It’s probably obvious that I haven’t done a terrific job of posting Tot School lately. Alex & I are still working together about twice a week, but I haven’t taken as many pictures or blogged about it much. It seems like there’s always a better way to use limited free time. So, I’ll try a monthly post for a while to see if that works better for me…
In October, we worked mainly with leaves and pumpkins.
Alex painted a tree and falling leaves. This was not nearly as beautiful as I would have hoped. I should have printed the tree on thicker paper!
He did the L is for Leaves magnet page from Making Learning Fun.
He did this very neat leaf shadow activity from Two Teaching Mommies. This was an effort in concentration for Alex; he struggled with it, although he could do it with help. (I also want to recommend Two Teaching Mommies as a GREAT resource for those of you doing Tot School with 2 year olds. They have COMPLETE units each month that are PERFECT for this age group! They’re currently working on turkeys, and there’s a football unit coming soon.)
Alex worked more in his Kumon Tracing book. He’s really doing a pretty good job of guiding the crayon/marker/pencil along the line!
We played a game (kind of like Hi-Ho Cherry-O) with candy corn and printable pumpkins. We rolled dice to determine how many candy corn to remove. It’s great number recognition and counting practice! I think that this printable pumpkin came from Making Learning Fun.
We printed the Mr. Potato Head pieces from Two Teaching Mommies, using a suggestion from their Facebook page to decorate a pumpkin with the potato head parts. It’s enjoyable, but it’s also a good way to practice where the facial features belong. As you can see, he needed a little help figuring out where ears belong! Alex thought this activity was great fun! (Oh, and I printed the pumpkin from a Google image search.)
Doing the leaf shadow activity on another day (although he’s wearing the same shirt…we must have given this shirt a workout in October!) 
I’d call out a letter, and Alex would cover it with a candy corn. He’s forgotten some of his letters, so this was trickier than I thought it would be! I focused on one pumpkin at a time so he had a smaller area to “search” for the letter. Again, I’m pretty sure the activity is from Making Learning Fun.
P is for Pumpkin magnet page from Making Learning Fun.
The Kumon Tracing pages are getting harder! I keep thinking he’s going to struggle, but Alex continues to surprise me by doing well! 
We made pumpkin pie scented playdough using this recipe from Along The Way. It takes a LOT of food coloring to get a true orange color. We ran out of red before achieving it! ;) Alex helped with measuring, pouring, and stirring while we made the playdough, although I drew the line at allowing him to use the food coloring! :)
Grace came to play one morning, and we finger painted and made sugar cookies. First, I gave them only red and yellow paints to swirl together and create orange. 
After they had painted their paper plates orange, I gave them more colors to freely finger paint anything they wanted. While they did that, I turned their orange plates into pumpkins for them.
I think this is Grace’s painting…I don’t seem to have a photo of Alex’s painting. Oops!
Grace & Alex rolled the dough (with help), cut the dough, and we baked their cookies. I probably shouldn’t admit to how much cookie dough was consumed, ha! While the cookies cooled, we made and colored frosting. After the cookies cooled, I helped them to *nicely* decorate one pumpkin cookie and then set them loose to freely decorate their other cookies. Talk about a mountain of sprinkles, yikes! ;)
One of the "pretty” cookies…
We’ve been SOOOO busy every evening lately that we ran out time to carve a pumpkin with Alex! Thankfully, the church where we Trunk or Treated had a pumpkin carving station. Max looked on from the stroller while Daddy & Alex carved this pumpkin.
The last pictures I have are our rather sickly looking pumpkin-shaped pancakes. I just made our regular homemade pancakes, added food coloring to the batter, and then we made faces with chocolate chips and stems with bacon. I’m not sure I could bring myself to do this again…it takes a LOT of food coloring to achieve a light orange color. Ewww! Alex enjoyed it, though, and that’s what counts! :) 
We’ve also been working on playing the Memory game, counting to 15, singing the alphabet song, and lots more little things that haven’t been captured on camera. SO, that’s our October…
To see what other Tot School familes are doing, check out Carisa’s website at http://www.1plus1plus1equals1.com/totschool.html
Alex looked at him and said, "Maybe his battery is dead."
