4-20-09 Garbage Truck and Burlington's WOW

(posted 8/20/09) We went to an OUTSTANDING event in Burlington, hosted by the Alamance Mommies group (sister site to my near and dear Triad Mommies) - Wheels of Wonder. They had every type of vehicle there that you could possibly think of - construction, delivery, emergency, limos, helicopters, army, tumblebus, monster trucks, go carts, etc. etc. etc. The kids were allowed to climb in/on/around all the vehicles and most of them would allow them to honk horns, press buttons, etc. Let me tell you, this was RIGHT UP Ryan's alley - if it has wheels, he is ALL ABOUT IT. I won't post all the pictures here - but I'll put them in a slide show you can click to get to (or see the right hand side of the blog for link).







Anyway, their handout was a coloring sheet of a truck that Ryan INSISTED was a garbage truck. Lately, he has grilled me for info about garbage trucks. They run two to three days a week here in our neighborhood for various things and when Ryan hears them, he INSISTS on going outside to watch. The. Whole. Production. Great... Anyway, so Alamance Mommies Wheels of Wonder prompted even more discussions of garbage trucks.

We colored a few coloring sheets, read a few books (a few of the favorites were Smash! Mash! Crash!, I Stink and Cars and Trucks) and then created our own garbage truck (original idea - No Time For Flashcards). A great way to work with the concept that you can put shapes together and make anything you want. Oh, and the q-tip painting was fun too (you can't see it, but he colored the wheels with a few markers also). Later, I realized I should not have had Ryan glue the back of the truck on, but to use something so it would pivot (like a brad). Oh well, maybe the next garbage truck we create...

03-21-09 Tot Schooling on the go...

We were able to capture pics this time - another trip to Lowes to work on our kitchen design. He loves the flat bed and we get some great time in with the designer. I can sit there and work with him in between questions from the kitchen specialist.

These beads are great - they are Noah's Ark beads (arks, lions, elephants, etc.). He had so much fun playing with them, making pipe cleaner bracelets, dumping, sorting, counting, loading in his dump truck, etc.


And, the trusty 'toothpick, popsicle stick, straw, etc.' water bottle. He just loves this and it is so simple. He plays with it forever - he really enjoyed looking at each popsicle stick in detail. These are the ones he painted (see this post). It gave me an idea - I think we'll do more things with pop sticks - wiggly eyes, markers, crayons, glue, collages, etc. and put in a bag to take with us to look in waiting rooms, etc.