Cars Lap / Tot Book

This idea was from Tot School, of course! Here is a link to her Cars Tot-Book, which is exactly what we used. I changed the idea a little, instead of using the name cards together, accordian style, I cut them apart and added a card that had his entire name printed out in all capitals - he is working on looking at that card and placing the other ones in the correct order. I did our last name and a card that has both names on there as well. He loves thumbing through this book, but the 'concepts' are review, so he gets a little bored with it quicker than I would like. 1+1+1=1 has created a new twist on the tot-book and I REALLY like what she is doing. We've printed the Monkey one and will be putting that together soon.

Coloring the color cards



Adding the stickers to the outside:




Playing with the counting cards and some of the letter/name cards:



The proud boy with the finished product:


Oh, and disclaimer: May not always be played with the way it was intended...But, what fun!

03-17-09 St Patrick's Day

Green breakfast with green OJ, green pancakes, grapes
We talked about St Patrick's Day a little and leprechauns, rainbows, pots of gold, green and shamrocks. After breakfast, we discussed a few more along that line and all of a sudden, my dear sweet, empathetic little boy turned with his sad, brown eyes and softly said (background - we have some married friends named Patrick and Kristy) "Mommy? It's Ms. Kristy's day too?". Awww, honey...it's THAT I want to bottle and keep forever. Yet, another reason I want to homeschool - I don't want him losing that sense of others.

We changed the playroom around a little Monday night and I made a little reading 'area' for him with all the books and a bean bag chair. He headed STRAIGHT for that this morning and spent a good hour looking at his books and coloring books. Cool!

We worked on the cars lapbook a bit with stickers, more counting card fun and new name cards added. He also colored with his water marker on the 'special' water marker book - just add water and he colors and the pictures magically appear. I admit, I have a good time coloring in that one too!

He also wanted his circles to put the small stones in them, again.


We had a lunch picnic at the park with some friends of ours down the street. There were some Canadian Geese there and they were making a bit of noise. I said "Look, honey! Hear them all honking?". A few seconds later, those twinkling brown eyes look at me and say "Mommy? Do gooses have horns?" I laughed loudly at that one :)

We also made a trip to the library after his nap - he LOVES going to the library! After the library, we went to Lowes hardware for a kitchen designer consultation. I got the idea of doing some tray time at Lowes and it worked out great! I didn't get any pictures, this time - but we took a flat bed cart, put Ryan, Cassada (in the carseat) and a bag of toys/trays for Ryan (and his dinner). We were there for 2.5 - 3 hours and he was GREAT the whole time! He sat on the flat bed (almost the whole time) and played with his construction vehicles and the popsicle sticks/tooth picks/straws/water bottle tray for over an hour. He did other things in "mommy's bag of tricks", but that was the one he played with the longest. Great stuff!

2-27-09 Worksheets, ABC books, Cars Lapbook

Ryan wanted to do a few worksheets today and play with his A, B, C books. These are great little board books - 26 of them in one little box, one for each letter. Each one has four or five pictures of things that start with that letter. We love to play with them.

We did get to work on the Cars Lap/Tot book some today also. Today he picked out the colors and colored on the pages. He also looked at/picked out the shapes. You can see the muffin tin crayons I made him for Valentine's Day in the crayon box. I'll put another post on those later.





I'm starting to realize I can have 200 activities planned and we get to one or two of them - simply b/c we are on the go in the mornings, usually. Plus, throw in a four month old and WHEW. Time absolutely gets away from us. Cooking dinner, playing with both of them, nursing, house renovations, sheesh. But, I am happy for those activities we actually do get done. It's better than nothing at all! We do stay busy in the mornings, usually. Play groups, errands, MOPs, etc. So, I am 'ok' with the amount of work we do get done. Some days I worry about it, but today is not one of those days ;)

We do read on a daily basis, try to color a little on a daily basis and whatever he wants to play with. I don't list all the activities we do - just the ones I specifically plan or set out in the trays that we get to.

2-26-09 Beads on a String, Sorting, Singing, 1st Lapbook - Cars

I made this toy for him for Valentine's Day. A simple can we got as a gift with coffee in it, some wooden beads, some cord and a bell. Tied the bell to the end of the cord and melted the end. Voila, a stringing activity that we also use for beginning patterning. He doesn't quite get the patterning thing yet and he likes beading 'a little'. This activity was used, but he quickly moved on.




He did ask for the water bottle and straws/pop sticks/toothpicks/etc. again. So, he played with that for quite awhile. He even climbed on the counter later to get it AGAIN. He also pulled out his song notebook to sing some of our songs in it (and look at the poems, pictures we've done to put in there). He likes to also pull down his 'artwork' notebook.

Also, he asked to do some more cutting...


We started making his first ever Lapbook today. We used Cars, The Movie Tot Book, b/c of course, Ryan's obsession is Cars. I will post the finished project when we are finished. I'm doing the name part a little differently than shown in the link. We are leaving ours separate, he likes to try and put it in order.