Category:

Preschool.

4/24/2012

I've had a few people ask me when/if Riley will be going to preschool. The thing is, at this age, a traditional preschool is really just daycare. And there is nothing wrong with daycare, in fact, day care can be a wonderful thing for children, but I'm a stay at home mom... there really is no reason for me to put my child in day care. It's pretty expensive, and it's not like I need to put her there so I can work... Taking care of Riley (and Jackson) IS my job. I had a lot of people suggest that I put Riley in a preschool for a few hours a week before Jackson was born, just so I had a few hours with only one little baby, but it just didn't sit right with me.

For one, I really enjoy spending my time with Riley. I don't want to just ship her off somewhere so I can be "free." Would it be so easy to just have one little baby (Jackson) at home instead of a baby and a toddler? Sure. But it just didn't seem right at this age to send her somewhere without a real NEED to do so. Instead, I started trying to come up with the weekly themes for our "tot school" that you may have read about on the blog. We don't do this every week, and some themes last for a couple of weeks, but I enjoy it, and Riley really enjoys it, and it's basically totally unforced learning that is just following her lead and her interests (with a little bit of my guidance). It gives me a bit of extra motivation and means I am constantly searching for new ideas and activities for her.

And I come across all kinds of ideas for her, things like this, our "tray of fun."

One tray of random things we already owned led to many activities. She liked dropping the little googly eyes in the bowl of water. She strung the wooden beads on a skewer stuck in playdoh. She used the ice cream scooper to transfer pom poms from the bowl to the egg carton. The fun lasted for quite some time! Great for fostering creativity, imagination, fine motor skills, learning and sorting colors, sensory play, etc...

Then there are the never ending art projects. One of the most heard phrases around here is "do painting!!!" So painting we do...

Of course, sometimes, my "fun" activities I plan for her are less than successful. My latest stroke of genius? Playing with colored bubbles. Sounds fun, right? Well... the idea was, fill clear containers with different colors of bubbles, take a straw, and blow blow blow until you get huge colored bubbled foam! Fun! Well, not so fun when all your toddler wants to do is SUCK through the straw, not BLOW. Totally didn't think about that. So what was meant to be a totally fun activity ended up going something like THIS: Eesh.

Not to worry, we quickly abandoned ship and decided to go back to good old fashioned blowing bubbles straight from the bubble wand. Crisis averted.

But recently I decided I wanted to try something else with her. While there are tons of things we can and do do at home, and we do have some activities we do each week (music class, kindy gym, coffee group), I felt like we needed something more. So today I signed Riley up for the local playcentre- basically a preschool co-op. Today was our first day, and it was a total success. Riley LOVED it.

So what is a co-op, you ask... Basically the co-op is based on the premise that a parent-education nursery school is the ideal environment for feelings of self-esteem and self-worth to flourish- an ideal environment for kids to develop confidence, think for themselves, solve problems, explore and learn. Parents give their time and energy to build this culture for the children. It might sound a little "fluffy," but I think it's actually a fabulous thing for the little ones.

So now Riley goes to "school" one day a week for 3 hours. I will be there with her (and so will Jackson), but not necessarily WITH her all the time. There are so many things for her to do there, and other kids for her to interact with. She's one of the younger ones (probably more 3 year olds than any other age), but she had a blast today. In the 2.5 hours we were there today, she did the following: used homemade purple playdoh to make shapes and "cookies," which she decorated with all colors of glitter and sprinkled with "frosting." She painted using brushes and her fingers, and she painted MY fingers. She built a tower with wooden blocks. She used her very own scissors for the first time. She washed her own hands at a sink at her own level. She sat at a table with 10 other little ones and ate a snack and drank from a cup. She played in a sandpit, jumped on a trampoline, went on the swings and slides and tunnel and through an obstacle course. She played in the water table with yellow dyed water. She "cooked" a sandwich with pretend food, and talked on the phone, and put five baby dolls to bed. She read stories and she hung out with other moms and toddlers. She basically had an absolute blast.

I didn't even bring my camera because I had Jackson with me, and I had my hands quite full (since the parents are quite hands on in this co-op setting!), but trust me, we had a blast. We call it "school" and Riley can't wait to go back to "kool!" And for me, it's just what I was looking for for her at this age- TONS of great toys and resources, unstructured play with other kids her age as well as some slightly older and younger, opportunities for her to explore and create and play, a community of like-minded adults there to foster the right kind of learning environment for the children. I'm not just dropping her off and leaving her, Jackson can come with me, she's getting to interact with new kids and has the chance to explore and learn and play in a great environment, and I get to meet some new people as well! Oh and in case you were wondering, Jackson was basically the perfect baby the entire 3 hours. He slept in his car seat for the first hour, woke up and ate, stayed awake for a short while, and then slept in the Beco carrier for the rest of the time. Thank you Jack Jack for being a superstar.

