Tot School

Tot trays have been kind of slow lately. Bear is on a make-believe kick and I am following her desires. She has all the time in the world (well, at least a few years anyway) to learn her abc's and numbers. Pretending is such an important part of childhood. (I've been reading a bit on the Waldorf theory and something there just hits a chord; yet, I love so much about Montessori as well, so I would never switch over completely.)

Bear is also obsessed with reading and puzzles right now, so we do those activities multiple times each day.

As far as Tot School goes, we've mostly been reviewing things she already knows (colors, shapes, letter sounds, body parts) through trays you can see by looking at my Tot School categories. I've also added a couple of games to work on her counting and number recognition from 1 to 3. (Post to come, much later.)

And of course we do a lot of art and a lot of cutting.

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Chayote Noodles

I was staring at our chayote plant (looks like a green squash but tastes like cucumber) as Bear and I sat on our log outside. Suddenly the curly wispy tendrils of the vine looked like noodles. While Bear picked some, I ran (waddled, since I am 9 months pregnant!) to get her frying pan and tongs, plates and forks. Bear cooked us a wonderful lunch of chayote "noodles," which we then proceeded to pretend to eat. Yum!

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Details

I'm due in a week and a half, but really the baby (his blog name hasn't been determined yet...) could come any day. That plus the fact that our internet is up and down a lot lately means that you might only see new posts sporadically for the next little while. Just thought I would let my readers know:)

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Black and White

Since newborns see best in black and white, when Bear was born, I decided to draw her black and white animals to tape by her change table for her to look at during numerous diaper changes. She loved these and would gaze at them endlessly. At first, she probably only focused on certain aspects of the animal, like the stripes in the cat above. But as her vision developed, she could take in larger and larger portions of the drawings. Bear still likes to look at them now.

We'll be using the cards with the new baby. Can't wait to see if he is as enthralled by them as Bear was.

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Black Pink Black Pink...

Finally Bear is into patterning a bit. Today we made patterns using blobs of PlayDoh.

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Yellow Paint - Open Ended Art

Need some open ended art ideas? Check out Teaching My Little Bookworm for some great ideas. We basically only do open ended art here at The Adventures of Bear, but it is always nice to get new ideas.

(click photo to enlarge)

The theme this week is Yellow and Paint so we printed in yellow with limes. Then I turned it into a lesson on how red and yellow make orange and Bear printed orange limes. I love how her orange limes turned out. And since this was open ended and self directed, Bear just started painting in all colors and with a variety of other tools. We ended up with seven paintings!

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Vroom Vroom

This was a lot of fun. We dipped Bear's matchbox cars into Tempera paint and zoomed them across card stock.

The activity even included car crashes.

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Pink Cake

As I've mentioned, Bear is a little birthday obsessed right now. She talks about having a pink birthday cake everyday! Today she pulled down some of my cookbooks and was flipping through the pages saying, "Pink cake, Bear." (Except she was saying her actual name, not Bear.) Guess she's seen me flipping through in search of recipes and decided to do the same.

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Leaf Prints

Bear enthusiastically went leaf collecting this morning and seemed excited to paint on the leaves, but she wasn't really interested in printing the leaves. I was. So while Bear painted with her paintbrush directly on the paper and then scratched into the paint with her stick (her new favorite technique), I happily printed leaves (bottom right photo).

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Naps or the lack of them

Any ideas why my 23 month old won't nap? Is this normal? I miss the one to two hour break in the middle of my day! And when the baby comes in three weeks, what will I do? Sometimes she'll nap in the car, but I'd rather not have her dependent on being in the car to fall asleep.

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Geoboard

Thanks to Spinner's End Nursery School for reminding me that I wanted to make a geoboard for Bear. I made it this morning while Bear passed me pushpins to hammer into a board that I hastily covered with one of my old ballet leotards. (Yeah, don't look at the back of our geoboard - not pretty!) Bear immediately started playing with it excitedly. I just used rubber bands because that is what we had. I recommend using something that feels nicer when snapped against your fingers!

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Tot School

Tot Trays: from left to right


Dudley the letter eating dragon - I work the puppet and ask Bear for different letter sounds. She gives me the letter and together we think of foods that start with that sound. She loves this right now and asks for it often.

