Catching Up—Part 2

Another new thing we started last fall was to start doing “tot school”.  I found the idea on 1+1+1=1 and since I really enjoy preparing activities for kids, I was sold.  Also, I was looking for something special I could do with Collin—a sort of special “big kid” thing since the new addition of the “attention stealer”  baby brother :).  So what exactly is tot school?  Well, the blog above has their definition of it, but I will share with you mine.  As in the blog it is NOT school.  For us, it isn’t really about learning necessarily.  I thought it was at first and I still do mostly learning activities—because I enjoy preparing them ;), but that isn’t what it is about.  For us, it also isn’t about exposing him to new things or giving him things to explore—although I thought this at first, too.  Collin is a natural born explorer and when he is ready, he picks things up pretty quickly (remember that Mama…when HE is ready!).  So having extra “teaching” isn’t really what he “needs”.  But what he does need is…me.  You see everyone believes that since I am a stay at home mom, I spend all of this time with him, etc, etc, etc.  But in all reality, most of the time, he just plays and I attempt to get things done around the house.  I set out toys or get him started playing with something, but then I try to do something else.  Or sometimes he “helps” me with what I’m doing.  But it is very rare that I give him my undivided attention and I really think that is a need of his…for social/emotional/spiritual growth, not academic.  So tot school gives me a chance to give him some undivided attention for a short time.  When do we do it?  Mostly it happens in the mornings when there is nothing else going on.  I don’t worry about missing it if other things are going on, etc.  I have Collin choose which activity we do for the most part unless I have something “special” planned—like a certain craft or baking thing.  And we play until he is done or until I need to move on to something else-- anywhere from 15 min to 1 hour usually.  Lately it has been much less formal as we haven’t done the shelf in a while and I just try to spend some time  in undivided attention—as a multi-tasker, I really find this hard!  It may just be playing with some toys with him or it may be a craft or baking, or an activity I found online…but as I said, it isn’t about WHAT we do.   

So…here are some of the things we have done.

Our “tot school” shelf.  This day it contained the factory game (see below), restaurant game (also below), orange play dough, a poster to color, locks/latches board, maracas & silky for some fun music time :)

 
Crunching Cheerios with a pliers

Blue “goop”.  Is it a solid?  Is it a liquid?  YES!!

Each week (or 2) we focused on a color.  At the end of the week we did a photo of all the toys we can find of that color.  We will then make a book from these photos.  Got the idea here. 

Playing catch with the “silky ball” (a ball with a silky tail wrapped around it, held in place with a rubber band)

Working with nuts and bolts (thanks grandpa!)

This was definitely the FAVORITE tot school game—he chose it every day for weeks!  (I put it away just because I was sick of it—bad mommy…)  Anyway it was formally known as “the Menards game”.  We would build a “Menards” (his favorite store) and then the colors were the parking lot.  There was a matchbox car to match each color which had to park in the correct spot….and of course we had to come up with why they were going to Menards. :)  As with most “structured” games his non-compliance came into play and so the variation on the game was that he would have me try to park the car, but then before I got to the spot he would put a different car in my car’s spot and so there was a big ado about “That’s not your spot, get out of my <blue> spot”.  So…he was matching the colors anyway in order to not allow me to get to my spot!  ;-)

stringing beads…and dancing them around

 
We make homemade play dough often (using this recipe) and we mixed the blue/yellow to make green…and then red/yellow to make orange during the appropriate week

saving “bugs” (pom poms) buried in the beans (can’t remember the rest of the “story”)

Chasing a balloon through the tunnel

 

playing the birthday game.  Pick someone to be the birthday person (I believe it was around Nana’s birthday and so we celebrated her day lots!).  Then put 20 pennies into the can while counting.  Then sing Happy Birthday!

Mashing bananas for banana bread.  Idea here.

Stamping

 
The candy game—another hit for my little candy fiend!  We put a piece on each dot and figure out what the number is…then after sharing the candy, we can do it again with the bears if desired (not nearly as exciting!)
 

After visiting the zoo, we had lots of zoo related games, so we fed the ducks and swans at the real zoo and Collin was the duck at home (tongs were later replaced by tweezers since these pinch!  Ouch!)

 
we also have put up the easel with different mediums each week.  This week was dot markers and tends to be a favorite.  The chalk board is also a winner.

I wanted to replace the “menards game” with something special and this was liked (even though the pic doesn’t look like it)  but definitely not on the scale of the menards game.  It was the restaurant game—pick a single food from the menu to order, ring it up, count up the right number of coins to pay for it, enjoy the meal!

 
Factory game:  So it is a bit of a short cut, but the farmer visits the factories (cards) and finds out how many of bushels of corn they need…and of course what they will make with that corn!

Here he was digging bears out of the play dough.  You can also see one side of the place mat we made for thanksgiving.  The leaves were the feathers of a turkey.

For TONS of great tot school ideas, please visit 1+1+1=1 or

 

Catching up—Part 1

So way back last fall, Collin & I started a couple of new things that we do that I wanted to blog about…but never had time, so here goes.  The first one was that Collin and I have started to do daily devotions together.  We have two books that we use Gotta Have God: Fun Devotions for Boys: Ages 2-5 and 100 Ways to Know God Loves Me and 100 Songs to Love Him Back .  The Gotta Have God book has a story and prayer and then an activity or coloring page for each devotional and the 100 ways to Know God (thanks Nana & Papa) has an application/story and then a song for each devotional.  We have really enjoyed our times doing these.  I was feeling that we needed to do more of teaching him who God is and spending daily time with Him and making Him more of a priority has been really good. 