Anyway... I always thought I loved having a BABY, but seriously, having a TODDLER is such a blast. The learning, the fun, the imagination, the things she says, the ideas she gets, what she finds funny... seriously it is the best thing ever. I mean, come on, what is not awesome about this??

0 Comments

March week 3: BUGS

4/1/2012

0 Comments

Oh man, this was definitely my favorite theme for the month, and I think Riley really enjoyed it as well. I've got to say, I am loving doing this little themed tot school with her. I love coming up with themes that I think will interest her, coming up with lessons and games, activities and outings. Here's what we did for this theme:

Art:
We did a LOT of art projects. There were so many different ideas and options here! At this age art is so much more than JUST art... it's a sensory experience, it helps Riley's hand eye coordination, we identify shapes and colors and letters and numbers, she listens to me tell her different facts about different bugs. Here are just some of the things we made:

We were really into caterpillars and butterflies this week, so we did lots of art projects around those. We made plastic baggie butterflies, she really liked ripping the paper and picking which color pom poms to go in there.

We pretty much write her name on all her art projects, and she now recognizes it and says "Riley!" as soon as I write it. She will even sometimes tell me what letter comes next as I'm writing it! She also really loves having her hands traced.

Books:
We had to hit up the library for this one. We did have a few "bug" theme books, but not enough to last for a week, and I wanted some more interesting ones, so off to the library we went. Plus we were focusing on butterflies and caterpillars this week so I wanted some books relevant to those.

One new thing we tried this week was to incorporate books into art time. Sometimes Riley is a bit resistant to new books (she loves her old favorites) so in order to encourage her to at least listen to me read her new stories, I would read her stories and we would make our own artwork based on that story, even if it was just using the same colors that we saw. She actually really liked it, so I think I'll continue using that as a way to introduce new books to her.

Stories, rhymes, and songs:
Little Miss Muffet, Itsy Bitsy Spider, Bringing Home Baby Bumble Bee, The ants go marching... so many more I can't even keep track! We sang "Shoo fly" a million times because we kept getting so many flies in our house and they are driving me craaaazy!

Activities at home:
She has a magnetic bug catching puzzle which was a total hit, and she now knows: cricket, firefly, dragonfly, caterpillar, butterfly, bee, spider, ant. Puzzles are great for pattern recognition and hand/eye coordination, as well as great for learning different kinds of bugs! She is a pro at the wooden puzzles, so we're trying out some harder 4 piece puzzles. She picks out the pieces that go together, and asks me to help her do them, but she will often put in the last piece.

We worked on letters: B is for bugs and butterflies, C is for caterpillars and crickets, etc... We made bugs with playdoh and pipe cleaners and even added eyes.

We had a lot of fun with playdoh and "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" book. I would read it to her, and then we would make what we saw... we made the caterpillar, and then made all the food that he eats! Riley was TOTALLY into this activity- she loved making the foods, and would say "3 blue blueberries!" Feed caterpillar... yum yum" and she'd feed her hungry caterpillar.

Outdoor fun:
We made a trip to the local plant nursery and picked up a swan plant for Riley. It's a plant that attracts monarch butterflies, and the one we bought had a caterpillar AND a cocoon on it already. So we planted it in her very own pot, and checked on it multiple times a day. We watered it and talked all about caterpillars and butterflies and everything in between. She LOVES it. She runs out and goes "caterpillar, where are you?" "No touching caterpillar, no touching cocoon."

We went on a spider hunt. We talked about spider webs and what spiders eat and counted how many legs they have. We practiced flapping our wings like a butterfly, crawling like a caterpillar, and jumping like a grasshopper. And man can this girl jump!!

Movie:
We watched A Bug's Life! for our movie night this week, which was pretty fun, Riley loved pointing out all the bugs she knew. Riley also loved watching this kid's youtube video about caterpillars, which you can see HERE if you are interested.

Overall, lots of activities, and lots of fun!! Next week's theme: EASTER!!!

