Little LE is exactly one month away from turning 4.   I am convinced that she is gifted.  In its own way, its as challenging raising my little LE as it is raising a child with Asperger’s.  Right now, I am faced with the challenge of perfectionism.  Her brain processing power is ahead of her fine motor skills.  She knows the way she wants something to look, the way it “should” look.  When she is unable to match it in reality, she gets very upset.  Temper tantrum, scribbling all over her art / note, crying upset. She is heart-breakingly hard on herself.

Moments after drawing this person, she drew a big X from corner to corner to corner because “her stripes and dot dress is wrong”.  At her age, the “average” kid is still making “tadpoles”, with legs sprouting from the head.  The emergence of a torso is a 5-6 year old skill, with making the trunk longer than it is wide an even later milestone.  I’m just amazed at her precocious ability (she scores around 6 years, 3 months on the Goodenough Draw a Person Test), and she is freaking out and destroying it because its “wrong”.

It does no good to tell her that it is all right, or that it is perfect just the way it is.  She *knows* it isn’t (in her mind), and she just gets more upset.   We’ve read Beautiful Oops more than a few times.  In moments of calm “rationality”, we’ll talk about art, and how there really are no mistakes in art.  How she is only three and she is still learning to use her hands, and it’s ok if the 2 points of a “w” don’t line up exactly right now (or whatever). I’ve tried to model making mistakes and different coping skills.  I try to acknowledge the work that went into something, rather than just praising the result.  I’m not entirely sure what else to do.

Over the last year or so, light tables have been a big deal in the momma blogger / homeschool scene.   It’s funny because we’ve been playing with light a very long time, although certainly not with a fancy, big table.  I have a very old LightTracer box picked up years and years ago for tracing images for scrapping.  It is not as versatile as the ones I have seen out there in blogland.  I wouldn’t want to bring in anything wet or messy on it.    We’ve played with see through pony beads and petri dishes, translucent geo tiles, layering tissue paper,  and those multi colored flat vase filler marbles.   As overhead projectors become a thing of the past due to document cameras and smart boards, etc, I keep an eye on the clearance section of educational supply web sites.  I’ve picked up a bunch of accessories designed for the overhead for rock bottom prices — dominos, word tiles, base 10 pieces, and so on.

Today Little LE was making sentences with a word tiles.  At 46 months she is recognizing about 2 dozen words (family names, some basic sight words, and some CVC words like cat, sun, etc), but most of the words were unfamiliar.  She’d put together a “sentence” and then have me read it and laugh at its silliness.

We’ve been doing a fair amount of salt dough creation.  Right now we are working on an Easter egg tree.  We made salt dough eggs, and have painted them a base color.  We’ll be adding accents later.  Kidlet and I will be exploring glass etching to decorate the vase we are using to hold the twig “tree”.

A sheet like this comes home each week with the words circled that Kidlet needs to study.  (The errors in capitalization are mine.  waterproof and evaporation aren’t capitalized on the actual weekly sheet, but my app “auto-corrected” them for me, oops).

BUT, the homework is photocopied from a SF spelling practice book, so the 4 pages a week of spelling homework are on the first 12 words of the 30 (sometimes it includes the first 3 challenge words, but not always).  The 12 words my kid almost never needs to study.  Can you guess how well it goes over that he has to do the dreaded writing to “study” words that he doesn’t need to study?

So we come up with different solutions for practicing the words that he “needs” to study (tbh, he generally only gets 4-5 words that he actually doesn’t know how to spell, even when its all “challenge words” ).  I’ll have him use a set of alphabet stamps to spell his words, or type them on the computer using different fun fonts. Sometimes I will pull out the gel bag (ziploc bag with cheap hair gel, food coloring and glitter) and have him draw the letters in that. I will have him use the words in sentences, the sillier the better (typed up ont he computer of course). Some days I let him give me the spelling test, and he has to correct it.  We’ll use magnet letters or scrabble tiles, or do oral spelling bees.  We’ll twist pipe cleaners into letter shapes to spell the words. I try to be creative and come up with different things each week.

