Getting Ready for Halloween

R 31 m, T 14 m

Now that I am working, even though I work from home, it is difficult for plan activities for the boys.  We fit a lot of what we do into random moments throughout the day and often I don’t have my camera at those times.  For example we spend a lot of time counting in the car, or counting pictures in books.  

Our best pre-reading activity of the week was talking about the sound “B”.  I listed several words that began with B emphasizing the B sound, such as B B B Besta (his grandmother), and B B B balloon.  He responded B B B birdy.  I was impressed though I don’t know if it was just coincidence or not, because he also told me B B B cat.  Still he was thinking about it and a few minutes later he said b b b bat so I think the first sound concept may be beginning to click.  

The boys made pumpkins one day with their babysitter.

We decorated a pumpkin with permanent markers, R even managed to draw something that resembled a face on it, though I had to tell him where to draw each part.  Tomorrow I plan on carving out the face he drew.  

I have been trying to teach R to play games with very little success so far.  I made him this game fully expecting him not to get it yet.  You roll the die and move to the color you get, there are other levels in which you can move to the shape that you roll, for now we are just sticking with color.  He did much better than I expected him to on it and seemed to enjoy himself.  

R still is struggling with puzzles.  He is unable to see the shape of the space in order to choose the correct piece.  I made the following puzzles to work on it with him.  He did a pretty good job.  I wish I could convince him to do an activity more than once.  He still needs to work on getting the hexagons lined up perfectly but I can’t get him to try the butterfly again.  I know I can always make him a new picture which he will probably try but it takes me about 5 times longer to draw the shapes for him than it actually takes for him to complete the puzzle. 

After he showed me that he was quite good at the puzzles above I made him this puzzle below.  I cut odd shapes from card stock and traced them onto another piece of card stock that he then had to match up.  He completed this but he did struggle quite a bit with a few of the shapes. 

While out for a walk one day T insisted that he had to look at the river.

This was going on at the bottom of our hill.  We spend a good half hour or so watching the work.

These steps are on our way home from watching the resurfacing of the road.  R is actually in the picture near the top of the steps.   I just think it is a cool picture.  

R told me one day that he wanted to do stick painting.  So here he is painting a rock with his stick.

R isn’t quite ready for our Montessori Red Rods so I made a car ramp for the boys from the longest one.  T loved it, he sent the car down over and over again, laughing hysterically every time it fell off.  

We went to an indoor play area.  

I made this costume for R.  R is afraid of people in costumes.  He is also very picky about the clothes he will wear.  It was difficult coming up with a costume for him.  He loves fires so a fireman seemed like the most obvious choice of costume.  I bought a large long sleeved T shirt (size 6-7) though he normally wears a size 4 shirt.  I cut it up the middle and covered the edge with black duck tape.  The stripes on the coat are made from red duck tape with thinner strips of silver duck tape on top.  The red tabs are Velcro that I sewed on with duck tape over top.  The pants are a pair of sweat pants he already owned.  He needed new boots and I actually bought this pair for him a few weeks ago.  The hat I bought from Target.  This may be an interesting Halloween, though since he is afraid but also fascinated by people in costumes.  I will post a picture of T’s costume next week; I am still working on it.  He is going to be a blue fuzzy monster.

Go to 1+1+1=1 to see what other toddlers did this week.