Tot Time

We are in week 2 of school - or play time. We officially started our Tot Time. (Play time for Curious.)  This is our time of day 30-min to 1-hr where I am teaching Jumping  Bean to interact with Curious. How to help him, have kind and encouraging words for him.  For Curious it's all about being curious.

 Last week - in some practice activity. I put all the pom-poms on the lap tray and just let him shovel and dump them in the bucket 

Later Jumping Bean and I made them into magnets for other school activities. 

This week I used some bins to display the Tot Time activities for Curious. The bins are not ideal, but it is what I have and so I will use them. I may add more depending on how this time goes, and how creative I can be.

Curious dug into the pom pom sort. I only gave him 2 colors and 2 cups. I helped sort the colors with him. He was more interested in filling up one cup and dumping it into another. - As you can see Jumping Bean is real engaged in interacting with Curious. (Hahaha)

Next he picked out quits, Curious did this about once, then he found all the extra empty bins and started putting the rings in the extra bins.

Last came the cars. We stacked them, then nested them too play peak - a - boo. Jumping Bean lined up all the extra bins and tried making patterns.

Items used for this weeks Tot Time

                          

1st Sensory Bin

I'm using about 3 different blogs to help me in my home schooling. One is 1+1+1=1 and she talks a lot about sensory bins. So here is my 1st Sensory Bin. It goes with our monthly theme - Who Am I and How God Knows Me.

I choose to put things in there that they like .  So a pic of each of them. Letters that spell their name. 

For Curious an airplane, nuke, and sunglasses. 

For Jumping Bean green rice, and cars

The pics are actually a puzzle to help with 1st, Middle, and Last Name on the back.

I made up a song about their names, so we were singing that as we played with the puzzle.

Curious and Jumping Bean putting there puzzles together.

Playing in the Sensory Bin. 

They can scoop / poor the rice, drive cars in it, found all the letters to spell their name. 

They had a great time! I swept the floor twice and am still finding green rice all over the house.

 - It's worth it!

1st Day of School

Well we made it - Today is the offical day!  All of preschool for us is supposed to be light hearted. This month we are working on establishing a routeen and getting our room organized and fucntional.  Our Topic is Who am I and How God Knows Me. - More about that in a different post.

Jumping Bean is 3 1/2 years old - and Curious is 17 months

The boys!

Almost there

Well the boys and I worked and worked on getting some more of the clutter / trim and tools out of the play / school room. I think we were a big help to Dad. (He probably came home and thought - Oh Boy another thing on my to do list!) We were able to move all but the door.

So remember it before - know after YEA!!!

My husband is working on the trim as I write - Thank you Babe!

I muscled the bed out of the garage and into the guest room, and we moved all the trim into the garage.

After we finished that task we started putting up a few things in our room. 

I'm cutting out the rest of the days tonight. The idea is for them to put the day up each day. 

School?

I had marked on my calendar that today would be the first day of school! Well the way things turn out and what I have planned are sometimes two different things. (hahaha) As far as material goes I'm ready. As for where and how? In process. My dear husband did get the school shelfs up for us this weekend. YEA!!!  So we spent today in the play/school room unpacking boxes of toys, books, games, and puzzles to go on the shelfs. The boys had soo much fun - seeing new stuff.

This is what we had waiting for us this morning. The door, trim, and other misc tool are still against the wall. Will probably stay there till they get put in. To those who do not know. We were using the school /  play room as a storage room for all of our appliances and stuff since we are living in the garage. 

The boys found the long lost train set - Curious did not know what to do with them. 

It was fun for me - frustrating for Jumping Bean to teach C to leave the track set up. 

Next we unpacked the puzzles - J love puzzles and went right to work on his new lap tray. C took all the pieces and put them in the pockets of the lap tray and was very pleased with his clean up. 

Next were books - lots and lots and lots of books. I tried to group them by theme, but little Curious was quick to help and the theme idea was not going so well. So we just put them on the shelf to get the job done. I'll reorganize again another day. 

So here is what we ended with today. School stuff on the left and toys on the right. It is not quite how I want it. That will probably take some time. I'm sure you will notice change as the year goes on. 

*A note to GGA* - the doll houses you made me just fit on top of these shelfs - I could not quite get them in the pic - but they look nice up there!! 

Friend for the weekend

Some dear friends trusted us with there only child for the weekend. Oh what fun she was. Yes us with 2 boys - Rough, Loud, Fast, Big Boys. And this one Petite, Quite, Soft Little Sweetness for the weekend. She was like a splash of sweetness to us all. Both the boys took on big brother with her, and were just so kind and sweet to our guest. 

 

Blue Berries

Great Grandma A is in town!!!! So we are off to pick some Blue Berries. Our fist go around was sparse and wet! - More pics to come.

Jumping Bean with Aunt E - Yes he picked them himself - Good Job!

Great Grandma A

Round 2 was nice and sunny and very plentiful! More pics to come. 

Round 2 of picking Curious eating a banana. GGA soaking in the sun!

The harvest! - cup count to come.