Q is for Quarterback

  For more tot school ideas check out the gathering.  Q is a very difficult letter.  There aren't many words that start with it so we've done Q is for quarterback for two years now.  It's really just a week of a football theme.  I don't have any really great pictures this week since my son has decided that he doesn't want his picture taken. 

This week we did a lot of activities from 3 Dinosaurs.  He really enjoyed the coloring the footballs.  Recently he's taken more of an interest in cutting so he's been randomly cutting paper a lot.  I'm hoping this will help his emerging scissor skills.
Awhile ago I got some stickers in the mail with helmets for all the NFL teams.  We used those this week to practice his fine motor skills.  We also read My Football Book by Gail Gibbons and his T is for Touchdown book.  He also got a history lesson about the Greatest Game ever played from my husband who is a football nut. 
I've really wanted to start doing sight words and we did some work on the word the.  We also worked on Patrick's name using the tiles and putting in the letters.  He is awesome at matching the letters but I'm not sure if he's completely understanding the whole idea that these are words.

Baby School at 16 months

We were really busy this month with lots of things to do at home and outside of the house.  We had a lot of fun.  Here are some of the fun educational things my 16 month old enjoyed.

 

We got out our fall sensory bin.  It's seen lots of use this past month and we'll continue to play with it until December.  She definitely prefers the sensory bins involving rice to the leaves and beans.  But she has fun dumping it out.

We're working on teacher her the various parts of her body.  A simple fun game we play together is to put the leaf on various parts and sing a little song "The leaf is on your _____, the leaf is on your ______"

 

As I mentioned we've not been just staying at home.  Here she is enjoying a jumping pillow at a local farm fall festival.  She had a hard time staying up on it but she loved it!

We also visited the zoo.  She really likes turtles.  I think they're her favorite animal.

We played a lot with our homemade orange Halloween play doh.  I found the recipe here.  We really enjoyed it however I don't think I added enough seasoning because it didn't smell different from regular play doh. 

Somebody gave my son giant coins for Halloween when he was trick or treating.  Mary loved sticking them into a wipe container.  I tried to get her to attempt to get them out again by sticking her hand in but she was not interested in it at all.

Random day where she didn't nap and we were trying to find some stuff that she could quietly play with while her bother took his first nap in six months (figures she did not nap that day!).  The eggs are actually his for matching upper and lower case letters but she had fun just trying to take them apart and put them together.  She wasn't able to do it but it was fun and since she doesn't use her hands together frequently a good way to practice that skill.

J is for Jedi

This week we did a Star Wars theme with our letter theme being J is for Jedi.  For more tot school ideas check out the gathering.  Our big exciting development is a portable desk to allow with more flexibility with our location.  Patrick loves his new desk!  Most of this week focused on this pack from Homeschool Creations.  He particularly enjoyed making the book about the star fighter.

 

 

I put a highlighter into his desk and he's been really into using it for completing his activities this week.  He pretty much did no writing with anything but the highlighter.

 

We also did some shaving cream play this week.  He was supposed to write his letters in it but he wasn't interested in that so we just played with it.  He really enjoyed the sensory experience.  It didn't go so well for my daughter though and we had to call poison control because she ate a handful of it super quickly.  Luckily she was fine.

H is for Halloween

We've been busy and I forgot to post our Halloween activities.  There aren't a ton of pictures since my delightful son has decided that he doesn't want his picture taken a lot recently.

We did candy corn math.  Last year Patrick struggled with this activity but this year he did great with it.  He did have some trouble lining up the candy corn correctly and I should have gotten him some candy corn for a reward/to see it since I don't think he knew what I was talking about with it.

I found these skeletons last year they're kind of bendy and he LOVED sorting them by color.  I think he must have sorted them over twenty times during the week.  He had so much fun doing it and we've reached the point that sorting colors is super easy.  He also used the chip dip bowl to sort, which I think was more fun then just piles or last year putting them on the correct color construction paper. 

We got out the sensory bin I made last year for Halloween.  It was fun for him.