On days where I know that I am volunteering first thing in the morning, and I will be the one pulling and correcting the homework (the teacher only keeps track of IF they did it, now how they scored on it), I don’t even make him suffer through those worksheets.  (don’t judge!)  However, even on days where Lil L is headed to child care, I sometimes have trouble getting the kids out of the house early enough to drop her off first.  I have to take Kidlet in, then take Lil L to KinderCare, and then come back to Kidlet’s school to volunteer.  So I present the homework most days, even if I *think* that I’ll be the one checking it in.

Lil L is 32 months.  Kidlet just turned 8.

A Few of Lil L’s recent activities.  You can see her poor scraggly hair a bit in some of these.  My daughter inherited *my* hair, which means its very thin, very fine, and tangles if you breathe on it.  This is no exaggeration.  No amount of leave in conditioner, de-tangling spray, etc does any good.  We get giant clumps of rats nest hair, and combing it is a NIGHTMARE.  She tends to have greasy looking hair around the house, because I saturate it in conditioner and let it just sit on the head in the hopes that just maybe THIS time it will make a difference.  (it doesn’t =0)

Playdough mats (L for her name, although she can spell it now)

I bought this button art on a super sale for Christmas 2010, but had it put up until she could actually use it.  We pulled it out a few months ago, and she loves snapping the buttons in place.  She often wants to use it without one of the included patterns, but this time was using them.  She decided that she wanted her boat to have eyes, color coding on the picture mat notwithstanding.

Making sculptures from Crayola Model Magic, buttons, tiny letter dice (from inside mini boggle games from Oriental Trading that were 50% off since they were “less than perfect” which doesn’t matter for this!).  She did her name first without assistance, then asked how to spell mommy, daddy and her brothers name, then she found the letters on the dice and pushed them in.

Showing off her “P” work.

While mommy and kidlet were dyeing some rice  (below) for a later project, she is playing with a sensory bin (mainly a mix of brown and wild rices that I had bought in bulk and everyone in our family hated it the one time I made it) with measuring cups, containers, and funnels.  The bin WAS full when she started; throwing the rice about is so much fun.

We used gel food coloring (since that is what I had on hand) and a bit of rubbing alcohol.  I don’t know what purpose that serves exactly, but we were happy with the vibrant colors that came out of it.

Kidlet has been working on idioms.  That is a tough one when you have asperger’s.  I had seen a display of idiom worksheets onpinterest (can’t find that link now to credit them).  But they didn’t share the sheet they used, just the image of finished results, so I created one.

We have done a few of them (ants in your pants, let the cat out of the bag), which I meant to show here, but didn’t get them scanned.  I put the idiom in at the top, and then have him draw what he thinks it would look like if it meant exactly what it said.  Then we talk about what it really means, and add the definition and use.  Then I have him write a sentence using the idiom.

Apple week   

Baby L is 16 months  

Tot Basket: V-Tech Learning the Alphabet Apple  

This toy has a number of settings, some are defintely for the older preschool set.  At 16 months, her favorite mode is “music”; when she pushes any of the letters it launches a different instrumental, generally toddler faves. She also really enjoyed spinning the clock handles. 

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Felt Board. I made these felt pieces new for this week with a bit of felt, some nice sharp scissors, and some fabric glue.  It has 10 little apples for apple chants and of course the apple tree. 

We did “10 little indians” with apples instead.   As well as a chant ala 5 little monkey with apples instead.  And another, which makes a good fingerplay as well. 

Way up high in the apple tree
Two red apples smiled at me
I shook that tree as hard as I could
Down came the apples,
Mmmm–were they good! 

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Tot Basket: Magnetic Apple Fractions.  Technically, these belong to big brother, but she kept wanting to play with them.  

Pulling them out and fitting them back in like a shape sorter, and dividing them into pieces and then having them snap back into place when she got the pieces lined back up were loads of fun. 

