Tot School

This week has been a lot of fun for Grayson and me, despite the house flooding on Monday and strep throat for both kids! I never thought I would be the kind of mommy who would come up with activities and crafts (I'm not creative like that :), but I've found that it makes me a better and more patient mom when I'm teaching him, and it makes him so much more peaceful. A few hours devoted just to him gives him the ability to entertain himself so much more! Here's a few moments from his week:

Grayson loved his blocks this week...he played with them for hours! He had not seen them in a while, so he loved sorting and stacking them.

Our printer ran out of ink at the beginning of the week (along with the great flood drama), so we improvised by (very poorly) drawing a Big A for Grayson to color and decorate. "A is for Apple" I was so proud that he let me help him just a little to write his upper and lower case A (see upper left hand corner of the page).

It's not pictured, but Grayson's memory verse this week was "Keep me the Apple of your eye." Psalm 17:8 I printed off a picture of an eye with an apple in the center...this visual really helped him recite it throughout the week. We drew the same picture and glittered it up and hung it over his play area so he could see it during the day. This was stuck directly to the wall, so I better come up with something else pretty soon, because the wall won't be able to hold it all--and I'll be getting blue putty stuck to it!

As many of you know, Grayson loves pirates, so right now I'm trying to implement them as a theme in any way we can for learning. His friend Jake got him some pirate dominoes for his birthday, so we pulled those out a couple of times this week.

He mostly matched them end to end, making shapes on the table.

Here he is in some free time with an "A is for Angel" cookie cutter and some play dough. You can also see some puzzles in the background...this was a really simple one from much younger, but I could never get him to play with puzzles much. He loved them this week! I didn't take any pictures, but he put together two other "real" ones this week; I was so impressed with how quickly he picked it up and that he wanted to put them together again and again.

Thought this was funny...all I told Grayson to try was to only pick up one button at a time and put into the bear tray...he came up with color sorting all on his own. Matt says obviously I'm teaching him to be OCD! :)

Again with the pirate theme: I got these blank treasure maps with sticker kit from Oriental Trading; he loved this!

Working identifying colors on a page....took this picture because he's been practicing holding his crayons like "mommy and daddy."

For some fun, we pulled out this....we love this Melissa and Doug magnetic board that comes with two backgrounds and magnets...we just mixed all the pieces together and let Grayson pick out only the ones that go in the appropriate background.

Grayson caught me at flustered moment (when we discovered the flooding), and I grabbed the first two things I saw: some pirate coins and a paper towel tube...told him to stack them into it. Just goes to show you don't always have to be on your A-game...this was his favorite thing all week!

Working on lacing some foam beads on some colorful pipe cleaner...he made his Nana a bracelet (that he took back today, by the way).

transferring some pom poms with his "clappers" as he calls them.

We had a great week together...I love this age and seeing him grow and change so much!