Tot School, March 1

The Littlest Apple is 30 months old.

I am so happy to have another Tot School post to share with you this week!  Thanks to some of the scheduling tips I read about in Steady Days,  I planned time for reading books (which we were doing anyway), free play, and Tot School activities.  Those are all things I normally just work in when I/we feel like it.  I’m pleased with how things went last week having scheduled time for those activities.

The Littlest Apple and I made Whole Wheat Pumpkin Muffins with Cinnamon Glaze.  The Littlest Apple is always very grabby and over-eager when we bake together, so it requires lots of patience on my part.  This time we talked about the numbers on the measuring cups (a simple “look! there’s a 2!”), he poured the ingredients into the mixer, counted some of the ingredients, stirred some, helped put the ingredients back in the pantry. We also discussed the order of events: get out ingredients, mix these things, add these things, put in pan, bake, clean up, cool, eat!

We got to see SNOW again in Houston!  (I didn’t get to enjoy it last time.)  It didn’t stick this time, but we enjoyed watching it outside for a few moments.  You can just barely see the snowflakes….

While I was vacuuming last week, The Littlest Apple got out his vacuum too.  I took advantage of that to create a little comparison.  We talked about the different colors, different noises, how you turn them on, how one was heavy and one was light.

The Littlest Apple continues to be very interested in pretend play.  In addition to acting out scenes from Cars, he pretends to be a fireman every day.  He loves to to pretend the fire bell is ringing, race to put on his coat, boots, and hat, and then run to put out the fire and save his dog, Mel.  No matter how many times I try to tell him that he’s got his hat on backwards, he prefers the bill forward, like a baseball cap.

I incorporated a Mommy and Baby Animal matching activity (from Itty Bitty Bookworm) into the fireman role-play one day.  The Littlest Apple had to “rescue” the baby animals and bring them to the matching mommy.  He did really well with this one!  Here are the mommy animals waiting on one side of the room for their babies:

We tested out Popsicle Painting.  I’m hoping to do this with our Art Playgroup on Wednesday!

The Littlest Apple played with his Valentine’s Sensory Tub every day last week.  We moved it to a quilt on the floor so he could use trucks, shovels, tongs, and buckets.  As much as we both loved this sensory tub, I’m excited about creating a new one for March!

Another big hit this week was our paint mixing activity.  Since The Littlest Apple is much more interested in mixing and playing with paint than actually painting with it, I decided to let him do just that.  We started with mixing red and white to make pink. He enjoyed that so much that he asked for more colors to mix.  We also mixed blue and yellow to make green.

This week we also explored the Houston Museum of Natural Science.  I’m a homebody, and I’d be more than happy to just hang out at home all day.  The Littlest Apple starts every day by asking “Where am I going?” or “Who’s coming over?”  So in addition to our normal excursions and trips to the park, we’re going to take weekly field trips.  This big city has so much to offer, and it’s time to take advantage of that!

I forgot to take photos at the Museum.  It was crawling with hundreds of kids on school field trips which made it VERY hard to navigate with my stroller.  The Littlest Apple enjoyed the Butterfly Center, an indoor tropical rainforest complete with a waterfall and LOTS of butterflies.  We looked at the dinosaurs, too.  He’s still a little young for this museum, but if we were to go again, I might try a Planetarium show.  He’s much better off at the Children’s Museum for now!