Tot School - Red

Tot School - Week 7 - Theme: Red

Owen & Eli: 19 months old

This week was a little tough. The boys started the week off with their 7th respiratory infection of the winter - this is way past ridiculous - so they weren't into that many activities and they were much more whiney than normal. It's hard to find motivation for learning when you're just trying to keep them happy! It was also a little tough because I feel like I'm in a rut with my color work. It seems like I'm doing the same activities every week but just swapping out one color for another and even I'm getting bored with it. We don't have our printer set up at home, so most of the activities I do have to be either with toys/items that we already have or I have to draw/create them from hand. It's hard to find the time to do that! I'm really going to try to be more creative this week though for Orange and Yellow. I decided to combine them to hopefully give me more ideas for activities.

We started the week with our color tray, including colored popsicle sticks, pipe cleaners, buttons, silicon baking cups, spoons and a juice jug. They always love playing with this, especially shaking all the items out of the jug once they feel it's full enough. I gave them an old spice jar too and showed them how to put pipe cleaners and golf tees into the holes. I thought they might get frustrated with the level of concentration it took, but they really enjoyed filling up the holes. Great fine motor skill practice!

We looked through our book about colors and identified different red items. We reviewed the green and blue pages from the last two weeks too and they remembered most of the objects. I was surprised that when I would point in a general direction to a pile of cars and say 'bring me the red car' that they could actually do it by the end of the week! It doesn't hurt that their favorite vehicles right now are fire engines and ambulences!

We reviewed our shapes and colors with these Sesame Street flash cards from our Dollar Store too. They were more interested in the characters than identifying the shapes, but it kept them entertained for a little while.

Play-doh is always a hit too, especially with cookie cutters. I'm not sure how I can make this activity more advanced or more educational though - any ideas? I'm looking for ways to take everyday household items and use them for Tot School to gain skills without buying new things every week....

... Like this!! This was my favorite project/activity of the week and the boys totally loved it! I had bought a pack of colored foam paper from Target on clearance and had no idea what to do with it. I had some leftover velcro and a cardboard box too, so I went to work with my cookie cutters and made this little game for the boys. I just gave them the red pieces this week, but I made red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple shapes for them to match. There's actually two boards for them to work with, but that's only after we're using all the colors together. I can't believe how good they are at matching up the right piece to the right outline! Eli is my Mr. Meticulous! He lines them up perfectly and makes sure each piece of velcro has a solid stick to the board. Eventually, I'm going to color in the shapes with corresponding colors so they can practice both shape matching AND color matching with the same activity, but for now, I just wanted them to get the hang of the game.

We were supposed to go to a Touch-a-Truck event this weekend but it poured down rain so it was cancelled until further notice. Bummer! The boys would have loved all those red vehicles!

Tomorrow we're starting Orange and Yellow. Even if you haven't done color-specific activities, send me a comment for activities appropriate for 20 month olds... please! Hope you had a great week in Tot School!

To check out what other Tot Schoolers are doing this week, click here.