Tot School: Winter Theme part 2

Luv Bug is 34 months old

We had another fun, busy week working on our winter theme. We focused on polar bears this week. Luv Bug's 2 year molars have been giving her alot of trouble lately, so I saved some of the activities for another time, but we still had an awesome week.


Luv Bug had 6 trays again this week:

 Bottle top names (totally copied this idea from Carisa at 1+1+1=1.) Luv Bug knows all her capital and lowercase letters as well as how to spell her name, but she always enjoys this tray. I asked if she could spell it out herself without the 'guide' and she had no problem, so this is probably the last time we'll do this one unless she asks for it.

We made these last year. She had a lot of fun matching up the pairs.

She wanted to play a matching game with them (she takes my turn too)

Transferring "snowballs" (white stones).

Polar bear tangram, I found at Making Learning Fun.

Sorting Bears.

This was by far Luv Bug's favorite tray. She did this so many times. I cut a 'mouth' into an old Gerber snack container, added eyes and a nose and ears on top. I gave her some whale erasers and had her feed the polar bear.

One day, I added an Education Cube with numbers 1-6. We'd roll it and feed him the corresponding number.

This polar bear ate alot more than whales. He ate bears and the rocks from other trays.

And cotton balls too.

Personally, I don't think it looks much like a polar bear. It reminds me of Beeker from the Muppets, but Luv Bug LOVES him. We may keep him out for the rest of the winter theme or until she tires of feeding him.
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We did quite a few other polar bear activities this week.

 I realized that Luv Bug has not had much cutting practice. I've set out scrap paper with her scissors before, but she never really showed much interest.  I made these polar bear cutting strips and she was all set to try.

 She still needs some more practice, but she did pretty well.

I'm going to have to do this more often. I bought the Kumon cutting book but I don't think she's quite ready for it yet.

 I cut out some shapes out of cardstock for her to make a polar bear. I gave her buttons for eyes and let her know what each piece was. I decided to just sit back and let her put it together.

Her finished polar bear. I love how she did this and I'm glad that I let her do it her way.

 More sensory bin play. We found an arctic toob at Hobby Lobby and added it to her bin. I love watching her play this. She makes her animals talk to each other. I just sit back and listen.

Here, her beluga whale was kissing her wolf after it fell over.

 Completing an arctic puzzle.

I covered her beach tent with a white sheet to make an 'igloo'.

 My little polar bear.

 I made blue and white glitter play dough. I usually use this recipe, but I was out of cream of tartar. I found a cooking website that said to use vinegar instead. As you can imagine it smelled awful and it was much more crumbly, but Luv Bug played happily with it.

We read The Three Snowbears by Jan Brett and played with these paper dolls that I printed from her website. She had a lot of fun with these.

 I found this polar bear activity at Making Learning Fun. It's actually a count the days of January activity, so it's numbered from 1-31. I got out our calendar numbers. She would take a number, find the corresponding number on her polar bear, then glue on a cotton ball.

It turned out so cute. Luv Bug was so proud to show Daddy when he came home.

We read Nanuq and watched the video that came with it. It wasn't very long but super cute with lots of fun facts and a song. It also comes with a password to a website to learn more, but we didn't get a chance to look at it yet.


Since Luv Bug wasn't quite herself and Daddy was tired from a busy week, we decided to have a movie night. We've only done this a few times, since we didn't allow Luv Bug any tv until she turned 2.
Earlie in the week we read, Knut. A cute story about a polar bear "raised" by a man at the Berlin Zoo.
So, for movie night, I made a fun dinner and we just snuggled up together and watched the Knut and Friends movie. I decided not to bother with the camera, but just enjoy some snuggle time with my awesome family.
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We also played alot. Since Luv Bug has been having a hard time teething, she's been wanting to snuggle alot. She hasn't done much playing on her own so I would set out a different toy each day and we'd play that together as long as she wanted. Mostly though, she just read and even declined a trip to the park. My poor baby needs some relief since these have been taking SO LONG to come in. Here are a few random pics of the rest of our week:

Wedgits

 A big favorite around here. Luv Bug amazes me with her designs.

