Monkey Thursday

I was super busy last night with no time to post so I'm going to talk about yesterday and today (2 seperate posts).  We had a MONKEY day yesterday!

Curious George at the Aquarium
Happy Halloween Curious George This one was fun-it was in the form of a poem and had several tabbed stories.
First Words at the Zoo Good toddler book-not too much George though.
Curious George Plants a Tree (this would be GREAT for Earth day!)

For those of you new we're BIG fans of Curious George.  Check out all of our other posts about Curious George

We even had a George themed first birthday party.  Here are the cakes I made (the first was for us the second was the smash cake):

 

It originally had Monkey's name on it.

I had to add Monkey eating it of course :)

 

Friday week 2

We didn't get a ton done today because I'm not feeling well.  We watched Signing Time volume 2 (Playtime Signs) in the morning and read a book and went to the library in the afternoon.  We plan to do the rest of our activities tomorrow as well as some reading (I am going to make a letter D box).

The Octopus-a story a grandpa tells his grandson (both are dogs) when he has the chicken pox.  It's about an Octopus that rains down on him in the bath tub (the grandson at this point is in the bath tub).  After the story they find an octopus in the tub!  Can they shove him down the drain?  This is a beginning reader (I Can Read!) level 2.  We read this one because it was due tomorrow (got it before we planned out our themes for the year-actually we requested it when we were reading about them for the letter O)

Funny thing though...we go to the library to return all of our books for the last two weeks.  I requested all of our books last night for the next two weeks since we all know how fun it is to search for stuff with toddlers!  Some others came through that I requested quite a while ago with those and we got a bunch of board books to keep Monkey entertained during church (our library has a wonderful selection of board books and since Monkey loves to "read" we've found that if we pop different ones in my purse to go to doctor's offices and several in the diaper bag for church he stays entertained and somewhat quiet).  We left with probably close to 100 books/videos/cds!  I have a huge cloth bag full plus a smaller one (that one has all the board books plus several that we requested) and a plastic bag that I double bagged that the handles ripped off on the way out to the parking lot!  Needless to say Monkey isn't going with me to pick up our books every-other-week.  We plan to start going to story time weekly though so he'll still get to go to the library.  I was so embarrassed to walk out with so many books but I know we'll get through ALL of them at least once (we have 3 weeks-we'll read them in 2)!

All kinds of animals: Tuesday-tot school week 2

I'm debating whether to read the Jungle Book to Monkey or not.  I've heard there are some rough parts so I might have to read it first.  That being said I think we'll watch the Jungle Book Friday or Saturday.  We've had a LONG day today.  We went to the doctor for Monkey's rash and found out we'll have to treat it off and on until he's completely potty trained (he was doing GREAT around 12 months but has had a major regression since).  We made chocolate chip frozen yogurt today for our craft/activity (chocolate chips start with C!)  Here's what we used:

Ice Cream Ball
Brown Cow Vanilla Yogurt (Cream Top but you can use any others-the Maple flavor might be yummy too!)
Some sugar (to taste)
Enjoy Life Foods chocolate chips (buy them on Amazon here) (perfect size and perfect for Monkey since he has a peanut allergy!)

I dumped all of it in (a little over half a bag of the chocolate chips-we like our chocolate chips) and I rolled it inside on a towel.  This part is VERY important because we've had leaking issues with our ice cream ball before!  Monkey had fun rolling the ball with me (ours is blue-we got it as a gift for Christmas).  In about 30 minutes of rolling (stopping halfway in to scrape the sides) you have awesome frozen yogurt.  The recipe for vanilla that comes with the ball is really good.

After we got done with that we started reading and playing with puzzles. 
Books we read:
But Not the Hippopatamus by Sandra Boynton (library)-this is a fun book.  Monkey loved this-we've read it A LOT in the past couple weeks.
The Grouchy Ladybug by Eric Carle (also a library book).  This was pretty fun.  It is nice to teach about feelings, counting (also time since there are little clocks on it and it says "At 6 o'clock..." "At 7 o'clock..." and so on), size comparisons, etc.  I think this book can be applied a lot of ways!
Little Polar Bear Finds a Friend by Hans de Beer (also a libray book).  Little Polar bear ends up in a crate and is in an airplane to be sent to the zoo but helps Wally Walrus and the other animals escape.  He meets another bear.  You'll have to see if Little Polar Bear makes it home!
Polar Babies by Susan Ring.  A fun book for babies and toddlers.  The polar bear cubs play all day.  We borrowed it from the library.
You Are Special, Little One- cute going to bed story! (also from the library)
The Jungle Book (Disney's).  Monkey enjoyed me reading about Mowgli's adventures.
Kangaroos Have Joeys.  Another library book. This book says the names of baby animals.  It would be really fun if you wanted to learn that deer have fawn and kangaroos have joeys (a variety of animals, fish, and insects).  You can also use this to learn about the different classifications of animals since I believe all of them are presented in this book.
We will also finish the Velveteen Rabbit before bed (we started it yesterday).  Edited after bedtime to say we didn't get to finish or even read more than 10 words.  Monkey didn't take a nap so he didn't even want a bed time story tonight!  Oh well there's always tomorrow!

