Tot School--"The Days of the Week"

**Josh is 46 months old...a very proud 3 1/2 if you ask him!**
**Matthew has now entered "Tot-Schooler." He is 14 months old.**

For Valentine's Day each year, we do a very simple treasure hunt. It has to be simple, because all of the clues are hidden in the house somewhere.

At the end of the hunt lies the treasure...usually a cardboard box filled with stuff. Stuff like their favorite breakfast cereal, some chocolates, a small toy...

This year, I found water bottles at Walgreens. The red water bottles were filled with stuff. Stuff like Kleenex, hand sanitizer in a tube, and these nifty little pill boxes.




I decided that since I am so bad about remembering whether I give the kids their vitamins each day, I would store the vitamins in these little pill boxes. They have helped my memory tremendously!

And the added bonus?
Josh has learned the days of the week!

Talk about "accidental teaching" on my part.
Josh's teaching, though, is a little more purposeful...



Just this morning, I sang the "Days of the Week" song with Josh before giving him his vitamin, and he said, "Are we going to Blake's house today?"
He right!
This is the day that the big kids usually have piano lessons, and Josh gets to play with our piano teacher's son, Blake.

He's putting it all together!
Don't you just love it when little ones start making sense of their world?!
It's so exciting!
This is just one of the many reasons that I am thankful that God called us to homeschool. I get to be present to see that light turn on...and then am able to share how good God is.

He is so good!

Tot School--"Animals in the Winter"

**Joshua is 41 months old**



Last week's Tot School began with some calendar-changing.

Exit January...enter February! Can you even believe it?!

Josh loves to help change the calendar. He likes to work with the blue sticky tac. Can you blame him?



We display the months on the wall using Velcro.

It's a great way to get the months back onto the wall straight...and it keeps them from falling off of the wall.



Josh also took a little time out of his schedule to scrub some marker off of the table with a Magic Eraser.

The funny thing about this picture is what he was saying as he was scrubbing..."I feel like the Sham Wow dude!"

We love Sham Wow advertisements. :)



For quite awhile now, we've been practicing the alphabet when we wash our hands after using the bathroom. This has worked pretty well...except for the whole "L, M, N, O, P" thing. I'm sure your understand. It all ends up sounding a bit like "MLMOMP."

So, we added a ball. Everytime we would catch the ball, we would say the next letter. It took a little while to get smooth, but once we did, it worked beautifully. Josh was forced to slow down during the middle of the song. "MLMOP" is now beginning to sound more like "L, M, N, O, P."

We even got up to the number 13 before he started skip-counting randomly.

At some point during our game of catch, Joshua decided that he needed to wear some protective gear.

I think it was because he would throw it so hard at me that it would bounce off my head and hit him in the head.




After talking about groundhogs and reading books about other animals that hibernate, Joshua tried hibernating himself.



And so did William!



Have you ever tried M&M counting?
Mmmmmm...




Carrie liked adding a little challenge to her counting.
How many times can I throw an M&M into the air and catch it in my mouth?



Joshua liked the more traditional method of counting and eating M&M's.
Hand to mouth.



Last weekend, Carrie and William did some baking for a church bake sale.
As they were preparing their goodies, Joshua asked me, "What do I get to make, Mommy?"

:( I hadn't thought that he might want to make something too.

So, this week, he decided to make some Rice Krispie Treats for his Wednesday night class. He was excited about making something to share. He said, "I think I will take these to my 'church kids' and they will be so happy!"

I hear that he was pretty proud of his Rice Krispie Treats when it came time to share them in class.



And...you and I both know that one of the best parts of baking a treat is cleaning it up!



My original plan was to have Joshua help me bake Groundhog Day cupcakes and take them to church to share. They're so cute! You decorate Nutter Butters to look like groundhogs and then push them halfway into a frosted cupcake.

I started having second thoughts about this after I bought the Nutter Butters...

Salmonella?
Peanut allergies?
Too messy for 2-4 year-olds?

I decided that we would just decorate some Nutter Butters at home instead.

As you can see, ours are a little more simple than the ones that I linked to above.



I think Joshua had fun decorating his groundhog.
Little squeezy frosting tubes are wonderful!



All right.

Confession.

Weekly themes are not working for me.
I'm switching to monthly themes beginning in March.

The rest of February is hopefully going to be devoted to love and finishing up the projects that are lying around undone.

Hopefully.

Tot School--Big Machines Week

**Joshua is 41 months old**



I have always loved having a theme to our school days...the educational jargon for this is "thematic units."

Themes keep me organized, focused, and excited.
Themes are fun!

This week, our Tot School theme happened quite by chance--if you believe in chance. I don't, so I guess I should rephrase that. This week, our Tot School theme was God-ordained.

I hadn't really put much thought into having a weekly theme for Tot School since we had only just begun this new venture. Then I visited Carisa's blog and saw her wonderful lapbook on "Big Machines."
I've only dabbled a bit in the lapbook world, but what I have done, I have loved--because Joshua has loved lapbooking.

So, I printed out the pages of Carisa's "Big Machine" lapbook (THANK YOU, Carisa, for making it so easy!), and Josh and I got started. Here's a picture of him coloring his bulldozers. Look how focused he is!



