Weekly Activities: No Theme

We enjoyed hanging out with our family this week. I didn't plan many activities this week, but we did manage to get in one or two days of tot school this week. I don't have as many pictures as usual, but I will share what I have. We are going out of town tomorrow, so I don't have anything planned for next week either.

One day I took the boys to play at Doogoland. They enjoyed lots of pretend play. We also did several name activities this week.

I made a new discovery bottle. I just put rice and different small objects for the boys to find in a plastic bottle.



One morning Jax spent time transferring beans with a spoon while Sawyer put toothpicks into a spice container. Then they switched.


They also had fun playing with their band in a box. This is always a favorite at our house.

What's In A Name?

I didn't plan much for Tot school this week since Jon and Kelsey are in town. Today we were home all morning, so I decided to work with the boys some. One of my goals with Sawyer is for him to learn to spell his name. I taught him a little song that I try to sing whenever I think of it. My mom got he and Jaxon name puzzles for Christmas and I have been encouraging them to play with these.
This morning after breakfast I got out the name puzzles and the letter sponges.
First I had Sawyer put his puzzle together and say each letter of his name.
Next, he matched the sponges to the letters on the puzzle.

The last step was to paint his name with the sponges. He chose the colors and painted his name. It didn't come out perfect, but he had fun and it was more reinforcement of the letters in his name.

I helped Jaxon do all of these steps as well. Of course I don't expect him to learn how to spell his name yet, but I am introducing letters to him. He wants to do everything Sawyer does, so I try to let him as much as he can. When I ask him how to spell his name he says, "A A A". He does have an A in his name, so he isn't too far off. Sawyer has been spelling his own name all day and he spells Jaxon's name "J A exellen" instead of J a x o n. It is so cute.
I wrote Sawyer's name in all caps on a piece of cardboard and in all lowercase letters on clothes pins. He matched up the letters. He not only practices his name, but also lowercase and capital letter matching, and fine motor skills.

He also played with his name letter magnets. I almost forgot he had these, but they are on a picture frame he got when he was a baby.

Weekly Activities: Z week

We had a busy week full of playing, laughing, and learning. Here are some of my favorite pics of the week.

I got this number puzzle at the dollar tree. The boys played with it quite a bit this week.

I made these discovery bottles. In the first bottle I put water, glitter, and blue food coloring. In the second one I put water, dish soap and food coloring. I also added a few shape beads to the water. I showed Jax how to shake it and make bubbles. In the third bottle I put pom poms and a few animal sponges. I used hot glue to put the caps on and then put on masking take and ribbons.

Jax was quite fond of these.

They poured beans into different size containers. They also used their fingers to pick up spilled beans.


They made zoos with paper and stickers.

Another activity the boys enjoyed was playing with magnets. Jax loved putting the magnets on the tray. I had Sawyer sort and count the magnets.


S and J also had fun painting with zoo animals and then giving them a "bath" in the sink.

On Thursday the boys built a zoo with blocks for their animals. I love watching them play and work together.


We also spent a lot of time enjoying the beautiful spring weather. We went to the park a few times and picked strawberries one day.

Z for zoo

We are learning about the letter z this week. Sawyer has done a great job learning to identify his letters and sounds. I think I mentioned this before, but I LOVE the Leap Frog Letter Factory video. We checked it out from the library and he learned all of his letters and sounds in a week. Of course I continued to reinforce his learning. We ended up buying the video and I want to buy the others as well. We have borrowed them from the library from time to time and they are all really good.
I bought some glitter zoo animal stickers from the dollar tree this weekend. I let Sawyer draw a zoo scene and I drew one for Jax.

Then they put stickers all over the zoo. I had the boys name all of the animals and their sounds. Jax is pretty good with his animal sounds. He loves the bebra (zebras). I liked these stickers because they had texture. They were easier for Jax to grip than flat stickers.


We also made animal tracks one day. I had the boys paint with some of their animals. They had a blast making tracks all over the paper. I found this idea on No Time for Flash cards.

When they finished I let them wash the animals in warm soapy water. I pulled chairs up to the sink, so they could give the zoo animals a bath. We talked about how the zoo keepers take care of the real animals at the zoo.
I was hoping we would get to take a trip to the zoo this week, but I don't think we will be able to.