She also enjoyed stacking them, and I was very suprised to see that she was able to balance all four apples on top of each other, despite the fact that they aren’t flat. 

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Crafts: 

We looked at red and green apples and talked about the colors, and then I gave her red and green tadoodles markers to see how she would do with them, as the last time we tried markers a few weeks back, it was disasterous. It went a lot better this time, though much marker ink still ended up all over hands =) 

I made an apple tree out of cardstock and glued it down on a background.  The intent was to let her use up a whole sheet of smaller apple stickers, but I couldn’t find them, so instead I used spray adhesive to turn some larger paper apples (bulletin board decorations) into “stickers”. 

That left us with apples rather out of proportion to the tree, but I don’t think she minded  

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Others: Washed apples with a vegetable brush in a pan of water; paper apples graduated in size downloaded from File Folder Fun, which we used to talk about big, bigger, biggest and small, smaller, smallest; 

On topic books we read this week: 10 Apples Up on Top, The Apple Pie Tree, Apple Farmer Annie, Five Red Apples (pat the bunny series) 

On topic snacks this week: apples, apples and more apples!  raw in thin slices, applesauce, baked with cinnamon, apple muffins, thin apple sliced cut into apple shapes with mini cookie cutter

The Favorite:

Applesauce on a Stick

1/2 cup unsweetened pineapple juice

3 medium apples unpeeled cored and cut up

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 cup dark raisins

1 tablespoon sugar or to taste

Popsicle sticks

Process apples, juice, cinnamon and raisins in blender or food processor until smooth; add sugar to taste. It will taste less sweet when frozen. Spoon into 3-4 ounce paper or plastic cups or frozen sucker molds. Place in freezer. When partially frozen, insert a stick in each cup and finish freezing.

New sign: “Apple” isn’t really new, but of course I focused on that this week!  Make either the “X” or “A” sign, place the knuckle of your right index finger against your cheek and pivot the hand back and forth. 

Find more terrific tot school posts over at 1+ 1 + 1 = 1

The theme this week is Transportation / Things That Go

Baby L was quite sick earlier in the week and still runny nosed and fussy today.  I got hit hard with her cold halfway through the week, so once again, things were cut a little short, and my documentation is less than ideal.

Baby L is 16 months

Sensory: Whipping Cream ”Clouds” with plastic airplanes & helicopters (from a bin of Lakeshore Learning Vehicle Counters).  Shaving Cream would make nicer “clouds” to squish in and last longer, but Baby L is still putting a lot in her mouth, so I went with something edible.

This was a big hit, especially once she figured out that whipping cream tastes delicious   She did zoom the airplanes and copters around for a bit, but then started using them as utensils to zoom the “clouds” right into her mouth.

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Tot Basket: Transportation Magnets and magnetic board.  

These magnets are made by Melissa and Doug; but we’ve had them a long time and I don’t think they are sold now (at least I couldn’t find them on thier site or Amazon to link them).  Baby L likes placing magnets and pulling them off

Vocabulary: various types of vehicles

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Tot Basket: Maxim Ramp Race. 

This is another toy that is from Kidlet’s toddler hood, and I couldn’t find the little ramp at the bottom so the cars slide off smoothly (I know I’ve seen it around here somewhere!) but it didn’t seem to matter to Baby L; she really liked watching the cars swoosh down the levels.

Vocabulary: car, blue, green, zoom, top, bottom

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Tot Basket: Wooden Trains & Tracks (legacy of Kidlet who would literally spend hours pushing Thomas around on tracks)

Vocabulary: train, track, engine, caboose, front, back, push

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Tot Basket: Transportation Manipulatives sorting. 

I took a few Oriental Trading “bug jars” (thin plastic cups) and inserted a piece of rolled up paper inside to make a red, blue, and yellow cup.  I took out a handful of the Lakeshore Learning transportation manipulatives in each of those colors to see if she could sort by color yet.  Not so much.  She did enjoy filling the jars and then dumping them out.

