This Week In Tot School...

For reference: Will is 3 years old. Sophie is 14 months old.

Can you guess what our main topic was last week???

Yep! Traffic! I took all the above pictures on our bike ride one evening and we talked about what they mean. Will also got some more practice in reading two-digit numbers (speed limit signs), though it's still pretty rough yet.

Also this week, I decided I really ought to step it up with Sophie. She's 14 months now and increasingly capable of participating in simple activities. I also wanted to include the kids' ages at the top of these posts for reference to look back on. Plus, if I plan things that the kids can do simultaneously, then I can alleviate the problem of having Will up later than I'd like just so we can have some one-on-one time after Sophie's in bed. It will make certain activities a little more challenging, but we'll be flexible and it will be fun to have some designated "Tot School time" that both kids can participate in. After having completed one week of this, I'm also increasingly aware that summer time is just not conducive to lots of "indoor time", so we won't be working every day and we'll do as much outdoors as possible.

Our first project this week was to make traffic lights. Each kid got a piece of white card stock with red, yellow and green circles traced on it and three coordinating crayons. They colored the circles first.

Next they tore/cut up pieces of red, yellow and green construction paper scraps and glued them onto the card stock using diluted white glue and a q-tip.

Obviously, Sophie did none of this part independently, but I did show her how to place each color paper into the proper circle and said the names of the colors out loud to her.

I had to help Will stay on track a bit too since he's not the biggest fan of crafts. ;)

The finished product - I trimmed them and attached a black background.

While Will and I finished up the traffic lights, Sophie got some play time with the Leap Frog alphabet caterpillar toy. Both kids love this thing.

The next night, Will made a stop sign using water color paint and his new paint brush. I drew the shape onto a piece of our special water color paper and traced some already-cut-out letters for "STOP" onto the middle. Then he just painted the whole thing and let it dry.

When it dried, he glued the correct letters onto their traced outlines.

After our stop sign project, we headed outside where Will rode his tractor around the driveway...

...and Sophie and I looked at picture flashcards of "first words". Both kids love(d) these at this age.

Here's a glimpse of our long driveway that Will rides up and down on his tricycle and tractor.

In addition to traffic stuff, we had a small mish-mosh of other activities. This tray was Will's. He learned the word "magnetic" and used the green magnet wand to sort the objects.

Sophie had a simple open/close tray with a sparkly, pink pom pom inside each container.

Will really enjoyed this tray and came back to it a couple times later in the week.

Sophie liked this tray but mainly stuck to just a few containers. Her favorite was the green and orange tin.

And she LOVED the pom poms.

As usual, Will had activity-envy and had to check out what Sophie was doing. The stuff I plan for her are WAY too simple for Will but he wants to play anyway... 'cause the grass is always greener...

This is what I have learned about Sophia in recent weeks: she loves order and organization... just like her mommy. She enjoys moving like objects into one unified location and so after finding all five pom poms, she collected them into one container... and then moved them all into another... and then back again. I think she'll to be mommy's cleaning helper when she's a little bigger. :)

Then the kids traded trays briefly.

And here's another attempt at a strewn basket for Sophie to sort and play with: kitchen items!

In the evening, after Sophie went to bed, Will and I (& Brutus) headed out for a bike trailer ride to hunt for street signs. (see above)

On Friday, Craig ended up staying home with the kids.

I taped an empty wrapping paper tube to the stop sign Will painted and they played with it outside in the driveway. :)

Sophie got to be our traffic cop.

Here are a few books we borrowed to go with our theme.

Oops! Only one uploaded correctly and I don't feel like wasting the time to re-do it. The others were called Street Signs (an aesop fable with torteise and hare), Alphabeep and something else that I'm forgetting.

And here are a few of Sophie's favorites this week.

Peek-a-Boo was one of her first favorites and it still continues to be. With lots of baby faces and expressions, it's very intriguing.

After reading this chunky tiger book, Sophie learned to "rarr!" softly like a tiger. :)

This book has an interactive component with the buttons and four animal sounds. Sophie loves it.

And finally another peek-a-boo, flap book with animals and the sounds they make.

Here's the inside of that one.