, she just does what we do alongside us, and it works okay. She actually loves it! So here we are, all learning together! :) Our letter this week was O, and here is our morning board:

Here is Natalie playing with a bottle cap game that a friend gave me for each of the kids - the letters of their names are on the milk caps & they are in a Parmesan cheese container - great learning activity! They both love it! :)


One of the really exciting things that was in our KidFest goodie bag - Wikki Stix! I have wanted these for a while, but just haven't bought them, but with getting 2 goodie bags for 2 kids, we have a few now - enough to use them with our playdough mat and make letters!!! :)

Natalie enjoyed playing with them, too. :)

We made an O!

Playing the spoon letter matching game! Each spoon has a lowercase or uppercase letter on it - one set is white, one is clear, and you match them up!

Zachary is matching the spoons with some letter flash cards.

Here we are making our O letter collage - O is for olive! Not real olives, silly - paper olives! If we would've had a more oval-shaped larger punch, they would've looked more realistic, but it works. :) Z was excited that he could use the big circle punch for the green circles - regular hole punches are too hard for his little hands.

Then we punched out a middle circle of each olive, and glued them on...

Our finished product - we glued small red hole punches in the middle of each olive. This was a fun craft!
We So here is a quick picture of our letter wall - we need to get our G back up, but here are the rest of them - love looking back at what we've done! :)

played with his toolbox this week, and discussed the difference between nails & screws & how to use a wrench - he loves this set & has a lot of fun with it! :)

We used some little rubber stamps & an ink pad to stamp a Valentine's Day card for Daddy. :)


Z loves stamping! :)

Here is our creation - I saw the idea to make hearts out of your fingerprints over at the Frugal Family Fun Blog recently - so cute! :)
We painted with corn syrup & food coloring on waxed paper this week - it made some neat sun catchers for our windows this Valentine's Day & was a fun project for the kids. Here's my red, yellow & blue corn syrup 'paint' all made up & ready!

Zachary painting on his waxed paper heart.


I did this one! :)
Then you put another heart of waxed paper over it & voila! Zachary's finished heart:

hanging in the window after we let it dry for a couple of days:

My finished, dried heart, hanging up:

Natalie got to paint some, too! :)
She mostly made a mess with the paint, but it was cute. :)

and she ate it! :) Funny girl. :)
Here is our octopus - we made him from a toilet paper roll - I found this idea at this great new craft site I discovered called Artists Helping Children - here is a link to the 'octopus crafts' page - there are SO many crafts to pick from - it is awesome!!! :) I will definitely be using this site in the future to find our craft projects!!! Zachary drew this face all by himself - we could've been more crative, I suppose, painting the octopus, etc, but this was good enough. :)

An d we dot-painted with Elmo & the number 4! This sheet is from Making Learning Fun.
And I forgot to share these toilet paper roll snowmen that we made a couple of weeks ago - they are SO CUTE and I got the idea here! :) Zachary helped me paint them white & helped draw on his face (the one on the right), but I did most everything else. :) Aren't they cute, though?

Natalie has been doing lots of fun things lately - including eating with a spoon! Well, sort of. :) She likes to have her cereal in a bowl with milk now & tries occasionally to eat with her spoon - it is cute. :) She calls everything that is edible a 'ca-ca', though this week she asked for her daily morning banana by saying, 'ba-ca-ca' so of course I thought that was genius. :) At the grocery store today, she kept reaching for everything, saying, "ca-ca! Ca-ca!" :) Her newest words are 'ball' and book' which sound exactly the same - "Bah." :) And if you ask her where her belly is, she makes a Pffffffbt sound - because that's what bellies are for, right??? Cutest ever! :)

Well, at some point, I'll be back with the few pictures we have from this week of Tot School - yes, we are forging ahead even through the sickness - gives us something to do other than watch TV! :) To check out what other people did for Tot School this week, head on over to 1+1+1=1! :)