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Tot Basket: small cars (brother’s hot wheels, etc) + blocks + street rug

We number of different things with the small cars this week.  I collected several of the same colors and we tried grouping reds with reds, blues with blues, etc.  Made a “garage” for the cars out of a shoe box. We drove the cars on the roads on the play rug, lined up cars and talked about front, behind, and next to, faced each other and rolled cars back and forth, created a “main street” with blocks for cars to drive between, and created a road out of blocks for her to drive the cars along.

Vocabulary: cars, colors, wheels, road, drive, line up, front, behind, between, in, out

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Others: pretended that a large box was a car/train and pushed her around in it, played with boats in the bathtub (weather has been rainy now for a few weeks, so outside time has been curtailed), Fisher Price Rumble & Learn Driver, V-Tech Animal Train

Nursery Rhymes & Songs: Wheels on the Bus, The Choo-Choo Train (chanting game), Down by the Station, Little Red Caboose,

On topic books we read this week: My Little Book of Trains; Sesame Street My First Book of Things That Go; The Race; Zoom, Zoom, Zoom; Bear’s Blue Boat; Traffic Jamboree;

New sign: Car.  Mimic grasping a steering wheel with both hands and driving an imaginary car.

Find more terrific tot school posts over at 1+ 1 + 1 = 1

Not really a “theme” this week, except I guess “basics” – the alphabet in general, numbers, colors and shapes.

Baby L is 15.5 months

I had *so* much going on with the volunteer coordination job for Kidlet’s school (I had to teach 2 training sessions, and spent a lot of time prepping for that) that I did a really poor job of documenting totschool time this week, so we are low on pictures.  Then to make things worse, I somehow managed to lose all the updates that I made to the post half way through the week, so my post is looking a little anemic! 

Tot Basket: Alphabet Puzzle

She hasn’t got the idea of matching the picture on a puzzle piece to the picture on the board really (with any puzzle).  She tries to fit it into any hole that looks close.  That works OK when we are using her blocksters or one of the 3 piece chunky handle puzzles, but not so much for one with this many choices.  Sang the ABC song while touching each letter; named each letter as she touched it. 

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Tot Basket: Stacking Blocks

These Metropolitan Museum of art nesting blocks (and books on ABC, 123, and shapes) were gifts from my MIL back when Kidlet was younger.  She did a really great job of getting them stacked quite high.  Knocking them over of course was the best part

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Tot Basket: Wooden Clock Shape Sorter

Although this picture shows playing with big brother, we did have 1 on 1 tot school time with it as well.  She was as “successful” fitting the shapes here as she was with the alphabet puzzle.  I let her play as she wanted though, with mommy naming the color and number and sometimes the shape of each block as she handled it.

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Totbasket: 1-10 Counting Bees and Hive (from last week)

She kept trying to make the bees kiss her toes again, so we did some more of our bumblebee chants from last week, as well as talking about the number on each bee and sorting them into thier holes on the hive.

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Others: Alphabet Cards from the 1 + 1 + 1 = 1 Members Section.  I printed a quick and dirty copy so we could just play with them a bit and talk about the various items (eventually I’ll print them out on cardstock and laminate them), Magnetic Alphabet Letters & Board, Felt Board: basic shapes in small, medium and largest sizes, chunky handle shape puzzle (triangle, circle, square), Melissa & Doug Stack and Sort Board

Nursery Rhymes & Songs: Alphabet Song (and a backwards version that my Kidlet loves to sing), TMBG “Here Come the ABC’s” and “Here Come the 123′s“, Fingers and Toes by Milkshake (counting song and we do it as a “fingerplay”)

On topic books we read this week: Musuem ABCs, Museum Shapes, Museum 123, Sesame Street Elmo’s Guessing Game About Colors, Big Bird’s Guessing Game About Shapes, Annie Ate Apples, Lift & Learn ABC 123, 10 Little Rubber Ducks,

New sign: Instead of introducing a new sign, we worked more on “Book”.  I’ve been using it all along, but she had made what seemed to be a try at the sign, so I wanted to focus on that and see if it would develop fully. 