0 Comments

March week 2: THE FARM

3/18/2012

1 Comment

Our second week's theme was "the farm", and boy did we have fun. There is just so much to do with a farm theme! Here's a little glimpse of what we did throughout the week (which was really more like 10 days):

Art:
We made cows with black and white pom pom balls (not sure what they are actually called?). We made "muddy pigs" with chocolate yogurt as finger paint (which she was not too sure about, and ended up asking for a spoon so she could eat it). We made horses out of her hand prints. We made farm animals out of balloons, which was her favorite, although apparently permanent pen on balloons still smudges hours later, and you end up with black all over your toddlers hands/arms/face/you name it.

Books:
We actually already had quite a lot of farm-related books, so I made sure they were all out for Riley to choose from. Her faves were Green Sheep and Make Me Quack, but she's pretty fond of The Wonkey Donkey too.

Stories and rhymes and songs:
One of my new favorite things to do with Riley is to tell her stories before bed. She lays in bed, and I tell her stories or read fairy tales, or read little rhymes to her. This week I picked certain stories and rhymes to go with the theme, so some of the ones we read or I narrated included: Jack and the Beanstalk, 3 Little Pigs, Billy Goats Gruff, and The Little Red Hen. And of course there are tons and tons of songs related to farm and farm animals: Old MacDonald was a big hit around here lately! :) She also loved singing BINGO!

Toys/indoor activities:
Farm puzzle and farm animal toy, practicing all our animal noises and talking about what animal eats what and who lives where. I should have tried to see if the toy library had a Little People Farm set but I didn't think about it until just now.

Outdoor activities:
Riley helped me pull weeds, and then "helped" daddy plant some trees in our font yard. Mostly she just wanted to hold the shovel, play in the dirt, and ride in the wheelbarrow. Oh yeah, and sit in the pot. "Get in, mama? Sit in here, mama?"

Outings:
I already posted about our trip to Lindale Farm where Riley got to see and feed and pet all the farm animals.

We also went to the local plant nursery to pick out some plants for our front yard, and we got Riley some veggie seeds (carrots) to plant and take care of each day. She got to put the dirt in the pot, plant the seeds, cover them, water them, put them in the sun, and we'll continue to care for them until they start to grow!! Her very own veggie "garden."

Next (and last) theme for this month: BUGS!

1 Comment

A day at the farm

3/10/2012

0 Comments

This week's theme for Riley has been THE FARM (more on that later), so we spent the day at the farm today! We almost didn't make it due to two cranky babies, but we rallied and piled in the car and off we went.

This place was Riley HEAVEN. As you walked in, they had not one but TWO slides, a trampoline (at the bottom of the slide, no less), some baby trikes, a dog, and swings. All the essentials, as far as she's concerned.

We were finally able to lure her off the slide in order to come and see the bunny rabbits. She LOVED them. That girl could have stayed in there with them for the rest of the day if we let her!

But of course there was much more to see and do, like visit the sheep and the chickens and roosters and ducks and goats and on and on and on. We bought a bag of food so she got to feed every animal she came across. And that was a lot of animals!

They had this MASSIVE pig that had just had 8 or 9 little piglets, and they were running around all over the place! They were pretty timid, which frustrated Riley as she was dying to feed them, but they were pretty darn cute!

She also got to spend some quality time with her Nana while we were there.

Now, back to the feeding of the animals. It was going pretty smoothly, we were teaching Riley to feed the animals with an open hand, and if there were chickens or things that might peck her, we taught her to throw the food towards them so as not to get her fingers bitten. All was going smoothly. Until we tried to feed the donkey. She did well, fed him with an open hand, but at the last minute she must have closed her hand while he was still trying to get the food...

There were tears. I didn't even know what happened as I was taking pictures, but she was not a happy little girl. She was okay, but she did have a little cut from where he must have nipped her, poor thing! Needless to say for the rest of the day she mostly just threw the food at the animals.

We were finally able to get her out of there with the promise of an ice cream cone, and she picked chocolate. Of course she did.

And the little baby? Well, after demanding food and therefore being fed among the sheep and chickens, he hung out (fast asleep) in the MOBY wrap the whole time, until the very end when we were getting ice cream. Such a good baby.

0 Comments

March week 1: shapes

3/7/2012

0 Comments

I am a little behind on this post, but here it is anyway. This month I decided I needed some organization in my life in regards to Riley's activities. I decided to pick a theme for each week, and pick toys and activities and outings to go with that theme. Obviously we do things not related to the theme, and sometimes certain activities branch off into something totally different based on her interests (as you will see with the playdoh in a few seconds...) but at least I have a starting point when thinking of new and fun things for the toddler. I chose each week's theme based on what Riley is interested in at the moment or what was relevant at the time. Here's a little glimpse of what we came up with...

