Toddler Beginnings Week 25

My notes on Mavi's tot school moments this week
Date: October 25 – November 5, 2010

Mavi is 26 months old.

It took  us two weeks to complete our Week 25 of tot school for the following reasons:

1. We were on a short trip on a weekend.
2. Husband took a week off from work and he mostly spent his time bonding with Mavi.
3. Both of us were very busy because something came up which is really really important.

I didn’t observe our regular curriculum, and this week I was just spontaneous with the activities that was given to the little one. 

Toddler Beginnings Week 24

My notes on Mavi's tot school moments this week
Date: October 18 – October 22, 2010

Mavi is 25 months old.

I’ve been having difficulty with Mavi this week.  He seems so uninterested with anything and doesn’t want to do anything except watching his Dora and Leapfrog videos.  Much to my surprise he even doesn’t want to paint. This week was such a challenge.  It might be because he’s bored being stuck at home or the activities I’m offering was uninteresting.

Anyhoo, we still managed to have tot school in some way. 

Letter Craft: Y is for Yellow

From:  No Time for Flashcards

This is just a very simple letter craft and much to my surprise, Mavi worked this craft all by himself (with my supervision).

Materials:  yellow, blue colored papers, marker, glue, scissor and a white paper.

1. In the white paper, I wrote a big letter Y and cut it out.

2.  I cut out different shapes from the yellow paper for Mavi to glue on the letter.

3.  Instruct your little ones to apply glue on the yellow shapes and stick it on the letter.  Mavi enjoyed this activity!  He did all the gluing by himself. I don’t interrupt because he is always concentrating.

 

4.  And after some time, he showed me the letter Y all covered with yellow shapes! I was so surprise! I didn’t even have to tell him which side of the yellow paper he has to glue on the letter.  I’m so happy that he’s already grasping the idea of our crafts and how it works :-)

5.  I glued the letter Y on the blue colored paper and posted it on our wall for him to see his work.

Toddler Beginnings Week 23

My notes on Mavi's tot school moments this week
Date: October 11 – October 15, 2010

Mavi is 25 months old.

Another delayed post.  I almost forgot about posting the rest of our tot school activities because DH and I have been very busy these past few days.  Thank goodness that I kept pictures and take down notes during our tot school, it helped me a lot to write down a recap of what we did during our Week 23 homeschool.

It’s also been raining for days now, and it’s pretty hard to take a decent photo indoor.  So the photos that you are about to see are either dark or those which I have used a flash.

But the good thing about this week as well was that, I introduced a lot of new activities for my little boy: some are a hit and some are not. 

Autumn is Love.. Memories of 2009

Dearest Mavi,

You were just about 25 months when we experience our first autumn in Belgrade.  It was sooo beautiful! I was always itching to bring you out so you and I could enjoy the lovely trees and cold weather. 

I collected some photos here taken last year, when you were just very small and cutie... experiencing the autumn leaves for the first time. 

This photos was taken the first time we take you out on a cold weather.  We were very keen because your Dad and I were scared that you might catch a flu once exposed to extreme cold, but much to our surprise you enjoyed the weather and didn’t even get sick even during winter. You were so scared at first, see how you wanted to cry?  You were clinging to Mama but we kept on encouraging you to walk and enjoy.

 

Later on, you started to gain confidence and started to roam around on your own. While I was busy capturing every single step that you take, Daddy was right with you the whole time.  You were just starting to walk on your own here, and with pounds of clothing you find it difficult to balance yourself, thus you kept on falling from time to time.

This was taken 2009 of November at Terazije.  Winter was fast approaching and we have to savor the last days of autumn.  This is one of favorite spot in Belgrade because you can run around in this place chasing the pigeons which you are truly fascinated with.  Plus of course, McDonalds was just right around the corner where Daddy and I would have our hot coffee.  At this time, I was already starting my homeschooling sessions with you and I was teaching you all about the colorful leaves as well.  You definitely love every moment with us outdoors because you get to explore everything!! You were such a joyful learner and a happy happy little cutie.

And lastly, these pictures were taken at a park near the Parliament building of Belgrade.  We just attended mass here and decided to stop by at the park so you play once again.  It was getting so cold already that we didn’t stay that long.  But as always, you had a wonderful time here, enjoying the playground, riding the swing and picking up the leaves.

