Mr Little Man: Color

I decided with Green Frog week, I needed to refocus and get some new ideas in the mix.
I've been spending lots of time (late hour time) at the tot school blog called 1+1+1=1. This blog is amazing and my main resource. I look through her link-ups and find other blogs/moms that have children around the age of Mr. Little Man so I can get new ideas. My Spare Time: Tot School - June Is another great blog that I have recently uncovered during my TS research. Her daughter is 21 months old in this post. It is fun to see what other little 21 month olds are up to and get some new ideas too! I spent an hour of "me" time at the library looking for some "green frog" & "purple cat" books to get ahead of the week. We did not read enough last week so I wanted to make sure we had some new exciting reads for the upcoming week-o-green. I cut up our green felt strips and taped up our Green Frog Cut out to "hide & seek" each morning. I filled the book crates with new (and very green) books and I was ready for our green week of tot school.

He liked his felt this week... for about 2 minutes. He mostly enjoyed looking at new patterns if I moved them occasionally. Besides that... he could take it or leave it.

My husband and I decided our hiding spots for the cardboard Green Frog needed to be a bit trickier than the previous week... he was just too good at finding it! We decided to put it on the window, behind the open shades for day one. I felt bad, thinking it was too hard but my hubby felt it may still be too easy. Well, he was a little confused the blue horse was missing on the wall... But he still managed to find the green frog in less than 10 seconds. My little I-spy master! This game remains a big morning hit in this house.

One day we watched a video on the computer and did some music time. I had found the following video on YouTube ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVPmtaHmL4g ) for the song, "Five Little Speckled Frogs". This was a new song for Mr. Little Man and I was unsure how the whole lesson would go in general. Well, we watched it 5 times with his eyes wide open and a big grin! He especially liked when the frogs ate the bugs. It was a cute lesson that introduced frogs and allowed me to show him the color green in action... ribbit! We ended up singing this at least once a day for the rest of the week... I think I'll pick a theme song to sing with him when possible as he loves music and really enjoyed singing and dancing to our new song during the lesson and throughout the week.

Mr. Little Man enjoyed some tooth pick/foam block play this week. He is starting to stick them into the sides vs the top and thinks this is so funny... oh the mind of a toddler.

As for our practical lessons this week, Mr. Little Man continues to feed the dog in am and pm. He loves to do it and seems so proud of himself... its adorable. We also visited the garden early on in the week and picked some green beans as well as some red and yellow veggies too!

Through some of my tot school blog searching, I found an amazing fellow Tot School blogger who's site is going to be a huge help to me! This week I used her green "color book" print out and he loved it! We read it over and over and over... and again. So thankful I found this site!

I wanted to incorporate a gross motor focused activity. I decided to make some green bean bags and practice picking them up, throwing, aiming into a bucket etc. I added some dried beans to some mismatched green socks around the house, tied a knot and voila! Mr. LM loves to play with balls and loves to throw so he loved these homemade bean bags. I set up some bowls and buckets at various distances for us to throw them towards... this part lasted just a few minutes before he started throwing them, kicking them and basically pretending they were a bunch of new balls. Lots of giggles!

We made a sensory tray this week and much to my surprise, it was the biggest hit yet! I had bought a package of almost expired spaghetti from the dollar store ($0.49) and cooked it as usual. Once it was drained and cooled, I poured it into one of our TS trays and added some strings of green yarn. My intention was that he would have the ability to explore the feel of the cold, slimy noodles, play with them and find the "green spaghetti". We did this and so much more...

We made lines, circles, piles and more. We pulled, squished and played for 20 minutes. I started getting fancy and made a bicycle... a frog seemed too hard so I went with a bike, ha!

For one of our activities, Mr. LM used his TS notebook and colored in his green frog print out (I printed it off google images). He loves to use the markers... crayons are so last week apparently! SO, we continue to stick with the TS notebook where we can color with markers and then he can erase it all and start again. And... I'm saving on printer ink which is fine too.

Some of the other books we read this week:

Tedd Arnold's Huggly Takes a Bath

Bill Martin Jr./Eric Carle's Panda Bear, Panda Bear, What Do You See?

Eric Carle's Play-a-Sound, Colors! Colors!

Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Dallas Clayton's An Awesome Book!

Green Wilma's Frog In Space

Lane Smith's Grandpa Green

Arnold Lobel's Frog & Toad Are Friends

Algy Craig Hall's Fine As We Are

Sorry, one more picture! Mr. Little Man with his grandma reading one of his books :) This is

Lane Smith's Grandpa Green and was a slightly odd book from the library but an absolute favorite for Mr. LM. We must have read it 30 times. If you've read it, do you think it is as odd as I did?

Linking to:

Educator's Spin On It Bill Martin JR Link-up!

Tot School Gathering Place from 1+1+1=1

Yellow duck, yellow duck... what do you see? I have to admit, by mid-week I was ready for yellow week to end... must just not be my color ;)

In all seriousness, we had a great week exploring the cheery yellow color and our quacking, web-footed friend, the duck. Mr. Little Man was quick to spot the color while out and about and seems to have embraced this whole TS adventure we are on. Which makes me want to stay up late and find new "lessons" for our upcoming themes. This TS thing is addicting.

Here are some of our lessons from the week:

We did our weekly coloring book picture. He had fun using various yellow markers and crayons. He jumped from one to the next holding each one in his tiny little hand as he looked quite seriously at the empty black and white duck on the page... then he'd carefully "create his masterpiece".

Another day we took a walk outside and looked for ducks along the water. We ended up seeing only seagulls... (close enough?) On the way home LM found some sweet smelling yellow flower

Mid week we played with yellow play dough (an all time favorite) an even added a paper towel roll. This became a tunnel, a rolling pin, a cookie cutter and eventually a drum stick. This is a great example of the mind of a toddler... TS is so fun for him and so fun for me to watch him explore, in ways I never could have guessed he would.

By far the most exciting thing we have done was gather a bunch of yellow items and put them in a container. Seem simple? Let me back up... I had gathered these items from his playroom the night before Yellow Duck week began. I put them in the bucket to keep them all in one place and planned to use them as a tot school lesson at some point that week. Well, if you choose a bucket your toddler can get in... plan on him doing that. He rode in that bucket, along all the yellow items, all week long. He pushed it, pulled it and spun it around. It was definitely NOT about the yellow but ALL about the bucket. He smiled for every minute that he played with this "lesson" though...

We explored some yellow big bird stickers (close enough, again :))

Played with our felt board...

We also tried a matching game I had found on Pinterest (this is not my original matching game... I found it on the 1+1+1=1's blog). Mr. Little Man was not very interested in this game... not even interested in the pictures, the cards, nothing. We spent about 30 seconds on this Tot School tray... I filed these adorable cards away and will try again in a few weeks.