Last Week in 1 Quick Post

Monkey is 2 +4 months.

I was debating if I should do a post or not but we read a lot of great books so I wanted to do a REALLY quick post of just our reading with a little commentary on the books we read.






Last week (August 16th) we checked out this book and started reading it.  I've had a lot of people tell me that I shouldn't read chapter books to my toddler for whatever reason (I've had people give me long lists that just don't make much sense to me).  I have no problem with Monkey playing quietly with toys while listening to me read.  In fact, my fondest memories of elementary school come from teachers reading to me while I worked on something else quietly.  Some of my favorite books (well they became my favorite books) were read to me this way.  We've both really enjoyed Ralph S. Mouse and his motorcycle.







This is one of our favorites.  It's wonderful to help with counting which is something we've been kind of focusing on lately because Monkey has been counting from 1-10 but sometimes will skip 7 or 4.  We've also been introducing the concept of actually counting something concrete instead of just saying the numbers so he can learn to link those two concepts in his head.  I would highly recommend this book (and you sitting and counting each apple on each animal's head) when trying to teach this.








Monkey has been OBSESSED with hiccups lately.  Sometimes I have a hard time determining whether he has hiccups or if he's just pretending though he often gets them anyways.  I thought this would be a fun book to read with him and it was.  He got in to it and made the hiccuping noises with me as I read to him.









Monkey has always liked fish.  This was a really fun book about consequences and trying to teach young children to listen to those in authority or introducing them of how to care for pets.  A little boy goes to a pet store to buy a fish.  The pet store man says to only give him "this much" or else something would happen.  The boy felt bad for his fish when he got him home and decided to give him the whole container of fish food.  The fish kept growing and growing and kept growing out of bowls, pans, the tub, and so on.  We'll be checking this one out again for sure.  It certainly kept his attention.








Monkey also loves balloons and what two year old doesn't?  I vaguely remember liking this book as a child but it is quite wordy so if you're reading it to a toddler you may want to pre-read it and condense it (which is what we'll do in the future).  The pictures in this book are beautiful.  It was a fun book to read together.





Those were our very favorite books.  I will now list the others we read but without pictures.

Celebrating Birthdays in Brazil-This was a fun book to borrow from the library.  My husband lived in Brazil for two years and we have decided to teach our kids Portuguese (I still need to learn it too!).  We saw this one at story time at the library a couple weeks ago so we decided to check it out.  Birthdays in Brazil are quite similar to those in the U.S.  It was interesting learning about how other kids live though and I think as Monkey gets a little bigger he will appreciate books like this more.

Oscar, Me, and the Letter O (Alphabet Friends)-This is a pretty fun series (Alphabet Friends).  The books start out by showing the letter (both upper and lower case) and then it has a rebus story that your young toddler can follow along with.  We've now read at least 2 books in the series and I would recommend them along with the Sound Box series.

Pig Out! A Picture Reader with 24 Flash Cards (All Aboard Reading)-Like I've said before, we really like our Rebus readers.  It's really fun for Monkey to actually be able to read with me.  He's starting to learn that words are like pictures in that they are symbols.  He has a sense of satisfaction on his face after he completes each of these, that's why we checked out several of these to read:
Lots of Hearts (All Aboard Reading) (great for Valentine's Day)
Picky Nicky: A Picture Reader with 24 Flash Cards (All Aboard Reading)
In a Dark, Dark House (All Aboard Reading) (great for Halloween)
Space Kid (All Aboard Reading)
Who Stole the Cookies? (All Aboard Reading)

-on a side note...we own this one:



And it's Monkey's FAVORITE book.  He calls it "Who Me" and asks to read it every day.  Because this one is so fun for toddlers we didn't really like the All Aboard Reading version.






 Calling All Cats: All Aboard Picture Reader (All Aboard Reading)
Dog Wash Day: All Aboard Picture Reader (All Aboard Reading)  (this is one of our favorites now too-Monkey loves the dogs and the fact that they're getting a bath)







I forgot to add this in as one of our favorites of the week.  We really enjoyed this one.  Again, Monkey loves dogs but it was really fun to learn about opposites in this book.






Honey Helps-we've checked out another Honey book before and we really liked it.  These books are about a puppy and kitty that are friends.  In this book Honey (the cat) decides to help Happy (the dog) when he's trying to do dog things-including burying a bone.  It's a beginning reader and a great book to teach kids that even though things or people may be different they can still help each other even if they don't do everything the same.

Small Pig (I Can Read Book 2)-This was also a really fun book and we used it to kind of go along with the next one that I will list to identify the letter P/p and its sound.

My "p" Sound Box (Sound Box Books)-I mentioned this series above with the Alphabet Friends book.  I really like this series.  We've now read at least 3 of these books.  They are rebus readers and help teach kids about the letter and sound of the letter.  There's also suggestions for activities in the back of the book like in Alphabet Friends.  If your library has these they're really fun-check them out!

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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

Other books we have been reading

Just Grandma and Me by Mercer Mayer
I got this book as an older child and didn't read it much since I was starting in to a chapter book phase. However it was really fun reading what little critter and his grandma did at the beach and how he acted grown up but not quite so grown up. We are little critter fans.

The Tortoise and the Hare retold by Mark Schlichting
We loved the pictures in this version. We read many of Aesop's fables before (you can read about it here) but this one was told slightly different. I think I got it as an older child also with a software program or something.

I Love You Forever by Robert Munsch
After hearing Joey read this book on Friends we HAD to get this. I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. I read this book first towards the end of my pregnancy with Monkey. I bawled as I read the ending. I do it EVERY time I read it to Monkey. He looked at me funny as I read this to him before bed on Tuesday. It's such a beautiful story and it makes me sad that Monkey is going to grow up!

Eight Silly Monkeys illustrated by Steve Haskamp
A classic nursery rhyme turned a little bit more fun. The heads of the monkeys are plastic and go away as you turn each page. This is a great book to teach counting and it's just plain fun too!

Where is Baby's Belly Button? by Karen Katz
This book is sure to get giggles. It's Monkey's favorite. He finds this book and brings it to me to read to him several times per day. Check this one out!!!

Sammy the Seal by Syd Hoff (Level 1 I Can Read)
What a fun book! Sammy the seal explores town including someone's bathtub and a school. This is a classic book!

All By Myself by Mercer Mayer (a Little Critter book)
This is also a fun book to read to a toddler who wants to do everything his or herself. This would make a great story to read for bedtime.

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!