How I wish you could remember all of these Mavi and grow up with happy memories of our life here in Belgrade.  Every single moment we had with you was happiness. I just realize that someday, you will not remember these moments anymore so let me be your eyes and ears... I wanted to capture all of these and freeze the time for you. 

We love you dear baby, more that you’ll ever know.

 

Love,

Mama

Letter Craft: X is for Xylophone!

From:  No Time for Flashcards

 

Another delayed post.

We made this craft during the time wherein we were imprisoned in the house due to days of rain and freezing cold climate.  There’s nothing much to do with the letter X  because there’s not much words or objects starting with the letter X.

Anyway since Xylophone is a favorite word of Mavi whenever I asked him for a thing that starts with letter X so I gave him this craft instead of an X-Ray.

Materials needed:

• black cardstock paper
• scissor
• glue
• crayons and colored pens
• colored papers or construction papers

 

Here’s how we did it":

1. Write a letter X on the orange paper and allow your kid to practice writing on it.
2. Allow him to play with the glue or paste and instruct him to apply an ample amount on the letter X.  Stick the letter on the background paper that you have.
3. While he was scribbling on the letter, I cut out a strip of green, blue, orange and red sticker sheet to the serve as the xylophone in the letter X.
4. At the same time, cut out some small squares from the black sheet to serve as bolts or locks.
5. I made him stick the strips on the letter as shown below.  Then I told him to put more glue on the stickers so we can glue the bolts.

When we were done, my son was so happy with our craft because he loves musical instruments such as the xylophone.  For a while he pretended to play with it, making us of our pens as the stick and gesturing that he’s playing on a xylophone. 

I hang this on our wall and he loves to see it everyday while saying “xylophone!”

 

Letter Craft: W is for Watermelon!

From: No Time for Flashcards 

Up until now, my son finds it difficult to pronounce the letter W.   He pronounce the letter as “dayayu”.  So I was very happy that we finally get to this letter so I can post the letter craft later on our wall so we can practice how to say its name over and over again. 

Here’s how we did our W letter craft.

   

1.  Materials needed: red, green and black colored paper, scissor and glue.

2.  Write the capital letter W on the green paper.  I handed my son colored pens and crayons for him to practice writing and scribbling on the letter.

3.  I cut the letter and made him apply glue all over it.  While he does this, cut a smaller version of the letter on the red colored paper and make sure that the smaller letter would fit right in the bigger one.

  

4.  Glue the red letter on the green letter. Cut out smaller pieces of squares on the black paper.  This smaller pieces will serve as the seeds.

5.  Once done, allow your little one to apply glue on the red paper and glue the seeds on it.

Toddler Beginnings Week 22

My notes on Mavi's tot school moments this week

Date: October 4 – October 8, 2010

Mavi is 25 months old.

This has been a productive week.  I was surprise at Mavi being so cooperative and in the mood to do most of our activities.  I also added new activities for him so he won’t get bored with the usual things that we do.

Alphabet Worksheets

 

Mavi enjoys these worksheets which I got from Confessions of a Homeschooler.  The printables comes with both the upper and lowercase.  The author of the blog also added instructions and ideas on what to do with the worksheets.  Currently, we use it as a playdough mat.  I print the upper and lowercase of letters W to Z on a plain paper and covered it with a tape.  It would have been nice if I have a laminator :P  Hopefully in the future!

Anyway, this was a hit... so I am thinking of making Mavi a number playdough mat as well.

DIY See and Spell

I was skimming Activity Mom’s blog and came across this wonderful idea of pre-spelling activity. 

It’s basically a homemade version of Melissa and Doug’s See and Spell.  The best part of having to recreate this toy is that you can customize it for your little ones, plus... you can make as many cards as you can!

The first thing I did was to list down 3 letter words (other suggest that it should be a cvc words) and googled some pictures of it from the net.  I printed it on a piece of colored paper and traced the word on each card using our Melissa and Doug’s Magnetic Letters.

 

At first try he wasn’t interested on matching the letters on the spelling mats because he was more interested on the picture.  Then one time, I saw him reading his first word book and is attempting to read.  So I gave him this activity again and taught to read the word written on the mats by making the sound of each letter.

He loved it instantly! To teach him to read the word from left to right, I make him identify each letter from left to right as well.  Then he would have to look for that letter and match it on the spelling mat. 

