Monday Week 4-Ocean wrap up

We're back to potty training again.  Monkey's rash is gone and we're done treating it again so we're back to pottying.  We started yesterday and had a ROUGH day!  He went back to going non-stop all day and we had to break him of that.  We had 12-15 accidents yesterday and caught two.

For those of you who don't know we started out introducing the potty at 9.5 months because he was very curious about the bathroom and the potty.  He was army crawling really well at that point and would follow us to the bathroom.  We got him a little potty and started putting him on it before his bath and while we were going.  He started holding it until he was put on the potty so I decided to see if he would do it at other points in the day and he did.  By the time he was 1 he was fully trained with less than 1 accident per week but by 14 months life got kind of crazy and and he reverted back to more accidents.  We kept at it though until he broke out with a terrible rash about a month and a half ago.  We had to stop because we had to treat it and almost as soon as it was better it broke out again.  He was diagnosed with a skin condition that many kids get when they're in diapers (cloth or disposable).  It's worse with synthetics so we have been using prefolds and wool to keep his diaper area "in-shape" so to speak.  We just finished our second treatment so I decided to move with full steam to try and get him trained so we hopefully won't have to treat it again.

Today was MUCH better.  We didn't really start in trainers (we use the Gerber ones at home during the day and our Monkey Bunns ones when we go out) until after nap time.  We had 2 accidents fairly quick.  After we had dinner though I took Monkey to the bathroom...nothing.  About 10 minutes later he ran to the bathroom door (we keep it shut because we don't have a potty lock or anything) and said and signed "potty, potty!"  I of course ran to the bathroom and he went!  He did that again about an hour later and then had an accident while I was running his bath water about 15 minutes later.  I'm proud of Monkey though-he did a really good job today!

On to the books we read!
Ocean Friends by Robert Lyn Nelson-this book has GORGEOUS pictures.  It's about a dolphin and the dolphin's friends.
Rainbow Fish Counting
Rainbow Fish Colors
Rainbow Fish ABCs (really short-several letters per page, no poem or anything.  Basically just the alphabet song)
Rainbow Fish and the Blue Whale-great to teach how to face your problems and talk them out peacefully
Curious George Goes Fishing
Fishes in the Ocean-not really about fish but great to teach counting (level 1 reader)
Turtle in the Sea (we read this before)
Ocean Counting: Odd Numbers
Peanut Butter and Jellyfishes: A Very Silly Alphabet Book
Commotion in the Ocean-poems about various ocean animals
First Words at the Aquarium (Curious George)
Shapes with Ocean Animals by Melanie Watt ISBN 1553378334

And the past week we've been reading
Clifford's Bedtime
The Going to Bed Book.

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

Tot School: Friday

Books read:
Yellow board book
Blue board book
Cowboy Small (borrowed from the library-cute intro to a cowboy's life for toddlers/preschoolers)
Rest of the Harold Book
Alphatales B book again

Watched Baby Signing Time volume 3 (A new day-weather, day, etc)
We also watched Signing Time volume 6 My Favorite Things because it showed the color signs and fruits and veggies and movements (I needed a refresher!)

Color walk. We went to the dollar store and it's fairly close so we went on a color walk. DS enjoyed the green grass being pointed out and thought the red fire hydrant was hillarious. He thought a white flower (dandelion) was cool and wanted to look at it for a while. It was fun finding colors to point out to him. I would name colors as he would look at something. He noticed when the grass stopped and looked at me waiting for me to name the color.

We went to the baby gym today and Monkey enjoyed the balls. He played with the balls in a ball pit and the big balls (exercise/birth balls). He had fun bouncing them. He also learned how to bounce on his hands and knees on a trampoline.

We might finger paint tomorrow since it kept getting put off.

Thursday Tot School: Green and Purple

We had a ROUGH day yesterday-Monkey slept until almost 6:30 so most of our activities were after dinner/before bed

Books Read:
Green board book (again part of a 4 part set-wish there was one for each color though!)
Let's Pretend (a library board book-it would be more fun to read to an over 18 month-er that wants to start playing house and dress up)
Harold and the Purple Crayon book mentioned in last post
-we read the first two stories and will read the rest tonight before bed

Monkey had a bubble bath and said "bubble" over and over (he LOVES chasing bubbles and having bubble baths).

Tot School: Tuesday RED!

Books read:
Big Bird's Red Book (thanks mom for keeping this one for me-it got lots of giggles!)
Red touchy feely book (came from a set we were given)
Alphatales A book again

We were up until 4 AM with Monkey so he napped until well after 5 so we skipped finger painting for the day. We still enjoyed our reading!