(1) Playdoh!!!! Riley is really into playdoh right now, and asks to play with it multiple times a day. So, we spent lots of time making whatever shape she wanted... circles, triangles, squares, pentagons... thank goodness I scored some shape cookie cutters from the toy library to use... that let me add star and heart to the list. :)

You can do just about anything with playdoh. We made a bunch of shapes, but we also used this activity to talk about colors and letters (C is for circle, B is for boy, etc...)

Other things to do with playdoh? Fine motor activities- we had some wooden skewers and some pasta in our pantry... instant activity! Stick the skewer in a ball of playdoh, and show the toddler how to string noodles on it. Easy peazy (free) entertainment. It would have been even better if I had dyed the pasta different colors... an idea for next time!

Obviously we moved away from the shapes theme a bit with the playdoh... Some other playdoh activities we did: Making "fossils" with screws, coins, anything really!

Okay back to the shapes theme. Other things we did with the shapes theme in mind included: (2) stringing shape beads (3) sorting foam shapes by shape and by color (4) playing with her shape train and shape sorter and shape stacking toys. None of those were all that creative, as it was just using toys we already owned and she already liked to play with.

Another fun cheap activity we discovered was playing with pipe cleaners and a kitchen strainer. Fine motor activity trying to get the pipe cleaners in the hole, and we brought it back to the shapes by making shapes out of the pipe cleaners. Of course, she asked me to make her a pentagon. Ha. Easier said than done, but I managed. :) Then she wore all the shapes around her wrist like bracelets!

We try to find songs and books related to the theme, which I'll be honest, was a little boring for the shapes theme. We have a bunch of "babyish" shapes books, but I decided for this week to let her read the books she loves, but this time point out all the shapes we could find in her books. We pretty much just sang our usual songs... The bad thing about the shapes theme is that it doesn't provide for much fun in the "outings" department. So we just went about our usual business and went to music class, the playground, playgroup, and coffee group... One fun thing I did was I decided to use the shapes theme with her food. She's not the best eater ever, but I decided to try and cut her food into certain shapes if I could. Hellooooo circle sandwich!

Some of these things might seem silly to you, but Riley seems to really enjoy these kinds of things, and I actually really do too. Plus, she seems to be learning so much so quickly these days, I want to take advantage and provide her with as many learning opportunities as possible.

Next theme (the one we're on to right now): THE FARM!! This one is FUN!

0 Comments

November TOT SCHOOL plan

11/5/2011

1 Comment

I was going to post about our plan for the next few weeks, but as I was writing it, it was getting pretty boring with no pictures and not many real concrete ideas of what we were going to do, so I decided to wait a bit until we had a few activities under our belt. November will have two themes, and the first one is TRANSPORTATION. I really just chose this because we have a big trip across the country in a few weeks, so I thought it would be appropriate. To start, we headed to the library...

Transportation books.
Go, Dog, Go, P.D. Eastman
That's Not My Train, Fiona Watt
That's Not My Plane, Fiona Watt
Trucks (Baby Touch and Feel) and Tough Trucks, Tony Mitton
Big Wheels, Anne Rockwell
Boats, Byron Borton
The Little Dump Truck, Margery Cuyler
Maisy Drives the Bus and How Will You Get There Maisy, Lucy Cousins
Sheep in a Jeep and Sheep on a Ship, Nancy Shaw

So far Riley prefers Go, Dog. Go! and That's Not My Train, oh and that little mini Let's Go Sesame Street book, We have read those ones SO MANY times already. She'll come up to me and say "Go?? Go? Go??" which means she can't find her Go, Dog. Go! book, and wants some help... and then we read it. Over. and over. and over again.

Stories/Poem/Rhymes/Songs
Lonely Bus Driver (finger rhyme), The Little Train, Tugboat, Engine on the Track (finger rhyme), Wheels on the Bus, I'm a Little Airplane (sung to I'm a Little Teapot tune), Row Row Row your Boat, Leaving on a Jet Plane, Twinkle Twinkle Traffic Light, and whatever other ones I can think of or find!

Arts and Crafts
This has been pretty fun so far! We did a "painting" activity with the colors of the stoplight (red, yellow, green). This involved putting paint in large plastic bags, and taping them to the window, and letting Riley "paint". We also painted by running cars through the paint and creating tracks with the wheels, but she preferred to use her fingers. Best part? No clean up!