Counting flat marbles on number sheet (to work on one to one correspondence)

Pompom sorting into egg carton using tong transfer

Feeding the ants (counting jars)

Counting rocks in egg carton (to work on one to one correspondence)

Match the picture to the letter

Puzzles

Homemade Alphabet Matching Puzzle

Lacing beads

Make Believe:

We spent a lot of time playing doctor, pizza party and birthday party this week.

Art:

string art
salty watercolors
tempera paint
oil pastels
watercolor pencils
cut paper collage

cutting practice - Bear loves to cut strips of cardstock. She does this everyday. I am now working on having her cut on lines I draw on the cardstock.

Language:

Lots of reading as usual. She is starting to "read" to herself, saying some of the words from the story as she flips the pages. Very cute.

Nature:

We went to a wonderful garden this weekend and Bear loved looking for flowers for each color.

We created a little nature corner on her tot tray table and also on our patio. We played on our "log" and used leaves for blankets for her Fisher Price Little People who were "camping" on the log. (Guess that fits under the make believe category as well.)

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Birthday Obsessions

Bear has been talking about her second birthday since a month ago. We still have one month to go. LOL. She wants a pink cake and lets me know every day! We've been playing at birthday party a lot with her dolls and Fisher Price Little People. Today Bear found an old baby picture of hers and had the photo join in the fun. We even made play dough cupcakes for the celebration, using buttons as plates. I love to see her creative play develop.

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Tempera Paint

We paint nearly every day. Both Bear and I love it. In fact, I had to give Bear one of her birthday presents a month early because we ran out of tempera paint. The new tempera is much brighter and nicer than the old one (different brand).

The day of the new paint, we enjoyed trying some different techniques, such as spatter paint with a toothbrush (did not work with almost 2 year old - to be tried again in a year or two), stamping water bottle caps and jar lids into the paint, and scratching the paint with a stick. The best part was that she cleaned all the tools herself after painting:)

For me, art is all about the process. There will be plenty of time for crafts in a couple of years with Bear. Right now, I love that she is in the stage of discovery.

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String Art

Bear dipped her yarn into tempera paint and placed it on a pre-folded piece of paper. Then she closed the paper, pressed down and rubbed, and when she opened the paper again, ta-da! String Art!

You can see a similar project at Thrifty Craft Mama.

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Pizza Party

I made a felt pizza for Bear recently to add to her felt food collection. We had requested a small pizza box from our favorite pizza place a long time ago, as I have had this project in mind for ages. Now the pizza box finally has pizza! Bear hasn't stopped playing with it since I made it.

Here is Sally enjoying her pizza.

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The Great Outdoors

Our nature walk today included all 5 senses. We listened to the birds, we smelled and tasted herbs, we felt different textures (like the smooth side vs the rough side of the mushroom in the picture), and we looked for different colors. It was beautifully sunny all day (rare during rainy season) and we spent almost all afternoon just being outside. It felt wonderful.

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Salty Watercolors

The wet on wet watercolor technique required a lot of concentration, but was thoroughly enjoyed by Bear. First, she wet her paper with a large paintbrush. Then, switching to a smaller brush, she painted over the wet paper with her watercolors, remembering not to dirty the discs by rinsing her paintbrush each time in the water container. Her favorite part was the last part, sprinkling salt over the whole thing.

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Caps For Sale

On Monday, our morning story was Caps for Sale. This is not a new story for Bear, but I found some story stretchers to go with it for the week. The first two poems, I found on this great site.

Poem #1

Monkeys, monkeys
in the tree,
throw the ____________ cap
down to me.

In the blank, insert a color. I drew some caps and colored them and Bear has to find the color I call out. Good for reinforcing the colors she already knows very well. We practice them in her other languages as well.

Poem #2

Five little monkeys up in a tree,
teasing Mr. Crocodile, "you can't catch me!"
Along came Mr. Crocodile, quiet as a mouse.
Then, SNAP!
(repeat poem until you get to zero.)

Bear loves to be the crocodile for this one. We have the monkeys from Carissa's Five Little Monkeys tot book printed out and use those to act out the poem.

