Color Themes - Purple

Xander is 15 Months

This week's color theme was PURPLE!  We started with a bin of various purple items.  It included ball pit balls, mini maracas, wooden spools and disks I painted, a beaded necklace, the hippo from our Little People Learning Zoo, and the purple dishes from out tea set.  As usual, the bin got plenty of use!

We used purple markers and purple Do-A-Dot paints.

We put some shape stickers on purple paper.

I decided to mix it up a little bit this week and had him paint his purple color books instead of laminating them and using them with dry erase markers.  You can download them here or from the downloads page.

We also did our regular color activities.  We flipped through our English and Spanish Color Flashcards (see downloads page), played with our Leap Frog Maracas, and played with a foam crayon puzzle (Staples dollar spot).  In addition to our normal color themed books, we also read Purpilicious this week.  It was a bit over his head, but it was cute and we pointed to the different colors together.

As I mentioned earlier, one of our trays was the bin of purple items.  He also LOVED his puzzle this week.  It was Melissa and Doug's Wooden Safari Chunky Puzzle, but I forgot to get pictures.  He carried the pieces around with him frequently.

On a different tray I had a cup of pom poms and a silicone ice cube tray.  My original idea was to have him put the pom poms in the holes with his fingers.  However, while I was busy switching his trays, I found him like this.

 He had taken the fork from the bin of purple things and was "stirring" the pom poms.  I know it doesn't seem like a big deal, but it was one of the first times I had seen him pretend playing like this.  Since he was so interested, I ended up putting a spoon with this tray and we practiced spooning.  He definitely couldn't spoon the pom poms on his own (not for lack of trying), but he loved sitting in my lap and having me help him.  It is an activity we will revisit soon!

 I had never shown him clothes pins before so this tray was an experiment.  He definitely isn't ready to pinch them on to anything, but he really enjoyed taking them off the cup.  I don't know how many times I put them all on the rim of the cup this week.  A lot of the time, I got him to put them into the cup as he took them off.

With no clothes pins, the cup is fun to play with!

Helping Grandpa in the garage.

Best Books - Week 5

Here are our favorite finds from week five of our book challenge!

Xander's Favorite:

Wiggle by Doreen Cronin

Xander got a big kick out of this book.  We would wiggle and dance every time we read the word "wiggle."  Since it is on every page, we did it a lot.  I think we ended up reading it three times in a row.

Mommy's Favorite:

Little Pea by Amy Krouse Rosenthal

Nothing deep or profound.  Just a cute story about a little pea who doesn't want to eat his candy for dinner.

Velcro Block

For Christmas I got Xander some Melissa and Doug Cutting Food.  While he really likes playing with it, I realized that he really didn't understand the concept of Velcro.  Hence, the Velcro Block.

I bought a wooden cube from the craft store and painted it white.  Then I put the prickly side of self adhesive Velcro dots one 5 of the 6 sides.  Originally, I wanted to arrange them like dots on a die, but they didn't fit well and I didn't want the bottom sticking to the carpet.

Then I painted wooden disks a variety of colors and attacked the soft side of the Velcro dots.  I did two of each color so that we could also use them for matching games.  You could also try to create patterns or groups.  In the future I might paint numbers onto the disks for more ways to play.

Xander is only 14.5 months right now, so he still struggles with lining up the Velcro.  He really likes taking the disks off the block, and gets very excited when actually gets a disk to stay on.

Color Themes - White Week

Xander is 14.5 months

This week's color theme was white, and what a challenge!  There just isn't a lot a lot you can do with white, so, unfortunately, we just didn't do as many activities.

As usual, one of our tot trays was a bin of white items.  This weeks included a paint tray, ping pong balls, cups from our play food, a plastic car, and wooden balls and spools I painted.  He really enjoyed putting the ping pong balls in the cups and paint tray.

We used our flash cards (find them on the downloads page) in the normal way, but then we also did some sorting.  I did it all for him, but he thought it was interesting.  Oh, and in case you're wondering, someone has hidden the "verde" card and I haven't been able to find it yet.

Because coloring with white is so hard, I did not make a white color book like I did for the other weeks.  However, we did paint with white paint.  I was impressed with how few times he tried to eat it!

We are still using all of the items in our color themes bin.  Xander plays with the ball and crayon puzzle (Staples).  He LOVES the dry erase center.  He also plays with the Wash and Go Magents and Leap Frog Maracas every single day.  He looks through some of our color books every day also.  Several times this week we went through some foam cards that I wrote the color names on.