Tot School: Monday

Books read:
Crayola My First Book of Colors (bought from the dollar spot at Target a few weeks ago)
Love Bugs: Colors (given to us but probably from the dollar spot at Target)
Baby Colors
My First Colors by DK (borrowed from the library)
Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? (making a lap book also-mine is based on this one)
The Adventures of Abby Alligator (Alphatales)

Played with the foam letter A

Watched volume 1 of Baby Signing Time (pets, family, snacks/food/drinks, more, diaper dance/potty). Monkey LOVES to dance to the "Diaper Dance".

Monkey liked looking at the rainbows of colors in the books and flipping through to look at them over and over. He started saying "blue" but doesn't recognize what color it is yet.

Started Tot School-our week!

Well we're not quite done but it's nap time so I want to tell about our first awesome week!
I was working on all my tot books and am STILL not done with the first 15 weeks (until Christmas-we're going by the University schedule so we take breaks with daddy). The good news is that my Bachelor's degree paper is FINALLY on its way though (spent a lot of time this week on the phone!). We've also had some bad toddler days this week so we didn't do everything we wanted but it's ok! I think it'll do a separate post for each day so it's easier to follow. Our theme this week was colors and we also worked on A and B. I need to find/make some fun alphabet cards to laminate (some I could also put in a lap book). We have the foam mat thing that you link together on the floor however it only has uppercase letters. We love it though. You can even pull out a couple and punch the letters out and use it as a puzzle. Here are some other things we used this week:
Alphatales books (A and B this week) I bought mine from eBay but this shows a good picture of what comes in my boxed set
Puzzle from Walmart (we got several of the three packs of puzzles and one happened to have colors in it on crayons)
Toddler Play (I got my copy from paperback swap but it's an awesome book!)
The Toddler Busy Book (I got my copy from paper back swap and mine has a slightly different cover-highly recommend this book for every home!)
Baby Signing Time (watched volumes 1, 2, 3)
Various books from home and the library (will mention each in individual posts).

Curious George again :)

We have several more George books but here's two more that are fun.

Curious George's Big Book of Curiosity
This is a must have! It is one of those books that labels things but it isn't just one subject. You will find body parts, emotions, family clothing, toys, things you can find in your neighborhood/town, jobs, homes (types of homes), grocery store, meals (including foods you might eat in those meals), transportation, farm animals and sounds, counting to 20, shapes, alphabet, opposites, superlatives (ie low, lower, lowest), seasons, weather, birthday party (things you'd find at one), colors, pets (in a classroom), playground, musical instruments, land/Earth features, bathroom, bedroom. This would be great to teach how to read since everything is labeled. It also includes most things your child will learn in preschool.

Curious George and the Rocket
A slightly shorter version of Curious George Gets a Medal. The one we borrowed was a board book though which is fun for little hands

The Complete Adventures of Curious George
The ultimate must have! This book has all of the original stories:
-Curious George
-Curious George Takes A Job
-Curious George Rides a Bike
-Curious George Gets a Medal
-Curious George Flies a Kite
-Curious George Learns the Alphabet
-Curious George Goes to the Hospital
All are really fun stories!

Curious George

We LOVE Curious George at our house. We own this book and we love to read about George. My son's nickname is Monkey and I call him George a lot because he likes to be curious and get in to trouble (like any other 14 month old!). I highly recommend that book. It has all of the original books in it by Margret and H.A. Rey. We decided to check out all of the books that our library has about George so look forward to another post soon when we get the rest of them!

Curious George Visits a Toy Store
I wouldn't say this is our favorite George book but it's still fun. There's a new toy store that opens and George is excited to check out the new toys. He learns how to Hula-hoop and helps children get toys off high shelfs. The owner is mad at him throughout the book because he keeps making messes but in the end realizes that he made the grand opening a big success.

Curious George and the Hot Air Balloon
George and his friend visit Mt Rushmore on a vacation. Workers are working on Mt Rushmore and George wants to go in a helicopter to see what they're doing up close. They have to run to see the hot air balloon race though. While everyone is distracted George sees a rope and MUST climb it. While he's climbing the rope up to a balloon the rope that's holding the balloon down comes undone so he starts going up and up with the balloon. George ends up at Mt Rushmore again and helps save a stranded worker. They land and a big crowd rescues them. George then gets to go on a helicopter ride to see Mt Rushmore closer.

Curious George's First Day of School
I really liked this one and think we'll have to buy it so we can read it over and over when we're learning colors.

George is invited to visit school. He is very helpful all day. They get to paint and only have red yellow and blue paints. He decides to make more colors. He ends up mixing them all together and makes a big mess. He tries to clean it up but makes more of a mess and gets upset that everyone is mad at him. His classmates help him clean up.

Curious George Feeds the Animals
George visits the zoo and feeds the animals. He gets in trouble for feeding the animals until a lost parrot finds him. He's told not to feed the animals but is thanked for helping find the parrot. There are a lot of animals he sees (you read what they are) so it's great for learning animal names.