Poem #3

"Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed"

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Bear's Art Space

This is Bear's art table. (And yes, those are cement blocks, leftover from our house construction, holding up her table surface! I figure, that way, the table can grow with her - I just have to add blocks!) We keep colored pencils, washable markers, and crayons out at all times. Bear has some shelves to the left of the table where she can reach paper, glue, scissors, collage material, and her playdough. I don't keep paint accessible; maybe when she's three I will, but I'm not ready yet:) I have my own art/sewing table too, so Bear can work on her art and I can work on my art simultaneously.

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Bear's Birthday Dress

I whipped up this dress last night for Bear's birthday (in August). It's a pillowcase dress, though not made from a pillowcase. The dress was so fast and easy to do.
I used a combination of this tutorial and this tutorial.

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Tot School

Bear is 22 months

(click on picture to enlarge)

Tot Trays:

Dropper work - this remains challenging for her. She doesn't really get that you squeeze before the dropper enters the water and then let go once the dropper is in the water so that the dropper will fill up. Nevertheless, she constantly asks to do this work.

Fabric Match - squares of scraps of fabric for her to match up.

Alphabet Matching Puzzle

Clothespins on yogurt container - her favorite again this week.

Color sorting popsicle sticks - she actually chose this without me prompting her to!

Literature Extensions:

Alphabet action cards
fingerplays

Art:

silhouette water colors
collage prints
chalk drawings
painting on canvas
watercolor pencils

cutting practice

Language:

Lots of reading as usual
An impromptu "b" lesson (As Bear stuck stickers in a notebook, I noticed that her stickers were butterflies and bees, so we talked about the sound /b/ a bit.)

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An Exploration in Puffy Paint

I got this great idea from The Artful Parent. It was super messy. Bear kept just squeezing and forgetting to move the bag of puffy paint around, so we got some great BLOBS that will probably take a month to dry. Nonetheless, the important thing is that Bear enjoyed this tremendously. Art is a process of discovery and not about product and that is what I try to keep in mind when I search for art projects for Bear.

The texture of this paint is neat. I think we'll use the leftover paint for fingerpainting tomorrow.

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Collage Prints

(click on picture to enlarge)

First, Bear glued some higly textured materials (junk I hadn't thrown out) to piece of cardboard. Next, she rolled paint over it. Then she layed a piece of paper over it and rubbed to transfer the paint. Lift the paper and voila! A textured collage print.

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Silhouettes

Inspired by The Artful Parent and Chasing Cheerios, Bear and I did silhouette water color painting. I cut out the silhouette out of contact paper and placed it on the paper for Bear and then she painted over the whole paper to make her silhouette appear. We also repeated this using contact paper shapes. The only problem with this project was that the contact paper seemed to stick too much to the paper and I had a hard time taking it off.

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Clap Your Hands

This week, Bear and I signed out the book Clap Your Hands. Bear likes to act out the book. As a literary extension (aka Story Stretcher), I made some Alphabet Action Cards. I typed out the actions, printed them on card stock, then wrote the letter in upper case and lower case on the other side. We place them letter side up on her foam mats and she chooses a letter. I read the card and we do the action. Some letters have more than one card.

Here is my list of alphabet actions:

A - ankle circles
B - bounce a ball; balance on one foot
C - crawl; clap your hands
D - dance around; do downward dog (yoga pose)
E - elevate your arms; elbow circles
F - flex your muscles; flap like a bird
G - Gallop like a horse; grab a pillow
H - Hop on one foot
I - inch along like a caterpillar
J - jumping jacks
K - kick your legs
L - lift your legs; lift your arms; lick a lollipop
M - march on the spot
N - nod your head
O - jump Over a pillow
P - push a ball, pat your tummy;
Q - quickly walk down the hall
R- roar like a lion; run in place; raise your arms; reach to the sides;
S - stretch out your arms; spin
T - twirl; tiptoe; touch your ___________.
U - crawl Under a chair; look Upside down
V - Vrrooom like a car; pretend to play the Violin
W - windmills with arms;
X - pick an eXercise (okay, kind of cheating, I know)
Y - Yawn; find something Yellow
Z - run in a zigzag; zoom like an airplane


Thanks to Keri at The Home Teacher, you can download your own cards here. She has started a great wiki and graciously offered to add the alphabet action cards to it.

If you have any other ideas for actions for the letters of the alphabet, please comment. :) I'd love to add more card to our stash.

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