Find more terrific tot school posts over at 1+ 1 + 1 = 1

I should mention that while I pick a theme for the week, that doesn’t mean we aren’t talking about that topic at other times.  I just like having a theme to help me pick the toys and activities for the week.  We won’t suddenly stop trying to teach Baby L about her body parts once the end of the week arrives   I picked this theme because we were looking a First Words book and when we turned to the “My body” page she reached up and grabbed her hair, which is the first word on the page.

On a completely unrelated note, I think Baby L needs a new web name; she isn’t a baby really anymore, although she’ll always be my baby   I’ll have to think on it.

Baby L is 15.5 months 

Baby L is in a stage where she wants to know “what’s that?” (except she only points), and I was looking for ways other than books to show her body parts.   I made up our tot baskets based on that, more than picking something she would choose to play with if she were picking something to play with on her own. 

The majority of our tot school time was spent in song and fingerplays that talk about body parts, rather than focused on the tot baskets (I think we watched on DVD and performed “clap your hands” by they might giants about 500 times).  We did them in front of mirrors.  We did them using stickers, adhering one to whichever body part we were chanting about.

Stomping to “Clap Your Hands” (the second verse is stomp your feet) by TMBG.

I’m missing pictures for a few activities this week; couldn’t find my camera for a couple days. 

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Tot Basket: Baby Doll / Play Doctor

First we read “Doctor for a Day” and then got out the basket.  While playing with the doll (she doesn’t have a ton of interest in them yet, but we have one that Grandma S gave us when Kidlet was learning to potty that came with a little potty chair), I’d say “Uh oh, baby has a boo-boo!  Where does she hurt?!” and wherever Baby L would touch, I’d stick a band-aid on and say “She has a boo-boo on her {insert body part here}”. 

Vocabulary: Names of body parts, boo-boo, band-aid

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Tot Basket:  Mr. Potato Head

I had doubts that Baby L would be able to actually assemble Mr. Potato Head, but it provided opportunity to name each part; and they were 3-D pieces she could pick up instead of just a flat picture.  As she picked up a piece, I’d name the part and give a small fact like “That’s the eyes.  We see with our eyes.”

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Tot Basket: Hand puzzle, layered body puzzle.  Obviously there was no expectation that Baby L would be *assembling* the puzzles.  As with Mr. Potato Head, I was naming whatever she picked up and tried to give a small fact about that part.

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Tot Basket:  Counting Bees and Bee Hive (no longer sold).  This is a toy I bought some years back from Lillian Vernon for Kidlet.  I was amazed to discover that I was able to find all 10 bees (all over the house!)since Kidlet hasn’t played with it in ages.

I put this in because I had a bumblebee/bodypart chant, and also because its just something she likes to do — stuffing the little bees into the holes.  In the picture she had just picked up a bee after we were done playing and started making it kiss her own toes.  Definitely my favorite moment of totschool this week!

Bumble Bee, Bumble Bee (tune: Jingle Bells)

Bumblebee, bumblebee,
landing on my toes.
Bumblebee, bumblebee,

now he’s on my nose.
On my arms, on my legs, on my elbows.
Bumblebee, oh  bumblebee he lands and then he goes.

A Bee is on Me

A bee is on my bonnet
A bee is on my nose,
A bee is on my shoulder
A bee is even on my toes.

A bee is in my hair
A bee is in my pants,
A bee is in my ears
A bee is making me dance.

The bee is near my socks
The bee is near my shoes,
SPLAT!
Bee, I know how to take care of you!

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Crafts: Make a Face

I cut out some eyes, ears, mouths and noses from magazines to glue (mommy did the glue) onto a paper plate to make a face.  The hair is some doll hair stuff I had bought a long time ago.  I didn’t glue it on, but put it in place to try and show her that this was a face, and what was the top of the head.  I recited one of our rhymes, then repeated a line as she did that part of the face.