Monkey also played with animal puzzles but I've been trying for over an hour to get the pictures up and my card reader isn't working so maybe tomorrow!

Here's another post about a kangaroo book-we really liked it!

Tuesday 9/8 edit: Pictures!!!

Monkey has his own way of doing puzzles.  He figures out where one thing goes and puts the rest on top.  He'll get it!

Bunny Monday (week 2)

Well we're starting week 2 of tot school.  We took some fun pictures when we got going...at 7 PM!  Yeah that's right.  We had THAT kind of a day.  As I type I'm on hold trying to get Monkey in to the doctor for yet another "rash" (not really a rash...) that looks like a chemical burn in his diaper area.  He was napping until well after 6:30.  We still read books and watched Signing Time while I got our dinner ready. 

 

Monkey just woke up and is enjoying a sippy while mommy gets ready to read!

 

Bunny with the letter C.  Monkey got Bunny for his 1st birthday from his grandparents

We read:
Alphatales Cc: Copycats while Monkey played with his foam letter C (you can read about these materials here)
Clifford's Animal Sounds-a really cute board book we got from the library.  Perfect for a 17 month old!  Monkey looked through this one for quite a while.
My Very First Book of Animal Sounds by Eric Carle-another board book from the library.  This one is split in half when you open the cover.  It's basically a game to match the animal picture and name with the sound they make.  I don't think we'll check it out again but it inspired me to make an animal themed tot book.  I will make a game that you match the animal to the sound and an animal ABC book.
Five Little Bunnies-this was a First Little Golden Book that I was given by one of my elementary school teachers.  It is great to teach about everyone being an individual, how everyone in a family has a certain role, the 5 senses, the number 5 or 4 or 1.  I used my fingers to show how many bunnies were being talked about throughout the story.  I wiggled my fingers in Monkey's face when we read.  He thought this was quite amusing and drew him in to the story even more.
The Bunny Book by Richard Scarry mine however looks like the second picture.  This was one of my favorite books as a child.  It's really cute and teaches toddlers about different types of bunnies as well as their features (long ears or short ears, etc).  Monkey loves looking at this book but I have to keep a VERY close eye on him since he likes to tear.
The Friendly Duck-Another one of my favorites from my childhood.  This is a story about a little boy that lives on a farm that visits a duck (he passes other animals on his way).  The little boy doesn't come one day so the duck follows his path and finds him.  This book would be great to just read or to learn about farm animals or to learn about a series of events.  The duck is the cutest part of the book!
The Tale of Benjamin Bunny by Beatrix Potter-Another book from my childhood.  We also wanted to read about Peter Rabbit but didn't have time to get to that one too.  MUST have books for every child!
Bunnies ABCs- This is a fun book that has a different animal for each letter.  There are some funny ones I haven't heard of outside of this book but it inspired me to make an animal ABC book in a lapbook for Monkey.  I hope to work on this in the next few weeks.
The Runaway Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown-Honestly not my favorite book of hers.  It was cute because it had the message that no matter what the baby bunny did to run away the mom would change herself to make the baby come back.  I personally like Guess How Much I Love You better.
And we started reading The Velveteen Rabbit before bed (we'll finish tomorrow).

We watched Baby Signing Time volume 4: Let's Be Friends (friend signs including share, feelings, opposites, food, etc)

We went to the baby gym today and Monkey learned how to say "apple".  He enjoyed playing with his letter C while we read and also played with his bead maze.  He's getting really good at moving the beads on some of the wires.

Monkey "reading" the Clifford Animal Sounds book

I came up with another good idea that we will start implementing tomorrow.  We are going to start putting together "letter boxes".  We have a shoe box from my husband's new shoes that Monkey LOVES to open and close (it's attached on one long side) so we are going to put objects or pictures of objects that begin with the letter we're going to work on that day.  It's a fairly big shoe box so we can fit a variety of objects.  I will be posting what we put in each box if you decide you want to do this with your family too.

Tot School week 2!

Monkey is getting closer to 17 months by the day! You can see our themes for the year here.

