Tot School July 13-17

This week in Tot School was a tough week trying to get back into the swing of things after being on vacation. Again no time to organize anything so we played a lot of games. I got some of these games on our trip at an education store I went to. I could have spent A LOT of money there, but my husband was with me so I had to keep it to a minimum, hehehe.

Love the $ spot at Target right now with all of the education stuff. I got 7 puzzles and we put them all together this week. M&M is starting to understand how to put regular/jigsaw puzzles together. I love the color one that shows how the two colors mix to make another color.

To go along with the puzzle theme we put together these shape puzzles from Infantino that we got M&M for Christmas. She wasn't ready for them in December, but she is really good at them now.

M&M was really good at these opposite cards. She knows the names of most of them.

M&M is good at saying which things, "match the same", but we learned about the word different this week with these cards. She kept saying "not the same", but eventually she got it.

We also did these cards for three-letter words, but she just put the pictures in order and I showed her that it used letters to spell a word.

That's about it. I hope to get more organized in the near future so we can do some more letter weeks.

Life School

This is really late, but I wanted to post it anyway for my own purposes of memories. On the 4th of July we left to visit my family for a week.

As a little bit of background, all of my family live in one area and all growing up I thought that I would live there as well for the rest of my life. Then I met my husband. He was from another state. When we were first married I didn't even want him to mention the idea of us moving to his state. He still had to finish school, but then a chance came up for a job after he graduated with opportunities that we just couldn't pass it up. God has a way of softening our hearts so that we will follow His will.

Anyway, my husband promised that he would take me back to see my family at least once a year. It was such a treat to go and see everyone and for M&M to play with her cousins from the other side of the family. She actually ended up playing with cousins from my side of the family and from both sides of my husband's family. There was a lot of play going on that week. That's why this week of Tot school was more like Life School.

M&M had the chance to be a princess for a night with the rest of her girl cousins. They wore dresses that my mom made for all of them. They danced the night away with their daddies after a day of getting their hair and nails done.

We had the great opportunity to take her through an open house of a temple of our faith. It was such a wonderful experience and probably the best teaching tool to teach her about the most important thing in her life. We also saw the outside of another temple as well.

(I don't plan on talking a lot about my religion on this blog, but as it is such a big part of our lives the topic will come up once in a while as it relates to teaching M&M in Tot School.)

It was M&M's first time at a Children's Museum where she dressed up as a firefighter, played in a little store and house, and with a Melissa and Doug magnetic maze, and built things with her daddy.

The rest of the time was spent playing with A LOT of cousins on playgrounds while getting really dirty.

iHeart faces week 28: Feet

I have seen the blog I heart faces and loved the idea, but never thought I had anything worthwhile, but when I saw the theme for this week I knew I had to enter.



I love this picture because it shows my daughter's feet after she's played with sidewalk chalk for about an hour. I love all of the details and lines you can see in her feet.

Check out I Heart Faces for more fun feet!

Picnic Table Talk - Imagination

I wasn't able to do last week's Picnic Table Talk because we were on vacation so I'm excited to be back this week.

I really don't have to do much to get M&M to pretend play. We got her a play kitchen 2 Christmas's ago with some plastic play food and that has kept her busy as I sit with her in her play room. She cooks everything and then brings it over to me to eat. I've noticed that I don't need a lot of props for her because she will just pretend to have whatever it is that she wants to play with or pretend to be.

I do have a few dress-up clothes, but they are mostly the fake store-bought skirts and dresses to be a princess. I have a plastic set of make-up (which was very hard to find actually because most make-up sets have real stuff in them even for little girls) that we use to put make-up on each other. I am in the process of re-organizing my playroom right now and I will be setting up an area just for dress-up. I'm trying to think of ways of getting stuff out in the open because for some reason M&M won't dig through boxes, etc. to find any toys, she will only go for the ones that are already out. I need to get things out without it being cluttery. I've painted some wooden hooks to hang up hats and purses and I have a mirror that I'm going to put up so she can see herself all dressed up.

Thanks to my mom and her mad sewing skills, M&M has her own purple princess dress with sparkles and a tiara. I have to brag a little bit because my mom actually made 5 of these dresses for her granddaughters and then she put on a daddy/daughter dance . Earlier in the day the girls, who range in age from 3-5, got their hair done and nails painted at a beauty school. M&M was in heaven as she twirled and danced the night away while sneaking mini cupcakes from the snack table. This was the ultimate pretend play night because she got to be a real princess for a night.

I've noticed that when M&M pretends she doesn't need fancy props and tons of toys, she just uses regular everyday household materials. M&M loves it when I join in on the fun. I let this time be a time where she gets to do and make up whatever she wants. Most of the time I end up being the daughter and she is the mommy so she gets to boss me around. I notice that a lot of what husband and I do comes out in her play. My mom would call this play therapy. She used to do therapy with children and letting them play and act out helped her to see what problems there were when kids didn't want to talk about something. I have to be careful what I do and say because M&M is going to act it out! It also helps me to see what areas I need to improve on and gives me time to think about what I can do better next time when a certain situation comes up.

I have one concern of late with M&M's imagination and that is she is picking up things from other children as she plays with them and her new thing is "killing" things and people. Of course I don't even want her to act this out or even talk about it, but I don't know how to make her see how serious it is. I don't think she understands what it is, but that is something I really don't want her to pretend.

