Tot School Week 2: Color

For week 2 of Tot School I chose Color for the theme.  We did so many fun activities!  Most of them are relatively short since we do them during Peter's naps but they are perfect for toddler attention spans.  Here is a little recap of the week:
Day 1: We made rainbow toast by mixing butter with gel food coloring.  You can see from her face that she ate a spoonful of blue butter when I wasn't looking haha.  We also did water bead color sorting/sensory bin, and we fruit loop necklaces, a toddler classic.
Day 2: I printed off a picture of a rainbow and we each painted one.  I tried showing her how to do each stripe a different color but she was having to much fun doing her own thing.  We took a trip to the library to pick up 'Color' books to read throughout the week.  Lastly, we made bath paints out of shaving cream + food coloring.  Claire loves bath time anyway so this was a big hit with her.  She loved painting the walls and seeing the water change colors.

Day 3: We did rainbow Goldfish sorting, which was fun but Claire mostly wanted to eat the fish and I had to coax her to keep going.  I made Claire a rainbow ribbon ring by rounding up scraps in my fabric bin and we went outside and did a rainbow ribbon run.  We also made a rainbow hand print painting, which is in the last picture, and then I let her do some finger painting.  She loved doing the hand print painting.  I think it was one of her favorite activities from the whole week!

Day 4: I printed off a dot sheet and had Claire make a rainbow dot painting.  I made her a paint chip matching game.  I originally made one where you match the different shades on each paint chip but it was too advanced for Claire at this age so I figured out a way to simplify it and only have her match one of each color instead of several.  We also made apple yogurt donuts (apple slices with colored yogurt + sprinkles).  We waited and made these when Bryce was home from work and ate them as our treat for movie night.
Day 5: We did pom-pom color sorting, a Skittle experiment where you form a circle of skittles on a plate and pour water in the middle, and vacuum the rainbow!  

Peter Bryson Week by Week: 3 Months

August 27

Dear Peter,

Today you are 3 months old.  You are a whopping 18 pounds.  You have the cutest chubby cheeks and thighs.  I don't know why, but chubby rolls are the cutest on babies!  You are sleeping like a champ, usually 8-9 hours at night only waking up to eat once.  You still eat quite often during the day, usually every 2 1/2 to 3 hours.  But I have no complaints as I would rather have you eating often during the day than waking up a lot at night.  

You have started smiling and cooing all the time.  You always save your biggest smiles for mama, and I won't lie, I love it.  You especially love when I sing to you and your little smile fills your whole face.  Your dad and sister can get some good smiles out of you too.  Claire loves talking to you and trying all sorts of ways to get you to smile.   
You are such a sweet mellow boy.  You love to be held and cuddled but you are also pretty content to just lay on a blanket and watch your surroundings.  You are starting to stay awake longer and its been fun for us to interact with you more.  
Your favorite friend besides mom, dad, and Claire is the ceiling fan.  You seriously love it and get so excited when we lay you on our bed and you get to watch it.  You smile, coo, and kick your legs until you wear yourself out.  
We still love to call you our little Peter Pan, that's the nickname that seems to be sticking the most.  I don't think we have a choice but to dress you and Claire up as Peter Pan and Tinkerbell for Halloween next month.  I've started planning out your costumes and I'm so excited to see how they turn out.  Hopefully you don't grow too much by then so your costume will fit!

Love you too much sweet boy,

Mom

Peter Bryson Week by Week: 12 Weeks

Petery Bryson at 12 weeks old.  He's finally holding is head up good during tummy time, which is hard work for him being in the 99th percentile!

Tot School: Week 1 Camping

I started Tot School with Claire last week!  I've been wanting to do it forever, like since she turned 2, but with pregnancy, moving, Bryce graduating, and then having a new baby I have yet had the time or motivation to start.  Now that I have Peter on a good schedule during the day and we've adjusted to life with 2 kids, I decided it was a good time to start.  I looked around on Pinterest for some ideas and found www.simplylearningkids.com which is such an awesome resource.  A mom put together an entire years worth of tot school activities with different themes each week.  I was so excited I started planning our next few weeks right away.  I'll be using some of her themes & activities and some of my own.  I decided it would be fun to do a weekly blog post documenting our Tot school activities and also to share ideas with other toddler moms.  I chose camping to be the theme for our first week since we were going camping later in the week. 
The first day we made a camping themed breakfast (pine tree shaped toast, scrambled eggs, & sausage), read a stack of camping themed books I picked up from the library, and made hot cocoa cloud dough.  Claire was a huge fan of the cloud dough, she played with it for over an hour!

The second day we made a fun campfire snack with honey wheat pretzels and fruit roll ups and made a cute camping picture.  I cut out all the shapes and the picture of Claire and helped her glue them to a piece of construction paper with a glue stick.
The third day we made s'mores trail mix.  Claire thought this was so fun to add all the ingredients and stir them up by herself.  We also made a fingerprint firefly jar, and light up firefly bugs out of easter eggs.
The fourth day I printed off camping clip cards and had Claire use a clothespin to match the small picture to the big picture on each card.  We also did pretend play camping outside in our yard after her nap.  Claire thought this was the funnest thing ever.  She wanted to stay and play out in her tent all afternoon. 

On Friday, the fifth day, we went on our actual camping trip and I printed off a nature scavenger hunt for us to do while we were camping.  Our first week of Tot school went so well, we both loved it!  I loved having a little more structure and routine to our days and loved having planned one-on-one time with her.  I'm really excited to continue this throughout the year and hope it will be a fun experience for us both!  
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