 

Just a short note, my son has a sense of humor.  He loves to test me most of the time and as you can see he placed the letter C in cry in the letter R.  He knows that it’s incorrect but he just wanted me to say “no” so he can correct it.  He loves being corrected and doing the right thing afterwards.  He developed that behavior when we started playing his Alphabet Bingo game.  I guess, he finds it pretty boring to be correct all the time!

So I suggest you try this activity... but as always, you don’t need to push your kids. Expose them slowly.  If they don’t like it, then keep it for the meantime and try again later.

Toddler Beginnings 21

My notes on Mavi's tot school moments this week

Date: September 27 – October 1, 2010

Mavi is 25 months old.

It’s a good time to introduce letter U (for umbrella) since it’s been raining for days.  Though we seldom use umbrella when we go out, Mavi can still see a lot of people using it.  Because of the gloomy days, Mavi wasn’t in the mood to do stuff at all.  He just wanted to watch his videos or lie down.  To keep him out of it, I  made him paint.

Painting is one of the thing my son loves to do and we’ve been doing this almost everyday.  He can spend hours and hours of just painting with watercolors or tempera paints, pretending that he can paint rainbows, eyes, cars, dinosaurs or just about anything.  That’s good news because at his age, the maximum attention span is 8 minutes.  So you see, whenever I do some chores in the kitchen, this is my solution: setting up the desk near the kitchen so I can work and at the same time supervise him.

   

Books we read this week:

• Armadillo
• Go Dogs Go
• One Fish Two Fish

Videos he enjoys watching:

• Dora and the ABC Animals
• Dora and the Train (Choo Choo)

CRAFTS DAY

Umbrella

From: No Time for Flashcards

I like how this craft turned out.  It’s a wonderful activity and I got lucky to pick-out some colorful cookie linens!

Things he learned:

• Painting with watercolors!
• Applying glue to the cookie linens
• Gluing straws in the cardstock

 

COLORS AND SHAPES

Triangle

• We make use of my playdough shape mats.  I just made them.
• Playing with glue using triangle shaped papers.  Makes him practice of gluing.  

• Playing with shape cutters which I got from Pertini Toys.  We are using the SES CREATIVE dough cutters.

 

• Our Circle Time is dancing with Color Mats.  The color mats are just colored papers which I have. I placed them on the floor and we dance to the tune of our nursery rhymes.  Then I would say a color and he’s supposed to jump, stomp his feet, clap his hand or swing his booty as he goes into that color.  It’s similar to this.  Great way of practicing Gross Motor Skills.
• Coloring sorting using rainbow pasta.  I bought paper plates and glued colored papers on it.  Then I made some colored bowtie pasta to be used for sorting activities.

 

LETTER

Big letter U

U is for umbrella!

Our letter U paper craft is detailed here.

 

For pre-reading and practice of spelling, I made these letter puzzles.  Mama, Daddy and Mavi are the ones I made.  I printed two sets of these words, the first one to be used as a guide and the second one, I cut it out so he can match the letters to the first one.

 

NUMBERS AND SIZES

Sorting Sizes

I was a little busy on this say and didn’t plan ahead of math activities so I make use of what we already have. 

• Number recognition:  14.  He calls this number “thirteen”, basically all the numbers from 13 to 15.  So I write the number 14 on a paper and introduced it as “fourteen”.  He got it right away, but there are times that he calls 13 as “fourteen”!

 

• Tower beads count using playdough and the beads that we have.

 

• We did number puzzles
• We count raindrops using our umbrella counting cards. 

Montessori Actvities

Sensorial/Play Pretend/Practical Life

• Play pretend using his kitchen set and cutting toys
• Pouring pasta from the pitcher to the drinking cup using a DIY funnel
• Scooping and feeling red beans

 

• Capping the lids of the glue sticks/liquid glue.  He always loves to do this! Whenever we work on glue or colored pens, he would always insist that he’ll be the one to “cover” the pens or glues.  Though when it comes to the glue caps, he doesn’t know how to twist or “screw” the caps... same with water bottles.
• Self-feeding.  I’ve been training him on this since he turns 1.  But of course, it depends on what meal I serve him.  If it’s not that going to be messy, then I’ll let him eat by himself, else it’s me doing the job.
• Practice cutting using our cutting/chopping toys. 
• Putting colored pens and pencils back to their boxes.  He loves doing this as well, placing the pens one by one.