Weekly Activities: Y week

Well, we finished up y week. I am glad, because like I said before there are not too many y words. Thursday the boys were eating yogurt and Jax made a huge mess as usual. I decided to give him a piece of paper and let him paint with his yogurt. Plus, yogurt starts with Y. Hooray! He had a blast, but Sawyer didn't want to join in. He said yogurt doesn't go on paper. I told him it was o.k., but he was not interested.I don't have any pics, because my battery was charging that morning.
I changed out their buckets this week. I tried to incorporate y in a couple of the buckets. I put yellow play-doh and a few tools in one bucket. Another bucket had yarn and this water bottle.
Jax did this twice for short periods of time and I don't even know if Sawyer touched it all week. Oh, well.
They both loved transferring water from bowl to bowl. Sawyer was able to get his own water and bring it to the tray. The good thing about this is that when they spilled they just used the sponges to wipe up the mess.

In another bucket I put multi-colored pom poms, tweezers, and an egg carton. Jax loved this activity, but he wasn't able to really use the tweezers. He wanted me to help him and he was trying so hard.


I bought these foam beads at the dollar tree last week. Sawyer enjoyed it. Jax wasn't able to get the beads on, but he could get them off and he also liked to stack them.


They both had fun playing with stickers. Last week I had stickers in a bucket and they weren't interested at all. This week I took them out, but they asked to do stickers just about every day. Sawyer loves these sticker books from Chic-fil-a.

Another option I gave the boys was flower arranging with yellow flowers. They each tried this for about 2 minutes on Monday and then moved on.
I have changed out the buckets and am looking forward to another week of learning with my boys. We will be starting the letter z today.

Letter Y

This week we are learning about the letter Y. There are not a ton of words that start with Y, so I am trying my best. We talked about yogurt, yarn, yellow, yippee, and yo-yos. Sawyer said, "what's a yo-yo?"
The first activity we did is glue yarn to construction paper.

It was simple enough for both boys to do without much help. I just put glue on Jax's paper and he put put the yarn on.

Yesterday, I brought out the shaving cream. Both of the boys love this activity. I like to do prewriting practice by having Sawyer write letters in the cream. He wrote a couple of letters, but he was more interested in just smashing it around.
Today we made yellow y collages. First, they colored the y yellow with colors and markers.
Then they glued on yellow paper and put on yellow stickers.
My poor kids are never fully dressed for these pictures. Jaxon had just eaten lunch, so i took his shirt off so he wouldn't make a mess. Sawyer had just used the bathroom and didn't put his pants back on. They really do have plenty of clothes.

Weekly Activities: Easter Theme

I have been reading a lot of tot school blogs this past week. I really found a lot of good ideas on this blog and other links on her blog. I have started to incorporate the "tot tray" idea. Instead of trays I am using colored buckets, since that is what I have. I am going to fill 4-6 new buckets each week with different activities and let the kids choose what they like to do. I had great success with some and not so much with others, but that is what learning together is all about. We were also all sick this week, so I didn't do everything I had planned.

Jaxon's absolute favorite thing to do this week was put noodles into this water bottle lid. He chose this activity almost every day. Sawyer enjoyed it too. He would put 4 or 5 noodles in at once, but Jaxon took his time and carefully put one noodle in at a time. We used spaghetti and small shells.


In another bucket I hid small toys in this Easter grass. I drew pictures of the objects and had Sawyer match the object to the picture. J had fun just digging in the grass for the toys. We did this once and only once, because the grass was a mess. I am still finding it all over my house. Next time I would just cut up green paper for the grass. They enjoyed it and I am glad we did it, but I hid it in the closet the rest of the week, because I just couldn't handle the mess it made.


Another big hit this week was play-doh. I gave the boys Easter cookie cutters, a few play-doh tools, and play-doh and they had a blast. J was concentrating so hard.

I filled another bucket with plastic Easter eggs. On each egg I wrote a capital letter and the lower case letter, so they could match the eggs by color and letter. I knew this would be too hard for Jax, but thought Sawyer would enjoy it. Well, J enjoyed throwing the eggs around and so did S. He matched a few of the eggs, but it didn't hold his attention for very long. He only chose this activity once or twice. He did have fun sorting them into colors.
S also enjoyed cutting paper this week. Another activity I had that neither boy chose was putting stickers on egg cut outs. Usually S loves playing with stickers, but he wasn't interested this week.
He did really enjoy playing with his opposite puzzle and stamping. These were unplanned activities that he asked to do.

All in all it was a good week and I look forward to changing out the buckets and trying some new activities. We also did structured crafts and activities that I posted through out the week. I enjoyed teaching Sawyer about the true meaning of Easter this week. Today he has been telling everyone, "Happy Easter, Jesus lives!" Indeed He does!