Our Thankful Tree

We've been doing a bunch of Thanksgiving activities for Tot School lately, and this one turned out great! There are so many variations of "thankful tree" for Thanksgiving, but I really liked the craft portion of this one from 1+1+1=1.

The base of the tree is a paper towel tube. We don't really use paper towels, so I taped 2 toilet paper together. Then Emma used watercolors to paint the tube brown.

We used tape again to fasten the tube to the white paper so that it stands upright on its own. Then I used scissors to cut strips down an inch and a half or so. Nothing too scientific here! These are the branches! 

I printed out a leaf template that had four different types of leaves. I used the white leaves to trace on colored construction paper and cut out a bunch of colored leaves. Emma used watercolor paints again to paint the white leaves. Over the last week or two, we've been talking about things that she is thankful for, and then writing them on a leaf. She has needed a little help thinking of things besides what she sees right in front of her (bowl, paper, crayon, etc). Then we glued the leaves to the "branches" of our tree...the finished product!

She thought of this one all by herself!

Will was one of the first things she wanted to write down :-)

Food...and Pizza...she is a Dunphy to be sure!

Tot School

Emma is 32.5 months

Will is 11.5 months

Tot School via 1+1+1=1

We've been enjoying a lot of fall activities over the last two weeks. Unfortunately, I lost several pictures when our computer died, but I'm hoping that will be only temporary once we get them off the hard drive.

We have several fall books from the library that we've been reading every day. We really like It's Fall. It has beautiful pictures and is a great introduction to the change of seasons. Footballs and Falling Leaves is a counting book with great fall themed items. We also liked the simple book, I know its autumn.

To talk about the different things that happen when the seasons change, we took a nature walk. I put a piece of clear tape on Emma's wrist with the sticky side up and she picked up different things to stick to the tape along the way. She loved finding leaves, flowers, and sticks to put on her tape, and I loved seeing what caught her attention. This was a lot of fun and I'm sure we'll do it again soon.

We found a caterpillar one day and kept it in a tub with some leaves for a day or two. Emma thought the caterpillar was the coolest thing. She is totally unfazed by bugs and loves to poke at them and pick them up.

We didn't keep the caterpillar for too long, and Emma loved getting to put him back outside.

I found this great tree printable from First School. We scrunched up different colors of tissue paper to make leaves for the tree.

I don't have a picture of the finished product, but we put a bunch of "leaves" on the ground under the tree also. It turned out really cute and is hanging in our art gallery.

Another great printable from First School is this acorn sheet. We keep it inside a plastic page protector and Emma uses a dry erase marker to do a number of activities. Counting by dotting the acorns, circling, coloring, and then practicing writing numbers. She did all of these numbers on her own!

I'm so excited to see Emma wanting to trace and actually doing it. She is so pleased with herself and did a great job. I'm hoping to do some more tracing with letters in the coming weeks!

Tiny Tot School

Will has really enjoyed our sensory bin, especially the leaves. He likes the texture of the leaves and really likes to put them in and out of different containers. I don't seem to have a picture of this yet.

He also added to his signs with "all done". This one is not a favorite sign since he loves to eat so much, but this is a really cute photo!




He is showing a lot of interest in our wooden puzzles even though he can't actually do the pieces yet. He has the concept, though, and likes to put the pieces on the puzzle boards.

We had a fun time with Daddy this weekend. We went to an area of Middletown that has big trees and hills and collected leaves, acorns, twigs, and flowers.
 
Emma loved talking about the different things we saw and both Emma and Will enjoyed having time outside and spending time with Daddy.

That afternoon we also took a hay ride at a local farm and enjoyed some other fall activities, including apple cider!

Tot School

Emma is 32 months

Will is 11 months

Tot School via 1+1+1=1

We've had some nice Tot School time over the last two weeks, despite the kids' stomach bugs, my being out of town, and then today Will knocked his chin and stuck his teeth into his tongue. Poor kid has three holes in his tongue. One is fairly substantial, but the other two are smaller. He's doing ok, but I'm sure things are pretty sore!

Emma has been enjoying number recognition activities. These free printables came from TLSBooks. Emma used a highlighter to pick out all of the 1's, 2's, 3's, on up to 10.

We split this up over several days, which helped her to keep straight which number she was looking for on the page. I'd love to do this again and stick the pages in plastic page protectors so that we can use them more than once!

We did several activities with numbers 1 and 2. Emma used stickers to make the numbers follow a pattern I made on a paper for her.

We also used cut and paste number sheets from ABCteach. I cut the numbers out for Emma and we worked on recognizing 1-5, as well as putting them in the correct order.

She was instructed to color the numbers and she opted for tracing them yet again. She did a pretty good job, too!