With school starting and my life getting more hectic, I decided I wanted to take a more organized approach to Xander's Tot School Time.  I made the following goal sheet.  It includes each tot tray and the puzzle of the week, and five check marks next to each.  There is a row for stickers, coloring, Your Child Can Read, Your Child Can Discover, and Reading Amigo (see Reading Amigo review here).  While I have three boxes next to each, I don't mind if he watches the movies less.  I am very happy with all three DVD sets, but only have the check marks to help me remember to rotate what he watches.  I wrote in a row for our color flash cards, which Xander actually enjoys.  I also have a big section at the bottom for our Book Challenge.  The goal is to read four new books a day (although we read many many books every day), so I have seven columns of four rows to help me keep on track.  Once again, this is a goal sheet.  If something (or many somethings) doesn't get done, no big deal.  It is mostly just to remind me of what I have done and what I haven't each week.

Since this weeks theme was white and our Velcro block is white, that was one of our tot trays (post found here).  Xander hadn't seen it before, but he did better than I expected.  

Working on a puzzle.  He still can't do them, but likes to try.  I do them with him to work on the terminology and strategy.

His last tray was just a tray of alphabet blocks.  We practiced stacking the and knocking them down.

He also enjoyed dumping the tray.

Book Challenge - Best Books

This year Xander and I are doing a book challenge, where we are trying to read 1500 unique books (in addition to our normal, repeated favorites).  With the shear volume of books, I figure we are bound to come across some great books and some not so great books.  Since I love getting good book recommendations, I thought I would try to share our favorite finds each week.  It will also be a nice resource for me to look back on, should we decide to do it again another year.

Xander's Favorite

Gallop! by Rufus Butler Seder

This book has pictures that move as you open the pages.  Xander loved watching them move!  It also has large font and a positive message, which I like.  We will have to look for other similar books.

Shake My Sillies Out by Raffi

Xander really liked this book and wanted to read it multiple times.  It is repetitive and rhymy, because it is actually a song.  I got belly laughs from him when I put actions to it while reading.  I read it to my own tune, since I didn't remember the song.  Afterward we went to YouTube to watch Raffi sing it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rF9xQu7O2Eg

Mommy's Favorite

The Kissing Hand by Ruth E Harper and Nancy M Leak

I know most people are familiar with this book, but it was one we read this week for that was "new" on our book list challenge.  It is such a sweet story, I don't know how any mom could resist.  

Skill Coins

Over winter break, a friend and I took Xander to Incredible Pizza.  While we were there we won a crayon bank.  It seemed like a really great skill builder, but with a kid who puts everything in his mouth, I didn't want to just hand him real coins.  Instead, I made him some skill coins.  I made a whole sheet and included some color names, numbers, dots from 1-10, and shapes; I wanted to be able to use them in a variety of ways.  I printed them onto card stock, colored some, and laminated them.  I thought Xander would enjoy them, but he really surprised me in how much he wanted to do this activity!  

You're welcome to download the coin set here or from my downloads page.

1500 Book Challenge

Late last spring, when I fist became fascinated (obsessed) with early education, I ran across a lot of bloggers doing a 1500 book challenge.  Since Xander was so young, I couldn't really participate.  I haven't seen anyone doing it yet this year, but have decided to go ahead and try for the 1500 books.

The challenge part of the equation, is that the goal is to read 1500 unique books.  Each book only counts once, no matter how many times you read it.  Now we are lucky enough to have a lot of books, but no where near that many!  To complete the task in a year, we need to read about 28 new books a week, or 4 new books a day.  That is going to involve a LOT of trips to the library.  I have decided not to count any books we listen to from Tumble Books, because I really want to encourage real books and not more screen time.

The additional challenge will be that Xander now likes to make his own decisions.  He LOVES books and loves to be read to, but he has a few books in each room that are his favorites.  He wants these over and over (I have a surprising number memorized).  In fact, he will not sit in my lap to hear a new story unless it involves a lot of animal noises or happens to be one of the Preschool Prep Sight Words Books.  Luckily, we have found a work around.  Xander likes to be read to while having his snack or in the tub and doesn't mind new or longer books in these situations.  In fact, he gets really upset with me when I stop reading, even if it is to get him more food or wash his hair.  He does the sign for "more" and "book" and babbles emphatically at me until I continue reading.

I have an Excel file to keep track of the books we read and we were doing incredibly well at just over 100 books since January 1st.  Unfortunately, we had massive computer problems and that was the one file that was lost for good.  Luckily, it is early in the year and we can recover.  Also, I know that the pace we had set isn't a pace we will keep up.  We will still probably read just as many books, but right now all of the "favorites" and all of the books we own are getting counted.  Very soon we will have read all of our regulars, they just won't count towards our 1500 anymore.

I am excited to see how the year goes with this challenge.  In 1500 books, I am sure to find some really great books I never would have read otherwise.  We have already discovered some great series at the libraries.  On the other hand, we have already read some that I didn't think were worth our time.  I am going to have to mark the ones we really like to come back to in the future.