Our second craft so far involved making mini trains, cars, and boats with foam shapes. Now you could use these shapes to identify both colors and shapes, but I chose just to talk to Riley about the shapes so as not to confuse her. We actually got the shapes for free at a garage sale, I just bought the large foam piece and some glue, and voila! Amazingly enough, somehow she picked out the circles with 100% accuracy. Apparently, the girl knows her circles!

Now, obviously Riley required a LOT of help to "make" these... this part of the activity was meant to have her help me pick out the shapes, and put the glue on, and then I put them on the brown paper. Her creation looked more like this... :)

Activities
This was a little tricky because we don't actually own a whole lot of "transportation" items. We have a truck shape sorter, which is still very popular, and a train puzzle, which Riley likes, but needs help completing as it's a little advanced. We've been working on learning the colors of the stoplight, and have three different "color bowls" full of red, green, and yellow items, respectively. They are all just random items we had around the house. Riley didn't understand the color sorting concept at first, but she's starting to get it and is actually really interested in it, so we'll keep doing it.

I turned around for a second, and Riley had taken the colored pipe cleaners and put them on like necklaces! And she kept them there for a quite a long time!

I also set up a transportation "treasure box" (also known as a sensory box), which she really likes! It looked like this before she started playing with it:

There are black beans (like the road), rocks, "sand," matchbox cars, an assortment of mini trucks, wheels (which are actually yo yos), little puzzles that rattle when riley shakes them, yellow pipe cleaners (like lines of the road), spinning tops with trucks on them. Now, this was a bit of a gamble, as I wasn't sure if Riley would (1) stuff all the little non-edibles in her mouth or (2) dump them all over the floor and make a HUGE mess. Well, she did try to eat the black beans at first, and I let her explore having one in her mouth (mostly because I couldn't fish it out of there), and she decided she didn't like it, and was pretty easily redirected after that. As for making a mess, she would take handfuls and put them on the floor, but then she like to pick them up and put them all back, so that was no problem. She also liked to pick black beans off of a strip of packing tape, and putting them into the truck bed...

Outings/adventures.
We haven't done any big outings yet, but when we do go out, I make more of an effort to point out things transportation related, especially things we may have read about in some of our books. Riley points out cars and bikes, and we went and saw the train, and we have plans to take Riley on her first train ride soon!

ABCs
I recently discovered starfall.com, and Riley LOVES it. It has this alphabet part that Riley is really into, and she can now say the letters A-E as well as their sounds. If she sees my computer, she runs to it and shouts "A A A A A A!!" to do the letter activity. If you have a little one, definitely check it out. I didn't want to do too many letters at once (or have her staring at the computer for too long), so this week we only looked at A-E. Maybe we'll do a few more letters next week, or we might stick with A-E for another week since she really likes those ones so far!

1 Comment

Some big (exciting) changes are coming- TOT SCHOOL!!

10/26/2011

1 Comment

I have decided to start "home school" with Riley. Now before you jump to any conclusions (like I used to do when I heard the words "home school," hear me out. It's actually pretty cool. First of all, Riley is only 16 months old, so pretty much everything will be play-based. It's not like we're sitting here drilling her on ABC's and filling out workbooks. Yeah right. Basically it's just playing with her, guided by a theme each month (which I will choose). I might change it to two themes a month if we run out of activities or if she loses interest, we'll see. It's really all going to depend on Riley and what she's interested in at the moment.

SO... we started a little (or very) late this month, but for what's left of it, our theme is "Halloween". Here's just a little peak into what we're doing with our Halloween theme. I started by clearing all the junk out of Riley's toy shelf, and replacing it with things I picked to go with the theme, as well as some of her favorite non-Halloween related toys. Here's what her shelf looks like when she wakes up in the morning:

Quick summary: (1) picture cards (2) puzzle (3) stacking blocks (4) shape sorter truck (5) home made straw container toy (6) block of fun (7) orange balloons (8) geometric stacker (9) orange items (10) Halloween treasure bowl (11) white and black items (12) Halloween (and regular) books.

I basically took a ton of her toys out and put them away. She had so many toys out, that her "playing" really just involved taking them all off the shelf and making a huge mess, but not really PLAYING with much of anything. Some things I left are obviously not Halloween-themed, and I left them because (a) she loves them and (b) they are good toys for learning. Things like the puzzles, the stacking blocks, the truck shape sorter, and the geometric stacker. Oh and her beloved flash cards. Those will probably stay out for quite a while.