This week we will be talking about Animals! I will update this post as the week goes on to add each day's posts. We are going to do a Brown Bear lapbook (found here). I got EVERYTHING laminated last week. My in laws own and run a copy shop so I got $60 worth of lamination cheap :)! I'm busily cutting everything but am proud to say I have 2 of the 11 done (those get us through Halloween). I have the Nativity one (it's in this book-Volume 3-the pictured one is Volume 2-I got it at the Thrift store for under $1) done and this farm animal one (see the first one on the page-Down on the Farm). We're also going to make felt board pieces from the Nativity and the farm animals. I need to get my felt board made (just need to wash and dry the felt and then I can glue it on my board-I'll post with pictures how I'm going to go about it in the next week or two). We have a LOT of books we want to read this week including starting The Jungle Book. Who can go wrong with a classic book under $5?

Monday: baby gym, bunnies, the letter c, animal sounds
Tuesday: polar bears, kangaroos, hippos (nice combo huh?)
Wednesday: "doggies", Brown bear
Thursday: Monkeys and Curious George (as you can see from previous posts we're HUGE George fans)
Friday: Library and chickens

Tot school themes for the year 16 m-2yr

I decided I should post my themes in case anyone else wants to do Tot School with us. As I have more time I'll update this thread to link to the lap books and folder games that we will do. I'll also post links to the threads for those weeks so you can see the activities we did. I'll include the link of where I got the idea for the theme. This might give you some good ideas of things your child/ren might like.

Week 1 Colors. Letters A and B. Making own lapbook with shapes in 11 colors (ten colors, one white) with pockets to sort the colors and pockets to sort the shapes. I'll make the pockets removable so we can start with sorting 2 colors or shapes at first. I'm also including the color book from here. I'll post pictures when everything is laminated. Intro, M, Tu, W, Th, F.

Week 2 Animals. Letters C and D. Making a lap book out of these books. Week 2 (find each individual day in that post).

Week 3 Ocean. Letters E and F. Lap book made from these two books: 1 and 2 hopefully ending the week with a trip to the aquarium. Week 3

Week 4 Feelings. Letters G and H. Lap book (this one is awesome!)

Week 5 Senses. Letters I and J.

Week 6 Water. Letters K and L.

Week 7 Farm. Letters M and N

Week 8 Shapes. Letters O and P. Lapbook with colors.

Week 9 Fall. Letters Q and R.

Week 10 Halloween. Letters S and T. Halloween on Saturday

Week 11 Animals (zoo animals). Letters U and V.

Week 12 Weather. Letters W and X.

Week 13 Winter. Letters Y and Z.

Week 14 Thanksgiving. Alphabet (week of Thanksgiving so we'll only work M-W)

Week 15 Christmas and Gingerbread Men. This is the end of November-beginning of December. We'll extend our activities for Christmas through the Christmas break.

Week 16 January.

Week 17 Snow

Week 18 We are all the same inside and Pirates (Martin Luther King Day + day after we'll do the first)

Week 19 Noah's Ark (as an alternate you can look at animals or something else-Monkey loves animals that's why we're doing so many animal themes)

Week 20 February

Week 21 Big Machines

Week 22 America (President's Day this week)

Week 23 Butterflies and caterpillars

Week 24 March

Week 25 St. Patrick's (the 17th is during Spring Break)

Week 26 Trains, Planes, Cars (after Spring Break)

Week 27 April and flowers and plants

Week 28 Easter

Week 29 Counting

Rain rain go away!

It's been raining A LOT around here lately (seriously for 4 weeks with about 3 days off in there). It's been nice the last couple days but we decided we'd read books about rain.

Rain by Manya Stojic
This is a book about a jungle or the like that hadn't received rain in a while. All the animals could sense in some way the rain was coming. It was a fun book with bright colors. It would be great to teach about the 5 senses.

Rain Romp: stomping away a grouchy day by Jane Kurtz
This book had a RAINBOW of colors. It was about a girl that woke up grouchy because of the rain but went outside to play in it and stomped her grouchiness away. There was a rainbow of colors on every single page. It was a lot of fun!

Octopus books!

We read two books about octopuses:

Octopus Oyster Hermit Crab Snail: A Poem of the Sea by Sara Anderson
A good book for beginning readers. Simple text and bright illustrations. We liked the flow of it and learning about different animals in the sea/ocean.

An Octopus Followed Me Home by Dan Yaccarino
This was a fun book about a child that brought an octopus home and asked if she could keep it. It wasn't her first animal she brought home to keep as a pet though! My son loved the bright pictures and thought it was a fun book.

Another turtle book

We got another turtle book and I have to admit it's a fun one!

Emma's Turtle by Eve Bunting
The story is written from the perspective of the turtle. His girl reads to him all the time about far away countries and places and animals found there. He decides to go on an adventure where he thinks he has traveled through all of those places yet he only makes it across the yard. It's a fun book to teach a little about animals in different countries and the love the turtle and girl have for each other. It's a really cute book!

