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.

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!

A is for Ants

Yesterday we learned about ants. Since my son is only 12 months we just read a story. When he gets a little older we'll start doing a craft and other activity.

We read:
One Hundred Hungry Ants by Elinor J Pinczes

It's a really cute book about ants marching to find food. They keep dividing their lines to get there faster. Great for learning math but a fun book for younger kids too. My son loved listening to it.