Two little eyes to look around, 

Two little ears to hear each sound, 

One little nose to smell what’s sweet,

One little mouth that likes to eat!

Well, she didn’t want to stop at 2 eyes and 1 mouth.  Other than that, she did a really good job getting the features into generally the right part of the face!

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Various cards.  We used her Wimmer-Ferguson gallery cards to pick out facial features on different animals and people.  I also made our own body part flashcards using pictures of her own body parts.

Here she is showing me “Where are your ears?” without putting the cards down

Here are the flash cards made with pictures of her.  The plan was to make a ziploc bag or paperbag book for her with a full body shot at the end, all with labels, but I didn’t get that far.  I’d say “This is Baby L’s mouth!” and tap the card, and then say it again and tap her mouth.  Then I would ask her to find the hand, or ear or whatever.

She was sitting in my lap while we did this, so no pictures with her. 

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I also tried the “Make Your Body Like This Cards” from Today Is Fun!, but as of yet, it’s too advanced for her.  Kidlet enjoyed them  

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Nursery Rhymes & Songs:  Fingers and Toes – Milkshake (one of my favorite kids music bands; grownups can listen to it without going mad), Clap Your Hands – They Might Be Giants (another goodie.  I spent my teen years listening to thier “grown up” music, and I love thier kids CDs), Hokey Pokey, Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes, This Little Piggy, Little Girl with a Little Curl, Little Jack Horner

On topic books we read this week: Find a Face, Parts, Doctor for a Day (out of print), I Get Dressed (from Gymboree, out of print), Baby Faces, Toddler Two, Where is Baby’s Belly Button, My First Body Board Book

On topic snacks this week:  Sandwiches cut with boy and girl cutters, ham and cheese stackers cut with hand shaped cutter,

New sign: See.  Make the letter “V” with your hand, hold it near your eyes and then move it away and down.

Find more terrific tot school posts over at 1+ 1 + 1 = 1 

This week I used gardens (flowers and bugs mostly) as a very general theme this week.

Baby L is 15 months 

Tot Basket: Alex Little Hands Stack a Puzzle – Garden  

She really liked stacking these.  They are nice and fat and easy to hold and were fairly easy for her to get into place.  No, she didn’t stack them in the correct order.  She’s 15 months, not 30!  She then lined them up in a row unstacked and I called out a number as she put each one down.  Then she started touching them randomly out of order and I would call the number of the position it was in.  She caught on pretty quickly that I was responding to her action and got quite a kick out of making mommy say “one, one, one, one, one” over and over  

Vocabulary: stack, top, rounded, smooth, numbers 1-6 

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Tot Basket: Magnetic Bug Catching Game (this is just like the fishing game, only its bugs.  The fishing game is a smarter buy.  The magnet hanging from a line attached to a wooden net handle makes far less sense than a magnet attached to a line attached to a fishing pole!). 

She played with it for a while, and while she couldn’t really control the magnet, she started using this trolling technique, dragging the magnet across the board until it caught something

Vocabulary: net, bug, specific bug names, magnet, catch, lift, metal

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Tot Basket: Tub Garden.  These are thick foam pieces that are meant to be used in the bath tub.  You get them wet and then they stick to the side of a shower door or whatever.  We just used them dry and played mix and match.  

After a bit of just playing together with them, I lined up some of the stems and piled up the blossoms to see if she was “getting” it and would put the flowers together.

Vocabulary: flower, bug, stem, leaf, blossom, grass 

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Collage.  I cut out some grassy knolls, stems, leaves, clouds and flower shapes for a contact paper collage (in a cardstock frame for support). I used the template from Wondertime’s Felt Garden for some of the pieces; others I just cut out free hand (from scrapbook papers).

At first I gave her the pieces in order, like the grassy bits first and then some stems, knowing that she would put them on closest to her first, then further away once the closest parts had something on it so the grass would be on the bottom, then the stems above that, etc).  But she kept grabbing the little plastic sleeve with all the cut outs in it, and got frustrated that she couldn’t figure out how to open it up to get at the shapes, so I just dumped them out and let her put things where she liked.