She loves her litttle 'mouse house'. She's engaging in more imaginative play lately. So fun to watch.

We love to cook together. She helped me make dessert for her Daddy. While it was cooking, she asked to dance.

Dancing to Laurie Berkner Band. This is probably her favorite DVD, the songs are really cute. We're taking her to see them in concert soon. I thought it was cute that she kept on her apron and hat.

I have to thank Carissa at 1+1+1=1. She recommended this in a post over a year ago. I love dancing to it almost as much as Luv Bug does.

We read this book about winter and Luv Bug got really excited and said, "Mama, it matches my other book." We found the set and she put all the matching pages together. She was so proud!

Of course, tons of reading.

We bought her this puzzle and she didn't want any help.

When finished, we measured to see which was taller.

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We read about 80 books this week.  I had found some cute polar bear books at the library.

 Here are a few we enjoyed:

I had such a fun week with my little Bug. I'm excited about some of the other fun activities we have coming up.

Tot School Winter Theme part 1

Luv Bug is 33 months old

We started our winter theme this week. I planned on 4 weeks but, because I found so many fun ideas, we may take longer. We had alot of fun this week so this post is going to have quite a few pictures.

 I put out 6 trays this week:

 I found these alphabet stickers in the dollar spot at Target. We used the lowercase stickers with these ABC stamping sheets that I purchased from this package at TPT. The unit was $6.00 but included 94 pages of printables. Many were too advanced for Luv Bug, so I put them away for homeschooling. We pretended the stickers were snowballs. The idea was to "'throw a snowball"  to the snowman with the matching capital letter. I put this on a tray because I figured Luv Bug would just do a few before she moved on and would take several days to complete. She LOVED this. It was the first tray she picked and she worked hard until it was finished. I forgot to take a picture of the stamping pages before, but her are a few of them in action:

 I bought this Animal Matching Game last year and Luv Bug's always enjoyed it. She's a pro at it now, so after she matched them, she found other ways to play with them.

 We just bought this pattern block set, so I thought it would be a challenge for Luv Bug. I underestimated this girls love of puzzles. She had no problem with the card I chose. Next time I'll put out one that leaves some of the lines out.

 I saw this idea for a "button snake" here. I thought it was such a cute idea and it was so simple to make. I've set this out before but Luv Bug was never really a fan. This was the first time she was able to do this herself, but after buttoning 5 or 6 she had enough and didn't return to it again.

I bought this Mind Challenge game at the Dollar Tree. I've been looking for one for awhile since I saw a similar idea here. Luv Bug saw me put this tray together last Sunday evening and, while I was putting the others together, took it down and figured out what to do. She loked it alot and asked for it throughout the week. She would put the tees in the holes, then balance a marble on each one. Since I bought this as the dollar store, the tees fit rather tightly into the holes so she has to work her muscles a little harder getting them in and out.

I finally made a set of these magnetic pompoms. I first saw them at 1+1+1=1, but I've seen them on other blogs too. At first I just set them out on their own but later added a fun sheet.

The penguin magnet page was from Making Learning Fun.

Luv Bug discoverd if she poked at the edge of a pom-pom (think Tiddlywinks), it would jump then land on the magnet. She had so much fun repeating this over and over (ok, I did too) .

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I wish I knew how to put together my own printables, but I am not very tech saavy so I'm thankful for those who are willing to share (even for a small charge) their creations:

I printed this mini book awhile ago. I know that it's from here, but I can't find it to link to the post.

 Luv Bug loves the Tot Time Notebook that Carisa over at 1+1+1=1 created.