As you can see I don't have a lot to offer in this area, but I am excited to look at what others do so that I can get some great ideas and maybe have some structured time set apart for pretend play. I know M&M would love it!

Tot School -Letter F

M&M is 37 months old

We did A LOT this week.

(I am not on my own computer and I can't get into Evernote which I use to store all of my ideas, so I can't link up where I got them, but I will do the best I can.)

We painted with feathers.

And fingerpainted.

We read the book The Rainbow Fish, by Marcus Pfister.

To go along with the book we made our own rainbow fish using a template from, I think, DLTK and tissue paper and tinfoil.



We sorted goldfish crackers by color and then ate them for a snack. I saw this on another blog, but of course don't remember, sorry.

This doesn't have to do with the letter F, but we also did this Melissa and Doug See and Spell puzzle that I got for $10 at a consignment store. I think it is the older version, but that doesn't matter to me!

I laid out all of the letters in alphabetical order and then M&M would pick the letters out that she needed and then I would have her put them back where they belonged. This was a great lesson in alphabetical order for M&M because she just knows how to sing the song, but doesn't know where each letter comes in the alphabet.

We made this cute fish aquarium that I saw, I think, on the Crafts-n-Things blog.


We also glued feathers on the letter F. This idea came from the No Time For Flashcards blog.

We also did several things with foam beads, but this is a picture of what happens when I have to feed Bubba in the middle of an activity.

I taught M&M about patterns with the foam beads. I got this idea and template on the paper from Childcareland.com.


After that M&M wanted to make letters out of the beads, because everything is about letters these days. I remembered I had these printouts of each letter from, I think, Childcareland.com so again, thinking fast to accommodate M&M's ideas I brought these out and we did each letter in her name.

I also saw this snack idea on another blog, but I don't remember. When I get home in a week I will put the links up for all of these things. This is a cup with vanilla pudding topped with crushed Nilla wafers for the beach and blue sprinkles for the ocean. Swedish fish, of course, are the fish. M&M did NOT like the swedish fish at all.



We did flowers with do-a dot paints.


Also did fingerprint flowers.

I found a template for the alphabet, capital and lowercase, on little fish so we went fishing with these cards. I made a fishing pole out of a small dowel, string and a magnet that I hot glued onto the end of the string. Then I put paperclips on all of the lowercase letter cards. When M&M picked one up she would look at it, say what the letter was, and then find the capital letter that matched, which were lined up next to her.



We got out her Lets Go Fishin game and played for a little bit.

But mostly she just wanted to take them out and play with them.

Since it was 4th of July week I remembered that I had this game, 10 days in the USA. The game board is a map of the US and each card has a state on it. We matched a few of the states, but this was too hard for her to do since a lot of them look the same.


We made fireworks by drawing an outline with chalk on black paper and then going over it with glitter glue. The first one is mine and the second one is M&M's.



We were cutting out something and M&M made a mess on the floor so we did a practical life activity of learning how to use a broom and dustpan!
We of course made an American flag with construction paper and silver star stickers. We talked about how the flag is made up of shapes and three colors. This suggestion came from Teaching my little bookworm blog.

As an original idea of my own we made our own flag of shapes and colors.


We gathered up these paint chip samples shaped like Mickey Mouse from Home Depot and made a matching game out of them. I've seen this on several blogs.


Short explanations, but hey, I'm on vacation!

Bubba's new trick

Bubba (my six month old) is army crawling already! I did not think it was going to happen so soon. We have to totally baby proof our house again. M&M didn't start crawling this soon so it kind of just snuck up on me. He's even trying to get up on his knees. He's bound and determined to keep up with his sister. We have tile in most of the house so I don't know if he's gonna want to crawl on that though. He did this just in time to show grandma this weekend.

It's so different with him. With M&M I wanted her to grow up fast so that we could do fun stuff together. With Bubba I want him to stay my sweet, smiley baby forever! I'm excited and sad at the same time because he's growing up too fast.

Any babyproofing advice? It's been a while and we are in a different house than when M&M was a baby.

Easy Chicken Enchiladas

I found the time to try out a new recipe. I will be doing this a lot more because I'm getting back into the swing of things. It only took me 6 months after having a baby, but oh well.

I found a recipe for Easy Chicken Enchiladas on the Make and Takes website. I've had this recipe for a while now and I should have made it sooner because it really is easy. I made it even easier on myself by getting a rotisserie chicken.

I don't really have an actual recipe with actual amounts for things, but here are the ingredients you will need:

Chicken (cooked and shredded)
Tortillas (flour)
Enchilada sauce
Cheese



As simple as this. You can go to the link to find out how they did it, but I will tell you what I did.



I shredded the meat from one side of the chicken because we only have 3 people to feed here. Added half of the can of enchilada sauce to the chicken and then added as much cheese as I saw fit. Spooned the meat mixture onto tortillas, rolled them and placed them in a small pan. (They used an 8x8) I used a smaller version of a 9x13 pan. I poured the rest of the sauce over the top of the enchiladas and sprinkled cheese, again just how much I thought was good. I baked it at 375 degrees for 20-25 minutes.

It was super easy and my husband LOVED it. Even M&M ate some, which is a miracle in and of itself. Once more tip. I used the medium sauce and even though is was a little hot for me it was still good, I just put some sour cream over the top of mine to cool the sauce down. If you don't like spicy you can get the mild kind. More recipes to come!