As soon as Sweet Boy turned 1, we started to attend Mommy & Me classes two days a week.
At first he loved it but as the time went by, he was less involved in group activities. I was so sick and tired of chasing him around while rest of the class is having fun singing, dancing, listening to story and doing any other group activities. (I later found out that he started to develop serious ear infection that caused him to temporarily lose hearing.)
Then I got pregnant with Happy Girl.
So I stopped going to the classes and decided to spend more quality time with him at home because it will be the last time he will be the 'only' kid in the house.
I had to have some kind of structure because I can't always be very spontaneous.
I believe that key to having great day with kids is always being prepared.
I looked around internet and came across a great inspiring blog, Carisa's 1+1+1=1. I still follow Carisa's blog almost religiously. It's a great place for any mommies, homeschooling or not. I learned about 'tot trays' and immediately set one up for Sweet Boy.
Here is his set up. I used the bottom shelves of changing table.
1) his art bin, 2) Stamps and paper, 3) scrap paper and scissors
4) Bristol blocks, 5) Leaves stickers and tree, 6) Magnet cubes and template
He loved to cut! He pulled out the tray and cut few times a day for 2 weeks!
We read a book about autumn before we did the sticker tree.
We also used do-a-dot markers to decorate bare tree.
More cutting.
He was good with magnetic cubes. You can make the magnetic pompoms with magnet stickers and pompoms. However, I just ordered the Magnetic Mosaic from Orb Factory. The magnet on the foam block isn't strong enough to stick to the board (included) with a sheet of paper underneath so I recommend using it flat on the surface.
He did pretty well, wouldn't you say?
Sweet Boy always had excellent fine motor skill. He can stack like adults!
We did matching shape sticker book.
Do-a-Dot was his favorite activity for several months.(Now he seems to be over it although he enjoys to squeeze it really hard and get the ink all over the paper...)
Some Autumn file folder game.
I wasn't really expecting him to learn the alphabet but it gave ME some kind of structure to follow and he enjoyed doing activities.
So this is how Sweet Boy spent the days with me and we still do lots of activities together.
I was seriously considering to homeschool him at least till the Kindergarten or 1st grade but currently he goes to daycare 3-4 days a week to build up on his social skills.
We have been doing Letter of the Week from COAH mixed in with printables found on 1+1+1=1 and various web sources. I also make few recurring printables for each letter. We have done A,E,I,O,U,B and this week we covered 'C'. I will post each week's activity with Sweet Boy from now on.
Enough chit-chat!
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