 Another one of Carisa's printables. I don't really believe in "teaching" Luv Bug at this age. I expose her to certain things that I think may be fun and if she shows an interest or asks I'll answer her. I would have never printed this for her yet but, the other day she was looking at a potty reward chart with seven rows that were numbered 1-10. Because she has a calendar in her room, she could already count to 31, but always had the numbers to look at. Well, the other day, she started counting on the chart. I figured once she counted to 10 in the first row she start over with 1-10 in the second row. Instead she kept going until she got to 39! I was shocked because I've never counted that high with her before. She asked what came next, so I told her, "40". After a minute, she counted 41, 42, 43....by herself. She figured out that after every 10, you add the 1-9 as you count higher. She kept going only to stop and ask me the name in each 10's column. I printed off this 100' s board and figured we'd color 1 number each day and count to that number. Well, Luv Bug wanted to keep counting and has now taught herself to count to 100!

Another from 1+1+1=1,  great for visual discrimination as are the ones below

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I made Luv Bug a winter sensory bin, which she played with alot.

 Lots of blue and white pom poms, snowflakes, winter table scatter, fake mini candles, and some winter themed toys. Most everything came from either the Dollar Tree or Target's dollar spot.

I gave her these little jars and bucket along with my penguin ice cream scoop.

 She played with this alot and added other toys too. This is probably my favorite. She got out her animals from her Fisher Price Alphabet Learning Zoo. (This is a hard toy to find other than on the FP website, unless you want to spend way more) She put one of the little candles in the middle of her animals and told me that they needed to get warm by the fire. 


Another day, I set out some batting and some of the items from her bin. I added an aluminum foil skating pond.

 She played with it a bit but was unimpressed with the pond. That was tossed aside almost immedietly.
I arranged some of the batting to look like an igloo. Luv Bug added a 'fire' and as shown below a polar bear. She said he was warming up in his "dent":)

 Her favorite part of the bin was playing with the candles "fire". She carried them everywhere. Here her Toy Story Busy Book figurines were cold and needed to warm up. (We love the Busy Books. Luv Bug has several of them that she plays with daily.)

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We read several books about winter this week. Here are a few:

This book is so cute. It includes two games (memory matching and bingo)

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 Here are a few random fun pictures that I couldn't resist adding.

 I just thought this was too cute!

 Luv Bug paints at her easel often. She usually starts off like this, and then ends up like this:

 But this is a new one:

Silly girl.

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We did a few other things to, but I didn't get pictures of them. We're having fun with this winter theme. I was going to do 'snow' next, but, because we have quite a few polar bear books that will need to be returned to the library the following week, we'll be learning about polar bears. Lot's of fun things.

Tot School- kinda

Luv Bug is 33 Months old

Because we were away on vacation part of the week, we didn't do too much Tot School wise. But, since Daddy was home, we had some away from home fun. I kept out her trays from last week and Luv Bug played with them a little bit, but mostly we just relaxed and enjoyed having her Daddy home all week.

Here are a few pictures from our week:

 Luv Bug's first time bowling. She loved it - for about 3 frames, then refused to do any more.  I took her back to my mom's house and she was asleep almost as soon as I put her down.

 We went to this little zoo not to far away. It took only about an hour to go through (including a stop at their playground). Perfect for a 2 year old.  We got to see the penguins feed just before we left.

 They knew it was time to eat and they all came up to the fence and waited. They were super cute, but Luv Bug asked to go home. Again, she was asleep almost immediately. (Turned out, the poor kid's 2 year molars were coming through)

 This is a daily site at our house. She will sit and look at books for so long. I'd say this is probably her favorite activity.

 That and throwing them in a big pile :)

This just made me laugh. She has SO many stuffed animals, I had to find a way to store them. I found this bean bag for them at One Step Ahead. It was a bit pricey, but so worth it. It holds tons of stuffed animals and she can easily get to the ones she wants.

 Luv Bug loves puzzles. This was a great Dollar Tree find.

 In a previous post, I mentioned that Luv Bug seems to just look at a puzzle piece and know where it goes. Since then, I've been carefully watching how she puts them together. This made me laugh. See how she flipped the puzzle upside down on the table. She just took them off in order and put them right back on. Another time, she took them off one at a time, stacked them (in order) and put them on again.

We haven't had this out in such a long time. She loved having it out on her little table.

Right before bed. Tired out from a long, fun week.
Next week we'll be starting our 4-week-long winter theme so we'll be back into the swing of things.