Here are a couple pictures:

Making a paper plate tambourine to praise God with (This was when we quarantined him to his room due to H1N1)

making marshmallow men after talking about greed.

Then a few weeks ago, Collin said to Dan one morning that he was going to “build Noah’s Ark” that day…and he did (basically just “fixed” on a box…but that’s what he called it)!  We aren’t sure where this came from exactly—we don’t remember reading the story recently, but may have…or it may be from a song on one of his CDs.  But I decided to take advantage of his interest and do some other Noah’s ark activities like stamping and acting out the story and I found this kit on clearance, so we have done some of it, too. 

Noah in his “ark” (one of many prototypes) complete with animals and food.

This day we tried to stamp with sponge animals, but it didn’t work well, so we switched to coloring the sponges with the dot markers.  We also did some normal noah’s ark stamps another day with the stamp pads.  (although he really just likes to rub his fingers all over the stamp pad until completely covered…who needs stamps…or paper!) :)

Can’t wait to see what will be next!

Brothers

Gabriel is finally getting old enough that they are just starting to be able to do a few things together.  Now don’t get me wrong, these precious moments are few and far between:

Collin STILL loves this book from when he was a baby, so when I told him one night he could read it to Gabe, he gave it a try first thing the next morning.

 

Gabriel learning to “fix” from the master!

Boy, am I in trouble now…

He may not be “crawling”, but he is definitely mobile.  He will cross an entire room this way!

Gabriel scooting

Here is one of his favorite hide outs these days—under the table.

Overheard at our house

Recently overheard around our house:

As a reason for not taking a nap, "Mama, I have an ear confession [infection...he didn't...]"
While playing in the garden, "Let's embarrass [bury] my feet"

How can you not smile at that!

You think they could be brothers?

Granted the eyes are different, but...

The View from our Window

A couple weeks ago we had a bit of "excitement" around here, but I'm just getting around to blogging about it. Here's the story:

Just before lunch one day, Collin and I were busy "dueling" in the kitchen with him in timeout in front of our basement door. It started to storm outside and I very quickly noticed hail beginning to bounce around outside. I decided to play it safe and told him to come around the corner into the living room so that we were out of range of the kitchen window (west side of the house). Well, sure enough a few minutes later I here it shatter sending glass and hail across the kitchen floor. Collin (Mr. 2000 questions) of course then asks if the window is broken and I very matter of factly tell him "Yes, it is", as if it is a very normal thing :). I tell him to stay put and go and grab Gabriel out of the bassinet in the dining room. When I return we move a bit further into the living room. Glass and hail continue to fly through the window and now a few pieces are starting to bounce into the living room, so I decide the staircase might be a bit safer. We wait out the remaining moments there listening to glass shattering both up and downstairs (and me just praying there isn't a tornado. I thought about going to the basement, but that would involve going into the kitchen--where there was glass flying everywhere.) Gabe peeked his eyes for only a moment, then back to sleep. Collin was definitely concerned throughout, but really only cried a bit near the end in the stairway because his blanky was out in the living room. When we came out, there was glass, hail, and leaves everywhere (up and downstairs) and the lawn was white with hail. It was amazing. We ended up having all 5 west windows broken out (storms and inside windows). Thankfully 3 of the 5 were not in carpeted rooms and the other two are a spare bedroom and the porch. So what do you do when this happens? Get shoes/boots on everyone and make PB&J of course ;)

We had glass scattered in the kitchen, dining room (clear to the east wall!), corner of the living room, both bathrooms, spare bedroom, and porch. I even found a hailstone on the east wall of Collin's room (across the hall from the spare room). Thankfully, by the time I got Collin put to bed and JUST started cleaning up the glass, some friends came to help out. Several families came to help get everything cleaned up before dinner! (It would have taken DAYS!) The yard was covered in leaves (looked like fall, but green). The garden was also destroyed, but we have had plenty of fresh vegetables due to many VERY GENEROUS church members!

Thankfully no one was hurt, but in the neighborhood pretty much all west windows were broken out with the exception of the church which only had one storm broken. Several vehicles were damaged as well with broken windows and dents. The sadest part of course has been the crop damage. We have had a great year as far as crops getting much more rain than is usual for these parts, so having fields destroyed was quite a blow. Many of these farmers have had drought issues the last few years and so were looking to have a "come back" year, but unfortunately several fields were just destroyed. Most farmers have insurance, but only to cover what they have into it, so it is another year without profit. So it's like working all season, and not getting a paycheck. There also were many pheasants killed and since farmers here often supplement their income with "hunting industry" that hurts as well. Some talked of fields smelling due to the number of dead birds. One farmer even found a dead deer due to the storm.

The photos I took didn't turn out very well, but I was able to get some from a friend. Twila Dykstra is a photographer who is in the church and also came to help with the cleanup. She was nice enough to share her photos with us. (click to enlarge)



Chipped siding, broken storm and window, shredded blinds (didn't show well, but looked quite funny from the inside), dented trim, and leaves "plastered" against the house.





The adjuster was here a couple weeks ago and estimated over $77,000 worth of damage to the church and parsonage! This week they came out to measure for all new windows on the west side of the parsonage. And today an old storm was put onto our kitchen window so we don't have plywood there anymore.
So that's the excitement around here! Enough for the season if you ask me!