After we worked with the cut out numbers, Emma used a glue stick to paste them in the correct order at the end of the week.

We also used the back of some of the number recognition sheets to work on tracing some more letters. Emma did some tracing but ended up drawing circles around most of the numbers.

Emma is still our tomato loving girl! One of her favorite things to do is to help with the garden, especially the picking! The tomatoes usually don't make it in the house...this one is headed right into Emma's mouth (in one bite!)

We pulled the muffin tins back out this week. Even though it was mostly for Will, Emma had some fun with them too. We worked on putting the correct color blocks in order.

This was challenging for her because she had to turn the blocks to find the right color before putting them in order. She got a lot better as we worked on it!

One rainy afternoon we made microwave Turkish Delight. This was our second time making this recipe, and it was much better this time! I cut the recipe in half, so I altered the microwave cook times in order to compensate. We made lemon flavored Turkish Delight this time. Emma really wanted to color it blue, but I convinced her that yellow would make more sense.

She was a great help pouring, counting, and even did a little stirring.

 We did a couple together activities, including playing with shaving cream.

This is such a great finger paint.

And we did a special afternoon bath that was mostly an excuse to try out glow sticks in the bathtub!

Hard to get a picture, but you can sort of tell that they were putting them into a large cup.

Tiny Tot School

Will loves music! He is so cute when we pull out the different instruments and crank up the music. He dances and bangs and even stomps his feet to the music.

Inspired by this idea of baby play with apples from Lightning Bug Literacy, I pulled out our bag of apples with the muffin tins.

He seemed to know exactly what to do, although he preferred to throw the apples into the tin instead of simply placing them.

He had so much fun doing this that when we put it away for another activity...

this face showed up really quickly! Poor Will. (We did some more with the apples)

We did a couple variations with the muffin tins since Will liked them so much. Large beads...

  and balls...

Mom's Favorites

Oh, blue highlighter!

And take a look at that beautiful girl!

Big boy enjoying the swings!

Tot School

Emma is 31.5

Will is 10.5 months

Tot School via 1+1+1=1

We haven't had a focused Tot School post for most of the summer; hopefully the new school year will help get us back on track! Thanks to Pinterest, we've been enjoying a number of new activities, including Magic Milk Paint.

All you need is a little milk in a container, a toothpick, dish soap, and food coloring!

Drop food coloring into the milk. Get close to the milk so that it doesn't spread quite as much (like the yellow, not the blue). Dip your toothpick in dish soap and then poke it into the food coloring....the surface tension is broken and the colors spread....so cool.

I used too much milk the first time and it did not work really well, so Emma painted with the colored milk for a while before we tried a second time.

Here is how it is supposed to work - awesome!

  A new skill we are working on is cutting with scissors! Emma really enjoys cutting, and has gotten much better about understand the concept, where her fingers go, etc. She usually cuts magazines or old coupons.

This is another fun art project that I found via Pinterest. With blue painter's tape, I made a letter E on a sheet of paper. Then I told Emma we were going to paint all around the blue E. Before she started on that, she traced the letter E....first time she has ever been able to trace a letter, and she received no prompting!

 The tracing complete, she went on to paint (with watercolors).

The finished project! So cute, we are going to make another one soon!

Here it is hanging in our homemade art gallery!

Emma can do all of her puzzles on her own right now, including the large floor puzzles. To give her a little more of a challenge, I dump several wooden puzzles together and she works them simultaneously.  She is still very quick! Puzzles are one of her favorite activities.

We've had a great time playing outside more now that the weather has been a bit cooler. Emma loves things like chalk and bubbles, and she recently learned to peddle her tricycle all by herself! We've also been playing with outdoor balls...throwing, kicking, and making up our own silly games.

Tiny Tot School

Will is into everything since he is now walking (usually running) across the room! It has helped a lot this week to have focused activities for him to do also. We love tot school!

Thanks to ideas from Carisa, Will has been having a blast with ping pong balls!

He seriously cannot get enough of them. We just keep switching up the "prop" toy that he plays along with the ping pong balls. Here we paired them with nesting cups.

And some outdoor play with the ping pong balls. He loved digging through the grass for them!

Emma couldn't resist helping.

What is it about ping pong balls? I don't know, but he loves them!

  Will is starting to get more interested in books. His favorite (by far!) is this version of Hallmark Guess How Much I Love You, read by Pap Pap and Omi. It is so cute to see him sit and flip through the pages. He recognizes the book enough that he gets frustrated when the board book version does not read to him!

 Will also discovered that our big "boat" box doubles as a tunnel. He even introduced Emma to this idea, and the two of them chase each other through to the other side of the couch.

 Mom's favorites:

Will and the ping pong balls,

and Emma with a big old belly laugh!