An Ice Cold Experiment

To go along with the winter season and the weather we've been having, I decided to do a little science experiment with Gavin.  I actually was inspired by a post on Facebook, but I don't remember now who posted it or have a site to link back to.  We filled an ice cube tray with some small toys and other goodies like buttons, beads, and cut pieces of straws, then added water.  Gavin watched me put them in the freezer and we talked about how the freezer was so cold it as going to turn the water into ice cubes.  Of course, he asked about every 10 minutes if his ice cubes were ready so we kept checking the progress until finally, after nap, they were ready to play with.  We spent the rest of the afternoon using his Little People tools to try to chip away at the ice, sat the bowl in the sunlight to watch them melt, and just experienced the coldness of the ice!  He loved the experiment, but next time we'll do it in the summer.  ;-)

Tot School and Craft Time with Mommy

It's been a while since I did a Tot School post and we've been doing so many crafts so I'm combining them all into one....Lots of photos below!

 Here are some things we did at the end of October for Halloween:

 And more recent things for Thanksgiving, including a new sensory tub!

 I made him and Gracie a Thanksgiving matching game with pictures of Pilgrims, turkeys, cornucopias, the Mayflower, etc.  And we're starting to work on writing letters!

Fun with a batch of homemade playdough 

I got the idea on the right from another blog, My Sweet Chaos.  He hammered golf tees into one of those green styrofoam things that you use for flower arrangements and LOVED it! 

 Community helper matching game we did on the felt board to show people we're thankful for.

Tot School

I haven't posted a Tot School update in a while!  I wanted to include some of the pictures that are on my other laptop from last week with the ones from this week, but now I can't get that computer to work!  Anyway....here are some pics from the beginnings of our Halloween Tot School activities.

Painting with shaving cream

 Our Halloween Sensory Tub!  This thing has been such a hit!  I filled it with dried black beans, a variety of pom poms, popsicle sticks, spiders, pipe cleaners, and various "tools" (scoops, magnifying glass, spoons, etc.)

 5 Little Pumpkins Sitting on a Gate felt board activity!

 Pumpkin Puzzle

 Sorting Spiders by color

Making a marshmallow ghost!

We also do a couple more crafts that I didn't take pictures of, but I will and add them the next time.  More pumpkin and Halloween activities coming next week!

Tot School

We're learning about fall right now.  Last week, I focused on some apple activities, and still have more I'd like to do if we get to them.  This coming week we'll do the letter L and some leaf art projects.  It finally feels like fall here, too!

I made this card for Gavin and put the letter tiles out for him to match.  While we did it the first time, I sang Daddy's name in the 'Name-O' song Gav loves so much.  Just a few days later, he we spelling Daddy on his own. 

 A is for apple and alligator!

 A fall themed book I made for him

We used popsicle sticks this time to put into the creamer jar.  It turned out that we did a lot of learning with them!  There were different colors, so he sorted them by color, then counted how many of each there were.  We talked about which one had more, etc.  The pic on the right is of a shape matching game I found online and printed/laminated for him.

Apple stamping

Tot School

Gavin is 28.5 months old.

Lots of dinosaur things this week....we were learning about the letter D!

The photo on the right is a large ziploc bag filled with paint and then taped shut.  We used it to draw shapes and letters and then smoothed it out to erase.  Kind of a homemade Magna-Doodle.  Gavin really liked it.