It didn’t come out looking badly at all – it’s Baby L’s abstract flower garden — yea, that’s it!

Vocabulary: grass, stem, bloom, flower, leaf, cloud, center, stick, sticky

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Tot Basket:  Imaginary Play Garden. I used the bottom of an egg carton, turned it upside down and painted it brown and then cut an X in each of the cup bottoms so we could push seeds through (dirt mounds), a shaggy brown bathroom rug (dirt patch), large lima beans (seeds), empty watering can, artificial flowers 

We placed the beans on each little “dirt mound”, pressed them through, pretended to water them, and then stuck silk flowers in the hole as if they had grown.  She did terrific picking up individual beans and setting them on each little egg cup bottom and using one finger to press the “seed” through.  When the beans got pushed through, she KNEW they were there, and kept trying to get them back out by getting a finger in the hole, but of course couldn’t reach them.  I showed her that they were under the egg carton and how to lift and move it to get them out.  She particularly enjoyed when I’d put a bean on each mound, wedged into the X so she could go down the line poking them through.

She had quite a long attention span for this activity, mostly playing with the beans; she couldn’t get the stem of the silk flowers into the holes.  I think she’d have done better with artificial flowers that had a single bloom instead of the clusters at the top (like a carnation or something).  The bunches of flowers made it so she couldn’t see the stem when she was aiming for the holes.  We also flipped the carton over and put a bean in each cup. 

Eventually it “degenerated” to playing fill and spill with the beans (a large handful stored in a small gladware container).

On a side note, I think I’ll save these items, add a straw hat, maybe a piece of old garden hose, some seed packets, a neckerchief, some seed catalogs, index cards and popsicle sticks for making plant markers and set it aside for a gardening “Prop Box” for when she is a little older and interested in dress up.

Vocabulary: Dirt, seed, push, poke, plant, water, sprinkle, flower, grow

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Sensory Bin: Potting soil, large lima beans for pretend seeds, a couple of plastic pots (technically biodegradable bamboo pots ), trowel and small rake.  Later we added a watering can.

 Although she followed my lead and imitated me with digging, filling the pots, and pretending to plant seeds for a short time, it didn’t take long before all she was doing was throwing the dirt all over the place.  I tried to re-interest her in confining everything to the tub with a couple of watering cans for sprinkling our seeds and making some mud to squish around in (potting soil really doesn’t make satisfying muddy messes, at least ours didn’t.  Too much of non dirt stuff in it, I guess for lightening up the soil or whatever), but it didn’t really convince her to stop throwing dirt everywhere.  After a short time and a half empty bin, we moved to the water table to get rid of the worst dirt, then headed in for a bath

 Vocabulary: dirt, soil, dig, trowel, shovel, rake, seeds, plant,

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Others: Fill and Spill Bugs, an old Mommy and Me Flower Puppet,  Art Cards – Garden

We played with them individually mostly, but I did try a new activity for us with the fill and spill bugs and the art cards and a few other 3D objects that I had around the house (which matched the cards). I lined up a few cards, piled a few of our items near by to see if she would be able to move the stuffed bug to the bug card, the plastic bird to the bird card, etc.

After a few demonstrations where I would name the cards on the ground, then pick up a 3D object and name that and lay it on the card, she did manage to get a few to the right place, but it was hit or miss, and I don’t think she was really getting it.  I’ll try something like this again in a few months.

On topic books we read this week: Sparkly Garden, In the Garden with Van Gogh, Jack’s Garden, Scratch and Sniff Garden, Inch by Inch, The Carrot Seed

On topic snacks this week:  Flower Quiche, flowers cut from fruit and ham and cheese (so many flower cutters b/c of the bento lunches), “butterflies” out of graham crackers, peanut butter and mini pretzels

New sign: Flower.  Make a “squashed O” with your hand, and touch it to your cheek on one side of your nose and then the other. 

Find more terrific tot school posts over at 1+ 1 + 1 = 1