Tot School Sunday #4

Music & Movement Monday
We spend the first half of Monday at Grandma's house in Phoenix, and the second half driving home and unpacking, so formal Tot School was a no-go. Monday is music day, though, and we did have some fun with music; namely, listening to Bob & Larry Sing the '70s in the car on the way home. And, I have to say, if you don't own this CD, go forth and obtain a copy! It is tons of fun, and there's nothing quite like listening to your two year old singing along with "Funkytown."

Being in the car for 3 hours, today wasn't so much with the movement, unless you consider playing with Grandma's dogs before we left her house, in which case, he probably got enough exercise to last the week. :-)

Tot Tub Tuesday
Tot School started early today; almost as soon as he woke up, Thanael saw his daddy making oatmeal for breakfast and got very excited about all of the measuring. He found a measuring cup somewhere (I think he has a secret stash, because my measuring cups keep going missing and), pulled up a chair to the counter and was ready to dig into the oatmeal tub. I quickly got out two large-ish shallow containers, poured some oats into one of them, and set him up at the table with some measuring cups and a toy coffee pot. Very convenient of him to figure out our "Tot Tray" activity for today, since I hadn't decided what we were doing yet.

Segue: It occurs to me that in several of the pictures that I post for Tot School, Nathanael is still in his jammies. People must think that I never get the poor kid dressed, LOL. I promise, he does wear real people clothes, (almost) every single day, and usually has them on before lunch. We just do Tot School when he is ready for it, and that's often fairly early in our day.

He got tired of scooping and pouring after a while, so we had breakfast and got (half) dressed. I was doing my morning chores, when Nathanael rediscovered the oat tubs on the table. He spent a happy twenty minutes or so scooping, pouring, and transferring (and getting oats all over the floor!) while I continued with my work in the kitchen.

At one point, I went to take care of something in the other room, and apparently that's when Nathanael decided he was done, because the next thing I knew I heard a whirring noise. I went back into the kitchen to find out what was going on, and this is what I found:

Mister Tidy-Britches went into the bedroom, got the Dust-Buster down from its charger, and took it upon himself to start cleaning up his mess! He did a pretty good job, too!

We're both still pretty mucousy from this head cold, so we took a nice, hot, sinus-clearing shower after all of the oats were cleaned up and, while we were in there, we played a fun new game for identifying body parts (since we were in the shower, obviously I didn't take pics! :-P). I'm calling it "Hey, Thanael?" and I think it's going to become a normal part of bathtime from now on. It goes like this.

Me: Heeeeeeeeyyyyyyyyyyyyyy, Thanael?
Him: Yeeeesh?
Me: Where is/are your.... hair/eyes/ear/nose/belly/feet/etc.?
Him: (lots of giggles, touches the appropriate part, and does a happy dance)

It was interesting to see where his knowledge gaps are; he knows all the parts of his face except his eyebrows, but he is really sporadic as far as the rest of his body goes.

Workbook Wednesday
We were going to play with the Chicka Chicka Boom Boom lapbook today, but then I realized that if we didn't "write" a thank-you card to my sister for Nathanael's birthday present, I would forget all about it, so instead we painted with his dot paints.

We had to put them away when he became more interested than using them on himself than on the paper. :-)

After painting, he wanted to play with the DK "My First Picture Pairs" game that he got for his birthday. Right now they are far more valuable to us as a vocabulary builder than they are for matching. I think that the quantity of cards (27 pairs) is overwhelming to him, but since he knows they all exist, he wants to have them all out at once. So for now I just ask him what the picture is of (he's added 2-3 words each time we've played with them, which is definite progress!), or ask him to find the picture for a word that I already know he knows.

Themeless Thursday
I was really hoping to make it to story hour at the library this week, but we're still getting over being sick, and I didn't want the other moms to freak out about my booger-y son. Also, I'm BEAT!!! Housework has really fallen behind over the past week or so, and I tried to make today a catch-up day, as much as possible. So instead of "sit down" Tot School of any kind, I just had Nathanael help me around the house, which he loves to do. It takes 45 minutes to fold a large load of towels and washcloths when each item has to be handed to you individually by a very short, easily distracted person who keeps taking breaks to climb in the dryer.

Side note: when Aliyah was Nathanael's age, one of her favorite things was to climb in the dryer, pull the door closed (just enough to shut the light off, not so that it was really latched closed), and wait for one of us to say, "Lazarus, come forth!" She would then emerge from the dryer, and we were supposed to be Mary & Martha, overjoyed at our brother's being returned to us. She's eleven now, and will be furious if she finds out that I told the entire internet this story, but... oh, my, it was adorable!

Anyway, he "helped" fold clothes, sweep the floors, and wash dishes. Washing dishes is his new favorite thing to do. Most mornings while I'm making his cocoa, he'll pull up a chair to the sink, climb up on it, turn on the water, and grab a sponge. If there aren't dishes in the sink for him to wash, he'll go find some clean dishes and work on those. If only the rest of the family had the same enthusiasm for washing dishes!

Fun Friday
Knowing that we would be spending about 5 hours in the car today, we took Tot School outside, and played with chalk!

Nathanael had never played with chalk before, and he was much more interested in taking the chalk out of the box and putting it back in than he was in drawing on the concrete. We have a great front yard for playing in, so I just let him wander around and do what he liked.

And that was our week of Tot School!