Tot School--S Week

Isaiah is 37 months old

We continued with the letters of Isaiah's name, hence the jump from I to S.

We have this foam alphabet set, so I pulled out the "S" and let him play with it.

Scooting! We have this scooter board that Isaiah used to crawl with, but he's really too big for it now; it slows him down. Since his sitting has improved so much, I put him on the scooter board this way, and off we went all around the apartment. He loved it!

Snack

If you can guess what kind of cereal this is, then well, you can guess what kind of cereal this is. Sorry, no prize comes with the box this time. We did however use the contents for our snack a couple times this week.

The original idea was for Isaiah to put the little stars on the big S and then eat them, but well, that didn't work. Instead I covered the S with stars, and he ate the away to find his letter of the week.

Self-portrait. Here are some of Isaiah's attempts at a self-portrait. I held the camera while he pushed the button, I'm not quite that trusting to let him do it completely on his own, yet!

Sorting. We tried to clean out the school supplies cabinet. We made some progress.

Stickers. This was the first time Isaiah has used stickers. I think that he liked them.

Shirt, shorts, socks, shoes. Aunt Beth, Uncle Jason and Jake gave Isaiah this puzzle, and all the pieces were labeled with S-words!

And speaking of socks, Isaiah is really into helping to dress himself lately, which is lots of fun. He'll even try to put his socks on himself, which is really hard for him.

Strawberries! We read The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry, and the Big Hungry Bear several times. We even ate fresh strawberries, which was very exciting and helped it feel a little less like winter.

We also went shopping and shared some soft-serve ice cream. We talked about shiny and silly hats when we read Old Hat, New Hat. I had wanted to make some silly hats, but we ran out of time. But we did plenty of other silly things which involved lots of smiles and giggling and rolling around and dancing! We also went for lots of walks in the sun on our sidewalks that aren't as slippery with snow now! Saturday we celebrated a wedding, which also involved walking around and seeing lots of statues (come back for the explanation of that one in another post!) and lots of fun silliness!

Lately I've been wondering if what I'm doing is helping Isaiah, well, for different reasons. Tonight as we were riding the metro on the way home from church, I heard a little "ssss", "sss", "sss" over and over. He wasn't reading "S" from a sign or anything (Russian "S" looks like English "C"), he was just saying the sound of the letter. I then realized that he was saying words with the "s" sound better than he had before we started focusing on the letter! I thank God for this encouragement to me. I'm excited to see what will happen during A-week!

Check out the other great ideas at different Tot Schools over at 1+1+1=1.

Tot School--General Learning and Fun

Isaiah is 37 months old

We didn't get to Tot School every day this week, but we did have lots of fun!

Isaiah has been amazing us with his new sitting ability! He's learned how to get himself from his normal tummy crawling position to this sitting position. He's also now perfecting a position where he sits on his knees and doesn't use his hands for a few seconds. This succeeds in improving his balance and scaring Mama while I try not to grab at him every time to prevent his falling backwards.

Working out those hips with Daddy!

We had a fun night with our friends. Lydia was teaching Isaiah how to take care of a doll, which of course Isaiah has no idea how to do, since he has no dolls. And much to Mama's sadness, he doesn't even really care about stuffed animals--it's cars all the way!

Continuing with the idea of working on the letters of his name, we did imprint painting (at least that's what we're calling it). I took a large piece of paper and folded it in half, then I painted a big I in the middle. I let Isaiah paint wherever he wanted, then we folded the paper in half again to imprint what he had done on both sides.

Apparently paint imprints work well with two hands, too.

Then of course we tried crayons again. He likes these crayons from Aunt Luda because they come with a cup that he can take them out of and put them in very well on his own.

I got this idea from a fun book that some friends sent us. I haven't started using the actual book yet, because I wanted to get Isaiah used to some of the actions on a larger scale first. Here we worked on drawing a "straight" vertical line from one point to another. I saw we, because we did it together.

But then he actually seemed a little more interested in coloring, at least on the table.

We pulled out this awesome play-doh set (also from our thoughtful friends). I enjoyed the play-doh. Isaiah enjoyed taking all the accessories out of the box and putting them back in. He LOVES doing this with everything!

Or singing into the cup. :)

We got a package! Isaiah's birthday present from Aunt Emily and Uncle Rich arrived, and we were finally able to go pick it up! Isaiah enjoyed trying out his new foam playmat that has numbers and letters and animal puzzles and 4 special drawing squares--perfect for drawing while playing on the floor.

Our friend Julia came over on Wednesday as we were trying out this new activity. Our friends, yep the same ones!, sent us some great stickers that I used for a few number cards. The plan is for Isaiah to put the correct number of stickers on a second set and then use them for matching cards. We'll do that part this coming week. For now we're using them for number learning. Julia worked on the Russian; I worked on the English (and a little Russian, but naturally, her pronunciation is a little better than mine). I just love his expression in this picture. :)

And taking an idea from RockerMom, here's one of my new favorite pictures of Isaiah.

Don't forget to check out the other Tot Schools around the world at 1+1+1=1.

Tot School

Isaiah is 36 months

Our Tot School was a little disrupted this week with a trip out to Siberia, but we still managed to have some fun before and after our conference. This post is actually from the few days before the conference and then after the conference, so it's really 2 weeks combined, but it's all good.

Isaiah had his all-Russian day with Aunt Luda. They had some good outside time in the snow.

We tried water colors for the first time. Isaiah was much more interested in the water than the paint.

Well, the water or the paintbrush, that is.

Since he liked the water so much, we tried pouring water from one container to another.

But of course, he found the easiest way to "put the water from the bowl to the box". Just put the bowl in the box, of course! I'm working on finding some better sized objects for doing this again. He really enjoyed it, but the sizes of the containers were difficult for him.

Then for about 30 minutes he moved these buttons from one bowl to another. We did this again several times, and he really liked it. It seems great for his fine motor skills.

Then Tot School was interrupted by a little trip out to Siberia for our Russian Field Conference. Isaiah got to play with 3 other boys for 5 days, which is like a little bit of school, too, but unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of the 4 of them together. But here we are in the cold!

Our last day Isaiah and I explored a little and found this amazing ice playground! We enjoyed going down the really fast slides. Great fun!

When we got back we pulled out the water colors again. I decided to work on the letters of Isaiah's name, so I drew a big "I" and a little "i" for him to work on. I got the idea from Shannon at Teaching Tiny Tots (sorry I can't find the exact post to link to). I think the paints aren't really bright enough, but he humored me for a little while, trying to paint the big "I". Eventually he ditched the paintbrush and used his fingers, which actually seemed to work a little better.

Then we tried to glue yellow crepe paper onto a little "i". He really seemed to get into the glue.

He also really liked piling the yellow paper onto the glue. Yeah, can't you see our little "i". :) He had fun and used his hands really well, though, so that's good.

So those were our 2 weeks put together. Be sure to check out what the other Mama's and Tots are up to by visiting 1+1+1=1!