Now for the fun stuff. HALLOWEEN THEME!!
BOOKS: All centered around Halloween. Riley usually prefers to read the same old books over and over, so I wasn't sure what she'd think about these, but she actually liked most of them! Here's what we got (from the limited selection at the library this close to Halloween) Normally I would get more, but there's only a few days left in the month, so I only got 6:

Surprisingly she likes all of them, except the "One Witch" one, she's not really into it. Normally she takes a while to warm up to new books, but she let me read all of these with her!

SONGS: I'll be honest, I didn't know a single Halloween song. But thanks to the lovely internet, I now have quite a few. Best part? The ones I learned are basically just new lyrics to common tunes, so pretty easy. And since she knows the tune, she likes the songs!

POEMS: I have a bunch of Halloween poems/rhymes to read to Riley. She's generally not really that interested in poems and nursery rhymes, but I want to get into the habit of reading her rhymes and it's a pretty easy thing to do, so we'll see how it goes. Reading nursery rhymes and poems to your kids is great for language development, so in the future I'll share some of what Riley likes just in case anybody is interested. She likes them a lot better if they have some sort of action to go along with them. Here's an example (you can use your fingers as the "pumpkins":

ACTIVITIES: This was a little bit tricky, but also really fun to try and come up with things to fit the theme. What Halloween "activities" could we do? Here's what I came up with:

(1) Halloween "treasure basket." This is meant to be a Halloween themed sensory basket, so lots of things that are fun and different to touch- includes leaves, spider web, Halloween erasers, ribbon, spiders, tomb filled with confetti, mini pumpkin pencil toppers, rubber skeleton, a random pine cone or two... She LOVED the spider web, and loved trying to get all the spiders out of it.

(2) Halloween color sorting- I already had an orange and a white trick-or-treat bucket, so we went with that and filled each bucket with its respective colored items. I didn't want to spend any money, so I searched the house and found everything I could that fit the color theme, and stuck it in the basket. So we're clearly working on orange, black, and white.

(3) pumpkin seed sensory bowl- we're going to try playing with pumpkin seeds this weekend at our pumpkin carving party, and see how that goes. I think this time I'll give her some different sized cups or bowls and some spoons and see what she does with it. Maybe a water bowl as well so she can drop the seeds in there if she wants?

(4) Making pumpkin bread from scratch- this is our activity tomorrow morning after breakfast! We're going to make pumpkin bread and she gets to help measure, pour, stir, and then do the dishes with me! And of course EAT the deliciousness!!

(5) Orange balloons! Good for learning colors, and for comparing sizes (4 different sized balloons), but mostly just good for throwing and kicking and shouting "boons boons boons" over and over again! Also, very good for covering with stickers! (please excuse the pants-less baby, it was almost bath time).

OUTINGS PLANNED
(1) Halloween Day at the zoo- SO excited for this one, we're going on Saturday!
(2) Trick-or-treating! There's an awesome neighborhood by our apartment that has great decorations and lights and is super kid friendly, so I can't wait to check it out with Riley.
(3) Halloween children's parade on Monday- hurray for another excuse to put on her Halloween costume!
(4) San Jose Children's Museum- tomorrow with Grandma (not Halloween related I don't think...)
(5) We carved pumpkins once already, and we'll be doing it again at a pumpkin carving party on Sunday!

Now just because we pick a theme doesn't mean we don't do other "normal" stuff. We do. In fact, Riley's favorite thing that I just made for her? Totally not Halloween related at all. And total cost? $0. I took a container of puffs, cleaned it out, and filled it with straws that we already had. Minimal effort, literally HOURS of fun for her. She takes the straws out, puts them back in. Piles them up, carries them around, chews on them, blows through them, the list goes on...

Sooo that pretty much sums up our Halloween theme work!! I'm loving having an excuse to do some new and creative things with Riley, and she seems to really be enjoying it too. Next month we will probably have two themes I think- first "transportation" (think cars, trains, trucks, planes, bikes, etc) and "Thanksgiving," although I think the Thanksgiving theme may really revolve around turkeys, as I don't think pilgrims and such will be all that exciting for her, but who knows. Maybe Indians? I don't know yet, we'll see.

Also? Riley turned 16 MONTHS OLD today, so stay tuned for 16 month update coming tomorrow.

1 Comment

Preschool.

March week 3: BUGS

March week 2: THE FARM

A day at the farm

March week 1: shapes

November TOT SCHOOL plan

Some big (exciting) changes are coming- TOT SCHOOL!!

Archives

Categories