Purple Week

Archer is 16 months

In August I posted our Color Themes Goals. Those are what I had in mind while we started Tot School this week, not actually learning the color.

His little shelf had several books about colors or Purple.  I also got out two of his Non-Fiction Sight Words books and one of his Meet the Sight Words readers (he likes those better than story books at the moment).  The poster was free from Isla Hearts Teaching on TPT. I also hung up the pages to his color book (free here).

Playroom shelves this week.  The goal of the toys is to entertain him and give him some fine motor practice.  Things like building, sorting and puzzles also provide some spacial awareness (math and even physics). 

Shelves included the purple sorting basket and food, shape cupcakes, purple silicone mold activity, race car carrier, hedgehog, a tray of squigz, gear caterpillar, magnadoodle, bin of purple objects and a pattern puzzle.

Purple foods 3 part cards (free here). I still did most of the matching for him, but we did it every day. We also did the corresponding Little Reader lesson to go with most days. He is getting better and better, both and picking up the words and at learning the idea of matching. By the end of the week, he could do 5 of the 6 on his own.

 Coloring his Purple Book (free here). We used crayons, markers and Do a Dots.

Bin of miscellaneous purple objects.

This was the first one to one correspondence activity I did with Archer.  I just had a little silicone mold and some pom poms in a cup.  He seemed to grasp the activity all by himself and completed it pretty quickly.  Someday, we will move on to doing it with tongs or scooping, but he's not ready yet.

Excited about all the circles he made on the magnadoodle.

For sensory play with used purple spaghetti.  More pictures on this post.

We got our his color paddles with the light table.  He had fun playing with them.  I also showed him how to combine red and blue to make purple.

 

Being silly with Daddy, making the world purple.

In addition to his normal running, wrestling and climbing, I got out Xander's purple spooner board for Gross Motor play.  He would sit on it and I would spin him.  He also did some spinning on his own. He's also gotten really into our Plasmacar lately.

Affiliate links used, at no cost to you!  Thank you for your support!

Colored Spaghetti Sensory Play

For Purple Week of our Color Themes, I decided to make Archer some purple spaghetti. Now, I will preface this by saying, I did it wrong, making it much more messy than it needed to be.  He had fun and it all washed out, so no harm done. The purple color would perfectly for Halloween!

I tried putting the food coloring into the pasta while it was boiling.  It looked ugly and made me overcook it, hoping it would take the color. Then, I actually got it purple by taking the cooked pasta, tossing it with a little oil and the food coloring and letting it sit for an hour or so. 

The pugs REALLY wanted to try it.

He spent a long time putting the pasta in his bowl.

He eventually decided to put it all over the porch steps.

Fall Sight Words Printables

Lately, Archer has been a little obsessed with apples.  He wants to eat them constantly and loves pointing them out.  He also LOVES sight words.  I find this really funny, because Xander hated them.  He didn't like the sight words DVDs and he liked to read books but would skip all the little sight words, going straight to all the "interesting" words in a sentence.

I'm trying to embrace Archer's interests, so I made him some apples and leaves with sight words on them.  I used 36 of the Pre-K Dolch Words.

I printed each page on its own color and laminated them. For an older kid, you could easily print two copies of each and play matching or memory games.

While he recognizes a lot of words, he has trouble finding them if you give him too many options at once. I started out by giving him six of the apples, with the idea of having him put them into the tractor wagon.  He didn't really want to do that, but he did have fun pointing to each one as I asked him to find it. Using only six also made the game go quickly, to suit his 16 month attention span. We will play this game with other apples throughout the fall.

You can print the Fall Sight Words Here

Blue Week

Archer is 16 months

In August I posted our Color Themes Goals. Those are what I had in mind while we started Tot School this week, not actually learning the color.

His little shelf had several books about colors or Purple.  I also got out two of his Non-Fiction Sight Words books and one of his Meet the Sight Words readers.  The poster was free from Isla Hearts Teaching on TPT. I also hung up the pages to his color book (free here) and some blue Do-A-Dot artwork.

Playroom shelves this week.  The goal of the toys is to entertain him and give him some fine motor practice.  Things like building, sorting and puzzles also provide some spacial awareness (math and even physics). 

Shelves included 6 Pet Vocabulary Cards (free here) and corresponding Toob animals, one beginning pattern blocks board, his mailbox, a latch board, color viewer, felt envelopes and shapes, wooden trucks (EVERY shelf rotation must include trucks), construction toys (similar to these), a chunky puzzle and a discovery bin.

6 of the Pet Vocabulary Cards (free here) and corresponding Toob animals. He mostly sat on my lap and we did them together.  He REALLY liked the cat, so hat trouble wanting to put that toy or word down.

This was the biggest surprise of the week! I've never gotten these out for him before and he LOVED them. He put the pieces in over and over and over.  Then he'd carry a couple of the shapes around.  He even help a couple of the shapes while we walked to pick Xander up from school.

Looking through his color viewer. (We got ours second hand, but it was originally from Lakeshore Learning).

I made what I thought was a flower, and he went nuts calling it a star again and again. The kid loves stars!

Blue discovery basket with miscellaneous blue toys

Blue things 3 part cards (free here). I still did most of the matching for him, but we did it every day. We also did the corresponding Little Reader lesson to go with every day. Here he was very excited about the paperclip!

Coloring his Blue Book (free here). He wanted to color while holding ALL the crayons!

Markers and Do a Dots.  He thinks the caps are more fun the the actual artwork.

Animal Rescue Activity for both fine motor and sensory play (more pictures and details on this post)

Gross motor usually involves a lot of running around and climbing at parks. He also rediscovered his Rody Horse (best $1 Facebook Marketplace find EVER).

Not part of our "planned" activities, but Archer found our alphabet peg stackers in the basement one day.  We got them out and started playing with the pegs. I made the word "for" and "of" for him, as well as a few other short words.  He was enthralled! I think that was the first time it clicked for him that letters make words. He kept taking away the f, putting it back and saying "of" and then doing it again. I am so blessed to get to watch those moments of learning!

Affiliate links used, at no cost to you!  Thank you for your support!

Animal Rescue Activity

I recently painted my kitchen cabinets. As I was prepping, I decided the painters definitely needed to be incorporated into our Blue Week of Tot School. Since I already had out some Toob animals to go with his Pet Vocabulary Cards (free here), I came up with this animal rescue activity.

I put each animal into a well of a muffin tin and used a couple of pieces of painters tape to secure it. I didn't even tell Archer what to do. I just set it down in front of him and he automatically started peeling off all the tape and freeing the animals. He got all the animals out himself, but he did have some trouble getting the tape off his fingers, so I had to help with that part.

When he had them all out, he spent a long time playing with the tin and the animals.

Affiliate links used, at no cost to you! Thank you for your support