Turtles and Aesop's Fables

We chose to read about turtles for our letter T today. We had an added bonus of getting a book that had a bunch of Aesop's fables though!

Turtle in the Sea by Jim Arnosky
Cute book about a mama turtle who lays eggs on the beach. Talks about the life cycle of a turtle and how it went through so many struggles in life yet still laid eggs.
The Rabbit and the Turtle: Aesop's fables retold by Eric Carle
This is a great book to teach morals to your children. It contains the following stories:
-The Lion and the Mouse (teaches friends come in all shapes and sizes-a mouse helps a lion that's in trouble because the lion didn't eat him)
-The Wolf and the Dog (teaches being free is the greatest gift-wolf wants to be a guard dog until it realizes it needs a collar and would be tied up)
-The Fox and the Crane (teaches treat others as you want to be treated-fox invites crane to dinner but crane can't eat off fox's plates so crane invites fox over and fox can't eat out of a goblet)
-The Cat and the Mouse (teaches that an idea isn't always enough-mice plan to put a bell around cat's neck so they will hear cat coming but no one volunteers to do it)
-The Monkey and the Fox (teaches to not try to be something you're not-Monkey imitates a king so everyone except fox votes for him, he ends up falling for a trap)
-The Rabbit and the Turtle (classic slow and steady wins the race-rabbit and turtle race, rabbit decides to rest until turtle catches up but turtle wins)
-The Wolf and the Lamb (when faced with danger make wise choices-wolf catches a lamb who for her final wish asks for wolf to play her music, eventually the shepherd hears and doesn't recognize the music and comes to save the lamb)
-The Fox and the Ox (be proud of who you are-frog tries to be big like ox and ends up blowing up even though his family told him to stop)
-The Blackbird and the Peacock (don't pretend to be someone you're not-a blackbird wants to be a peacock so it sticks feathers in its belt and everyone makes fun of him)
-The Fox and the Crow (common sense is greater than beauty-a baby fox is hungry so it's mama starts talking about how beautiful everything about a crow is, crow starts singing and drops its food and the baby fox eats it)
-The Grasshopper and the Ant (always prepare for tomorrow today-grasshopper sings all summer while ants work, in the winter grasshopper has no food)

Give Yourself to the Rain

Give Yourself to the Rain: poems for the very young by Margaret Wise Brown

I loved reading these poems to my son. He's always loved Goodnight Moon (same author). They were very calming. This would be a great book to read at bedtime. I especially loved the Christmas poem (Christmas Song). This is one we will have to buy so we can read it over and over.

Yak who Yelled YUCK

The Yak who Yelled Yuck by Carol Pugliano-Martin (another Scholastic AlphaTales)

Another great book in the series. It's about a yak who won't try new foods and yells yuck until it tries new foods. This book got some giggles!

Q is for Quiet Quail

The Quiet Quail by Heather Feldman (Another Scholastic AlphaTales)
Such a fun book! We are totally getting this series! My son started yelling "Quack" with the book. All the Q sounds make this a really fun book. Like the others in the series it's complete with an activity to find everything that starts with q in the final picture, a cheer, and suggestions to help you teach the letter q to your child.

Zany Zoo

Zany Zoo by William Wise

I have a Bachelor's degree and still couldn't understand every word in this book so there's no way that my 14 month old would understand. He got bored quickly with this book (that's a first). However it could be fun to read to an older child just don't expect them to be able to read it for quite a while. The poems were fun and a play on words.

We also read:
Animal Strike at the Zoo: It's True! by Karma Wilson

I LOVED this book! It was so much fun. My son was jumping up and down the whole time we read it because i was easy to get involved with. The illustrations were really cute too. The rhyme scheme of the book made it really fun.

L

Nobody Laughs at a Lion by Paul Bright
This book was really fun. It had a lion who thought he was good at everything but someone always beat him in everything except one thing (you'll have to read the book to find out what lions do best!). We had a lot of giggles during this one. The illustrations are simple but fun.

Kangaroo

Does a Kangaroo Have a Mother, Too? by Eric Carle
In this book someone (a child I assume) asks another person (I assume the child's mother) if various animals have mothers too. In the end we learn all animals have mothers and all the mothers love their children. I think it has a cute message.

Over in the Jungle

Over in the Jungle: a Rainforest Rhyme by Marianne Berkes
This was a fun fun book with rhymes about all sorts of creatures from the rainforest. It teaches counting and in the end there is a picture that you can find and count the animals. The bright colors are great for babies so I suggest you get the board book version. We had fun with this one. It also gives suggestions for actions you can do to make the book even more fun!