OTHER ACTIVITIES

Painting!

 

Mavi is into painting these days! Every morning he always want to paint... he’s so fascinated with it!  He loves using his watercolor more than the tempera paint.  Our tempera paint is so thick and it’s hard for him control and laid out the colors in the drawing pad, unlike our watercolor it’s easier for him use.  Maybe I need to try other brands. Check here for our potato prints activity.

Writing this post gives me more ideas of things that we still have to do for the coming weeks! Ayayay! *Excitement!

Well folks, that’s a recap of what we did for this week. Sorry again for the late post.

Ciao!

Letter Craft: V is for Vase

From:  No Time for Flashcards

This is Mavi’s favorite craft because at the moment, he is fascinated with flowers. At the same time, I love how this craft turned out.

1.  Materials needed:  pink or red construction paper, a white cardstock, green cardstock, a paper of lighter hue, colored pens, scissor and glue.

2.  Draw flowers on the pink paper and some stems. Mavi wants four flowers on his vase so I cut out 4 flowers.

3.  Write a letter V on the white cardstock and cut it.

 

4.  Start the activity by making your son scribble on the background paper.  When done, I made him put some glue on the letter V so he can stick it on the blue paper.

5.  I made him put some glue on the paper and placed the stems on the letter V.  I only showed him how to place the stem properly and finished the rest of it.

6.  Then I showed him the flowers. He smelled each of them and started to put paste hehehe.  Yes, he really really each one before sticking them. He kept on saying “smell the flower!”. 

6.  And here’s our vase with flowers!!! Beautiful isn’t it? I posted this in our craft wall and Mavi pretends to smell the flowers everytime he sees it!

Letter Craft: U for Umbrella

From": No Time for Flashcards

Mavi is 25 months.

 

This is one of my favorite letter craft that we’ve done so far.

1.  Materials needed:  colored pens or pencil, scissor, glue, colored paper (I used orange for the letter, light blue for the background and dark blue for the rain drops).

2.  Write a letter U on the orange paper and draw an umbrella.

3.  To practice writing skills, allow your child to draw or color or scribble on the letter. 

4.  Cut the letter and the umbrella, and instruct your child to apply glue on it.  While he does this, you can start cutting raindrops on the dark blue paper.

5.  When he’s done, I also instructed him to put glue on the paper so we can paste our raindrops.

   

Paper Craft: Umbrella

From:  No Time for Flashcards

Mavi is 25 months. 

This is a delayed post.  We did this activity last September 27, 2010.

Everytime I mention the letter U to Mavi, he would always shout “umbrella!” so this what we did for our letter U craft.

1.  Materials:  Cookie linens, construction paper, straw or pipe cleaners, scissor, glue and colored pens/crayons (in our case we used watercolors).

2.  We started out by painting the cookie linens and the white paper background.  Then as I made him do the coloring, I cut out the straws to be the handle of our umbrella. 

3.  When he’s done, he applied glue on the cookie linens.  I have to say that he already knows how to do this!! After weeks of practicing he finally knows how to apply glue without me helping him squeeze the tube! Bravo!     

 

4.  I placed the cookie linens on the background, and showed how to put the straw on the linens to form an umbrella.  When he finally figured out what to do, and I made him do the rest.

5.  Here’s our craft for the week of letter u, umbrella!!! Just in time for the rainy season ey?

 

DIY Playdough Mats

 

My son is very happy with these playdough shape mats I made for him.  I just drew different shapes from a paper, using different colored pens and covered it with a tape (contact paper or laminate if available). 

The first time we played with it, he wasn’t so interested because he was just too busy playing with the PlayDoh.  Then this morning I took it out again and showed him that I formed a square using green the dough on the Square Mat.  Then he was so eager that we do the rest of the shape! It’s a good thing that I use different colors on the mats so we can match the dough’s color on the shape as well.

I did the whole thing though, I just let him help me press the dough for he can’t figure out yet how to form shapes with playdough.

 

Here’s what he did when I gave him the rest of the mats.  He kept on showing “So nice!”. I still need to add more PlayDoh to correspond with the rest of the colors/shapes.