Tot School Sunday #3

This post was supposed to go up on Sunday, but we were out of town visiting Grandma, so it's a couple of days late. But we can pretend that it's still Sunday. :-)

Monday
Nathanael was Mr. Super Cranky Bottom today... he's cutting some molars, and it is not going well. So all we did was watch an episode of Blue's Clues (figuring out what song Blue wanted to sing), and then he went in the other room and banged around on the piano for a bit, completely off his own volition. I didn't get any pics because in the mood that he is in today, as soon as he noticed the camera we would have a meltdown.

On the "well, that went well!" side, during Blue's Clues he wanted to find his gourd that makes a fun shaking noise (I have no idea what to call it!) so that he could play along with the music. :-)

Tuesday
We did nothing today. Chris came home from work early, and Thanael was still very crabby (I think he's getting sick on top of teething), so we just chilled and snuggled and read stories. Which isn't doing "nothing," I suppose, but it wasn't anything amazing.

Wednesday
Ahhh... this week's tot tub idea was a huge success. It wasn't planned at all; I was sleepy and headache-y and on the spur of the moment just dumped some dried beans, pasta and wheat berries into some small tubs, got out a couple extra tubs for pouring, some ladles and a measuring cup for scooping, a pair of tweezers (for tweezing), and the tray that our beads came in for sorting.

He was really tickled about all the spoons ("Poon?!")

and started transferring beans between containers right away.

It turns out that he doesn't quite have the motor skills yet to successfully use a pair of tweezers, but you have to admit that he gave his all in the attempt.

Fairly quickly he realized that he could pour the contents from one container into another container, and he soon had emptied all of the tubs into the same container and spent a few minutes pouring the mix from one container to another.

Then, being the bizarrely tidy toddler that he occasionally is, he stacked the empty containers inside the large tub, put the full container on the top of the stack, and started scooping from there... onto the table

and then into Mommy's hand.

Next, we had fun with gravity, as he gleefully scooped up a ladleful and then poured it out onto the floor (at least I hadn't swept yet!).

Finally, we got out the vacuum & dustbuster and cleaned up together.

There was no part of this that wasn't fun!

Thursday
This past Christmas, my mom bought us the game of Rumis. All of the big people in the family really enjoy this game... it's challenging, but not too challenging, and it is one of the few games that none of us seem to have any sort of natural-talent-advantage over the others in. Of course, all of the colorful blocks are very intriguing to Nathanael and every time he sees the box, he wants to play with the game. So this morning, that's what we did. :-)

Fun as just throwing the blocks around is, Tot School is about learning, right? So I showed Nathanael some of the matching shapes in the different colors; 4x4 squares, 3x1 bars, and 4x1 bars.

Then I pulled out three "L" shaped pieces; the green, blue, and yellow ones. After I showed him how they were all the same shape, I lined up three different red pieces, one of which was the matching "L" shape, and asked him if he could find the shape that matched the others. And...

he grabbed the right one and started playing with the four matching "L"s together.

He built with the blocks for a quite while, but then he just started to get too rowdy with them, and that meant that it was time to clean up. Learning colors is something that we're kind of focused on right now -- not super intensely, but whenever the opportunity arises, I try to make a point of identifying colors. So putting the blocks away was an excellent opportunity to work on reinforcing red, blue, green, and yellow.

I lined the boxes up for each color, put a few blocks in each box, and then asked him to put the blocks away according to color.

I would hand him (for example) a blue block and say, "Look, Thanael, this block is blue. Can you put it in the box with the other blue blocks?" If he put it in the wrong box, I would explain that it didn't match, and then show him where it did belong; if he put it in the right box, I made a big deal about what a good job he did and reinforced that the block matched the others. At first he was about 50/50 for putting the blocks away, but after we had done half a dozen or so, he started getting them all right... and then he started teasing me with it! He would put a block in the wrong box and give me a happy, "I know that's not right, but let's see what you're going to do about it" look. Then when I said, "No, that block doesn't match!" he would pull it out, giggle, and either put it in the right box or put it in another wrong box and enjoy my reaction again. :-)

Friday
Today's "Fun Friday" was super fun, because what is funner than having a birthday?! Nathanael turned 2 today, and we spent the day opening and playing with presents. His favorite? The Melissa & Doug Band in a Box. He especially enjoyed sharing it with his big sister (she had the day off from school since it was Good Friday... so great to have her home to share her baby brother's birthday!)

He did end up getting sick, like I suspected. And so did I. :-(

Saturday
It snowed!!! In our bizarre-weather-world here in the mountains of Arizona, the weather from March through May fluctuates from blizzards all the way up to the mid-70's, sometimes in the same week. And for some reason, regardless of when Easter falls we almost always get snow Easter weekend. This year was no exception.

After coming in from the snow and taking a warm bath, it was Easter egg dying time! Oh my goodness, this was SO much easier last year, LOL. Nathanael of course wanted to help with everything, and it was about to become disastrous. Fortunately, it was also snack time, so I just popped him into his highchair and let him watch while he ate his snack. He told me which eggs he wanted to put in which color dye, and he mostly enjoyed himself.

We only dropped one egg on the floor, and only spilled one cup of dye (orange... all over mommy... it washed right out, thankfully!). I am looking forward to next year, when he is big enough to be trusted with some actual helping things; I don't mind cleaning up messes, but this year he would have enjoyed making the messes more than dying the eggs. :-)

On a side note, Aliyah mixed her own egg dye this year with food coloring, water, and vinegar. She did a really good job and the eggs came out very nicely.