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 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

MANY more Curious George books

Curious George Goes to the Beach
George goes to the beach with his friend and ends up feeding all their food to the seagulls and their basket washes away in the ocean. A little girl he met conquers her fear of the ocean and helps George swim to get it. They end up getting to share lunch with the girl and her grandma. This was a cute story but not like the original ones that there was something cool to learn (like folding a hat out of paper, etc). We enjoyed it though.

Curious George Goes Sledding
This is a book my parents got me as a child. Curious George saves a little boy from going off a hill too fast on a sled after George creates a mess rolling a huge ball down the same hill. The book was adapted from the film series according to the cover. It was a fun book to read. We'll read it a lot when it snows :)!

Curious George at the Parade
We read this one last Sunday in honor of the 4th. It was a fun book about a parade George saw (and ruined part of). I wish we would have read it before we went to our parade but we ran out of time.

Curious George First Words at the Farm
This is a board book to teach farm words. It isn't a story or anything just pictures and words. George is in a lot of the pictures otherwise you'd never know it's a Curious George book. It was fun for Monkey to look at and we'll probably check it out again but likely won't buy it.

Curious George Learns to Count from 1 to 100
This book is more than counting. There are other activities to do such as mapping through a town, identifying objects, grouping, and you can count each object on the pages. This is a book we plan to add to our collection.

Curious George Visits the Library
We LOVE the library. This would be a fun book to read at the library or in preparation to go to the library. George wants to check out all the books and ends up crashing a cart of books. He ends up just getting a few to read.

Curious George in the Big City
George visits New York and ends up getting lost. He takes a tour of the city until he finds the store he lost the Man in the Yellow hat. This is a Christmas-time book because they are visiting to get presents.

Curious George and the Dinosaur
I think this book was part of the idea that went in to the recent Curious George movie. George finds a dinosaur skeleton and has to climb on it when they visit the museum but he gets the kids excited about the museum which was what counted. This would be a great book to read before visiting a museum.

Curious George Roller Coaster (Level 1 Beginning reader)
George tries to grow to be able to ride the roller coaster. They end up letting him ride it because monkeys don't grow very tall. There are activities to encourage measuring and to use household objects to learn how to measure. There are directions for making a growth chart too. We always have fun reading the beginning reading books. I think they are a bit simpler for Monkey to understand.

Curious George Goes to a Movie
George goes to a movie and is too curious of where the picture is coming from so he ends up going in to the film room and unraveling the whole reel. The boy that was operating it cleans it up as George does shadow puppets. This would be fun to read before you turn out the lights and use a flashlight to make shadow puppets.

Curious George Snowy Day
This is just like an episode of Curious George. It snows all night and he goes out to play in the snow. He borrows a sled to get home and saves the neighbor's pig on the way. There is a maze and other activities in the back. It also gives directions for making snowflakes.

Curious George in the Snow
George goes to a ski resort with his friend. He uses a pizza pan to slide down the mountain when (after already getting in to trouble) he sees his friend. He helps a skier go faster though. This is a fun winter time book.

Curious George and the Pizza
George learns to make pizza and then makes some of his own. He hides in the delivery van and helps deliver a tricky pizza so he is rewarded with a yummy pizza. This would be fun to read before making kid-friendly pizza (ie bagel pizza, tortilla pizzas).

Curious George and the Firefighters
George goes on a field trip to a firestation and hops on the fire truck and entertains kids while the firemen fight the fire. This would be fun to learn a little about firemen or before going on a tour of a firestation.

Curious George and Friends: Favorite Stories by Margret and H.A. Rey
This book is fun because it has a lot of books in it for much less. I will talk about each story
-Curious George (I will talk about this one later-we're reading our big George book before naps so I will review it soon)
-Cecily G and the 9 Monkeys (we already read this one-you can read my post about it here).
-Elizabite: Adventures of a Carnivorous Plant. This was a fun one with simple words and pictures. Elizabite tries to eat everyone and everything including a burgler. The eventually take her to a zoo.
-Pretzel. This is a story about a weiner (dachshund) puppy who grows up to love a little dachshund and tries to get her to like him. She doesn't want to like him only because he's the longest prize winning dachshund around. He tries to do all sorts of things to make her like him but it's not until he uses his length to save her that she realizes how great it is for him to be big.
-Katy No-Pocket (by Emmy Payne). This is about a kangaroo mommy that can't carry her baby because she doesn't have a pocket. She tries to learn what other animals do to carry their babies but ends up going in to town to find a pocket. She finds a whole lot of pockets and carries all of the animal babies around.
-Spotty. Spotty is a bunny with spots. He is the only one in his family that has spots and they are afraid to show him to grandma because he's different. Spotty runs away and finds a family of bunnies with spots except one plain one. Spotty teaches that family (and eventually his) about the importance of loving everyone even if they are different.
-Billy's Picture. Billy is a bunny who wants to draw a picture. He gets going but all the other animals come and make different parts of his picture look like theirselves. The end result is quite funny. They all draw their own self portraits afterwards.
-Whiteblack the Penguin Sees the World. Whiteblack wants to visit the world to have something to talk about on his radio show. He visits a bunch of different places and uses many modes of transportation to get everywhere. He has plenty of stories to tell when he's done!

Curious George's First Words at the Aquarium
This was a lot like the farm book. Great for a baby to learn to identify things but no fun George action.

Merry Christmas Curious George
George and the man with the yellow hat go to pick out a tree. He ends up getting stuck in one that goes to a children's hospital. He is able to cheer up the children and they have a fun party there. We plan to get this one again closer to Christmas time.

Curious George and the Dump Truck
George finds a dump truck that was left unattended. He ends up dumping dirt out in to a pond. It makes the ducks happy which ends up making the workers happy because it made the park more fun.

Curious George Makes Pancakes
The town holds a fundraiser breakfast for the children's hospital. George figures he can help after adding blueberries to people's pancakes. Monkeys have four hands so he was able to serve everyone quickly when the person making them got overwhelmed and ran off to find someone to help. He runs off and ends up in a dunking booth. He helped make the fundraiser the best yet.

Curious George at the Firestation
This is different from the other one. George and his friend visit the firestation. They learn what is there and see some puppies their dalamation had. George rings the bell to see what would happen and everyone gets mad at him. One of the puppies gets out of the basket and almost falls down the hole around the pole but George catches him and saves the day. They let him keep his fireman's hat.

We're going to go pick up a few more at the library. If anyone has suggestions for our next theme let me know!!! Otherwise we'll probably read all of our books we own and talk about them.