As I write this post, I am laughing because all of the pictures from throughout the week that I chose, have him in either just a diaper or in his Elmo jammie's... at least it is a"red" Elmo jammie shirt :) I promise he wears clothes and has more than one pajama shirt.
So, this week was a better week... I had restocked the book crates for the week using books with birds and the color read as a focus in addition to some other favorites. This week I had more planned and had a lot of variety from the week prior and from our normal playtime activities. Keep in mind, we spend from 10 minutes to maybe 90 minutes doing tot school each day, depending on his interest. This is only a small part of our day which is full of lots of fun and play. The tot school addition, however, allows me to teach him new concepts with the same or new toys and build his understanding of the world. In addition to our planned activities, we found the color red all over the place throughout our week, cars, firetrucks, flowers and even our food!
Our TS activities included:
Playing with red silicone baking cups in a container of water. Little Man practiced pouring and stacking and absolutely loved every minute!
One day I gave LM a crafting styrofoam-like block to which he put in some red plastic tooth picks. This is a great time to stress that all of our time doing TS is spent together and supervised, he is never left alone and therefore was well monitored while using these small pointy tooth picks.
We spent time reading about colors in general and got very excited when red (and brown for that matter) would pop up in our color books!
I made Mr. Little Man a felt board by hot-glueing some white felt fabric onto a cardboard board. I also bought some colored felt and cut shapes with them for the appropriate weeks. Mr. LM loves his felt board. However, his time playing with it quickly went from how I thought it would go... to something much more fun...
Then it became a cozy place to sit while he stacked some rings. This was great and I appreciated the genuine fun he had in exploring the felt board for the first time... in his own unique ways. There are no plans or rule on how we play with the activities... except that he is having fun.
LM loved the water play so much that we did it again later in the week. This time we had some extra pitchers and pans to play with and it was another big hit! He even said "ded"... aka RED!!!
We made some popsicles with red strawberries, banana, carrots & peaches which was a blast for both of us! Oh, and delicious.
Another activity we did was sweeping some red pompoms with a new hand held min-broom. This was one I was excited to show him because he LOVES to sweep. He must grab our broom and dustpan three times a day to use in the kitchen. I had seen this little handheld one at Target and decided it would be a very fun thing to explore together! (oh, and cleaner than the actual one we use in our house!) He swept, explored the textures... and had a blast!
We continued to read Brown Bear, Brown Bear everyday... My husband and I are thinking this is going to be a long 9 weeks of reading this book ;)
Some of the other books we read this week included:
Margaret Wise Brown's Big Red Bard
Mary Ann Hoberman's I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly
Susan Reed's Up, Up, Up!
Donald Crews' Freight Train
Risom & Scarry's I am a Bunny
Overall, great week... we are both thriving with this newfound TS.
Linking to:
No Greater Honor!: Tot School - Week 2 of Red Week
I love checking out your red week - I think I might have to steal some of your ideas! The broom obsession is so familiar sounding - a year ago, my little guy grew very attached to the mini broom I bought with the intention of actually using it, and it never got used. He took it everywhere with him, and I mean everywhere! For example - I was the only mom at story time that lived with a BYOB motto (Bring Your Own Broom!)
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