Then, on his very own, he went in search of the Tonka books that we have. He loves these books...and throughout the week, we've read them over and over and over and over... You understand, I'm sure.



Of course, when the kids woke up to the almost 12 inches of snow on Wednesday, we strayed from the "Big Machines" train of thought and made snowy day pictures.

First, Josh drew on black construction paper with a white crayon. He also added some yellow for the sunshine. Then, he painted some glue onto the paper and shook on some silver sprinkles. Lots of silver sprinkles.




Here they are hanging to dry on a stretchy line over the sink.



Back to the "Big Machines!"

Almost a year ago, I decided to pull out the cornmeal and have Joshua draw in it with his finger.
That activity gave way to Josh and William driving their Hot Wheels cars through it...which gave way to a HUGE mess.
We put the cornmeal away for a very long time.

I thought that now might be the time to pull it out again. This time, I put it in Matthew's old bathtub (can it really be called old when he's only 9 months?)and placed it on the vinyl floor where it could be "easily" cleaned up. Josh picked out some construction vehicles from the Hot Wheels box and...ta da!! A construction site complete with hills and valleys.

As you can see, William is having a pretty good time too.



On Thursday, my friend, Tonya, came over to talk lesson plans for big kids.

Josh was just getting ready to go down for his nap when she arrived, but he made sure to ask her if she would play with him when he woke up.

Thank you, Tonya, for playing with Josh. You are such a sweetheart. He is still talking about it!



Next came all the construction vehicles...big and small.

I no longer think that the boys need their own bedrooms. After all, they are always bringing out their toys to play in the middle of the family room where we are.

I wouldn't have it any other way.



Reading some more...



And lapbooking some more...



The funniest quote of the week?
When Joshua was looking through the construction paper box to choose a color, he asked, "Do you go any 'struction trucks in here?"
CONSTRUCTION paper...CONSTRUCTION trucks!
It took me awhile to get that one.

Tot School

Something has been bothering me for awhile now.

I am reminded quite often of all the fun things that I used to do with Carrie and William when they were little. They were only 2 years apart, so a lot of the things that I would do with Carrie, I would also do with William.

You know, things like painting, playing games, pulling out special toys and sitting on the floor to play with them. We went places too. We did things that were age-appropriate for little kids.

Now that Carrie and William are older and in the 7th and 5th grade, I have become very intense with their schoolwork. Now they are doing upper elementary and junior high English, math and science.

Serious business.

In my rushing around to make sure that we are doing all that I think we should be doing academically for the big kids, I feel like I'm forgetting to do those fun "little kid" things with Joshua.

I know that he's getting plenty of attention. After all, he not only has Mommy and Daddy, but he also has the attention of a 13-year old sister and an 11-year old brother. And now, he is beginning to enjoy having a younger playmate named Matthew.

But I think you know what I mean.

I'm not being intentional. I'm not thinking about what he might enjoy doing with me. I've been a little hit-and-miss when it comes to activity time with Josh.

After much time of wallowing in the guilt and doing nothing but feeling bad, I remembered that this isn't the way it's supposed to be. I'm supposed to be very careful not to get all covered up with guilt and condemnation (I have to say, though, that after 13 years of being a mom, I am pretty good at it). I'm supposed to be taking everything to God. So, I began praying that He would show me how to do all that He would like me to do as a homeschooling mom.

Enter Tot School.

Through blogging, I've met several wonderful moms. One of those moms writes a blog called The Four Little Penguins. When I would visit her blog, I would read about all of the things that she was doing with her little ones during Tot School. How encouraging to find a mom who was doing so many wonderful things with her children!

One day, I figured out that her Tot School graphic was linked to a another blog...1+1+1=1. It is that blog where I found the origin of Tot School, and I also found lots of other moms who are doing Tot School with their little ones.

I want to thank these moms for sharing their lives with me. I want to thank them for their inspiration and encouragement.

Because of your obedience to God's call, He led me to you.

And now, I am posting about my first week of Tot School with Joshua...and at times Carrie, William, and Matthew.

For us, Tot School this week consisted of one day...Friday.

We finished breakfast and then went right into some play time with the music box.

Here, Josh is playing with his macaroni shaker and "coach's whistle." You can see Carrie practicing piano in the background. I don't think that she was too distracted by her 3-year old metronome.



Matthew also found some things that kept his attention.



And, yes, William did too.



After packing up the music box, Josh and I went to the table to practice some cutting. I found a cutting book at our local bookstore called "My First Book of Cutting: A Kumon Workbook."



It was slow going, but Joshua was pretty proud of his final product.



Next, we did something that is one of Joshua's (and my) favorite things to do. We wrote a story for his storybook.

First we looked back at a few of the other stories that we have written.





Then we got started on his new story idea "Frank the Combine."
The idea for the story and the title all belong to Joshua. I write quite a bit of the story, but Joshua guides the storyline. As we write, we look up images on Google Images and I let him choose his favorite pictures. It's also fun to add family pictures when we can.



We read his stories over and over. He likes to show his stories to other people and giggles as they read them to him.

I know...a very long blog post this time.
Go rest your eyes.
It's Sunday evening, so I'm going to go do some lesson planning.
And maybe even make something besides brownies for supper.
Maybe.