Tot School (26 months)

As of Friday, my little guy is 26 months old. Not really a huge occasion, I guess, but another reminder that my little guy is getting to be a big boy.

I decided that I’d try going with a theme this week, and Alex seemed to like that. We did "H is for Hippo”, and (I kind of cheated and) got almost all of our activities from one source: Confessions of a Homeschooler. (I’m trying to get one week ahead in my planning, rather than cramming in any prep work into Monday’s naptime, so I took the easy route this week!)

We sang (many times, as I often heard "Mama, sing!") the Mary Rice Hopkins song "Hip, Hip, Hooray - Hippopotamus"...great song about God creating us! We have it on VHS video, but the video is dying :( I doubt it's available on DVD, but at least you can get the MP3!

I’ve been looking for magnets to use on the magnet pages, and finally found these thumbtack-style magnets at Office Max. Alex LOVED doing his “H is for Hippo” page:

Gluing and Following Directions - Alex loves glue sticks, and he’s usually good at following instructions. Usually. Today, it took a few tries to get him to put together this hippo. I love the crooked tooth and the upside-down ears. (Hey Angie – I thought of you when I pulled out the paper plate, ha ha!)

Shapes - I’m trying to encourage Alex to learn his shapes. I started with an easy shape that he already knows – circle. We sat together & fingerpainted this page from First School. (Just a warning – every time I print an activity from First School, I end up having weird things happen with my computer for the next few days.)

Alex fingerpainted last week with my friend’s daughter. Today he wanted to fingerpaint, so I got it ready, and he asked me, “Where’s Sami?”. It took some encouragement to get him started on this. I guess we can’t fingerpaint without a friend!

Alex also played with a flashlight quite a bit this week, and he noticed that the flashlight makes circles on the wall/ceiling. (The baby was totally fascinated with the flashlight, too...good entertainment for both kids when I need 5 minutes peace!)

Big and Little – We do big & little every week. Sometimes, I think Alex gets it. Other times, I’m really not sure. He was in a rare mood when we did this page, got angry, and crumpled up the hippos (which I hadn’t laminated). We did it again on Friday, and he was fine with it. He also apologized to the hippos for “hurting” them and gave them kisses. I didn’t ask him to do that, either. (Oh, I just Google hippo images & printed this one in two sizes.)

Colors – Alex can’t name all of these colors yet, but he could match every hippo correctly except for black and brown. In his defense, the brown is pretty dark!

Painting & Stamping – I googled hippo coloring pages (where would we be without Google?!) and found this. After he finished painting, I gave Alex an H stamp (from my otherwise-unused scrapbook supplies) and let him go to town with it.

Just for fun – Alex has the Melissa & Doug stacking construction vehicles, and he likes to pretend that this one is a snowplow. (Our county plows are orange.) I filled a roasting pan with cotton ball “snow”, and he had a great time “plowing” the snow. He did this multiple times throughout the week.

Note to my clutzy self: do NOT leave a roasting pan on your living room floor where you will trip over it! ;)

The best-laid plans: We have a beanie baby hippo, and I’d hoped to use him to play a tossing game. Nope. Alex just wanted to lay in a large plastic bin with the hippo, and he asked me to take his picture. So, no fun hippo games…

Just so I remember, Alex proved this week that he really does know the alphabet letters by sight! He was able to EASILY tell me, without any hesitation! Every kid is different, and some know their letters far earlier, but I’m very happy that he’s really getting it!

We’re planning on taking Alex on his first trip to the library today, and I’m so excited! We’re getting some books to go with next week’s theme: ICE CREAM! I’m sure we’ll leave with a few John Deere books, too…

To see what other tots are doing, check out:

For those who have preschoolers & would like to see similar posts for your bigger kids, I’m just gonna toss this one out there:

P.S. I had to add this just because we had a good laugh on Friday night dinner. I was in a rush, didn't have time to make what I'd planned, and grabbed a boxed mix from the cabinet. While the meat was cooking, I quickly mixed up some homemade biscuits to go with it. The H cookie cutter was nearby, so I grabbed it just for fun. Keith thought I'd gone off the deep end, and then we realized that we were having Hamburger Helper and H biscuits for dinner. Keith pronounced it very hokey, but Alex thought it was neat to eat an H for dinner!