school

I have mentioned before that I am not going to put Marlee in preschool. At least not this year. Probably not ever, unless I decide to put her in public school in kindergarten. I am still on the fence about that.

Anyhow, we are doing some "school" over here. This week I found some printables from 1+1+1=1. We were doing a letter a week, and then life got crazy around here and we didn't do anything for a while. We went to the pumpkin patch last weekend which was a lot of fun. So I thought we would have a little theme of pumpkins this week. Carissa had some stuff on pumpkins and jack-o-lanterns, so Marlee got to learn a new word. Last weekend, I had asked her if she wanted to carve them, and she said no. Then yesterday after we did some of this stuff, she asked if we could put faces on our pumpkins. It was cool to see that. We will be carving them with Daddy home, so he can help. :)

Marlee is super into cutting right now. She's not so into coloring, but cutting and gluing are her favorites at the moment. And we also got to do math with these, which is always a plus. I have a harder time doing math with her than reading just because my brain doesn't really work like that I guess.

Anyhow, here are the sheets we did. We also played a dice game, that was graphing the other day, but don't have photos of that. :)

 I had to help her draw their mouths...but she really enjoyed this. She also really liked me making one of the legs, and her making the other. :)

Tot school

Tot School-Marlee is 26 months old

Last week we didn't have A. at all, so Marlee and I played a lot. We had a really good time, especially because for the beginning of the week Daddy was home in the afternoons, so we got to do a lot of different things.

We played with home made play doh. (click on link for recipe).




She played with her computer. (she was in deep concentration)


She was super silly-that's how she likes to wear her headbands.

We got to see lambs. She has been waiting and asking to see them for 3 weeks-but they weren't born yet so we had to be patient.


It was nice enough for us to wear flip flops.


She also played outside a lot while I cleaned, and did some other things. She was a fantastic listener and played in our back yard, where I could see her through our open french doors, and I got a ton of stuff done. It was awesome. She also helped Mike and I rake, and clean up the yard. She is quite the little helper. :) We of course also read books, and she did some crafts at the class I am teaching about dinosaurs. (I posted the projects we did in another post (click on the link)

Tot School March 14-18

Tot school is hosted by 1+1+1=1


Marlee is 25 months old

Last week we did a lot of different things as far as life school goes. We didn't do as much "school." It was nice outside so we raked part of the yard together, as well as we did some spring cleaning. I washed some of the windows, and dusted our living room, and while I did that I gave Marlee a wipe and she "washed" her kitchen, some chairs and some of her toys. She had a blast. She also helped me put away some of her clothes, and all of that fun stuff from our trip. :)

We also made bears, but I don't have a picture of it. I also don't remember where I found it, but as soon as I do, I will link it up. :) We played with her new dinosaurs that we got while we were on our trip. She LOVES them! She has barely played with anything else lately!

On St Patrick's Day, we wore green, went to the library for story time, and made a little hat there. She wouldn't ever put it on so I have no pictures of that. But we also ate a yummy green shake, which we don't usually eat ice cream during the day, so it was a fun treat.


Then on Friday, her and A painted, and made some fun little 3 leaf clovers, with glue and glitter. They had a ball doing that, but I mainly just got pictures of Marlee's product.


Her and her mouse shirt.


She wouldn't let me take this shirt off of her for a few days. She screamed when I would...the first two days I told her she had to take it off so she could wear it to bed again. Then on Friday, I just decided to let her wear it since we were starting potty training, and we would be changing clothes often that day anyways.



This week will be filled with more school type activities as we get into the swing of things now that we are home for a while. :) Have a great week!

Tot School week 4 (Feb 14-18)

Tot School: 24 months



This past week we did a ton of things while being super busy with lot's of other kiddos. We had extra kiddos almost every day, and even on the days we didn't have more than Marlee and A, A still came over early. So we did some stuff together at our house, but mainly our tot school was when we were doing other things. :)

Here are the high lights of the week. Marlee practiced beading. This is still a very hard activity for her. I had to help her a lot. She can get the string into the bead, but hasn't figured out how to get the string out of the other side, so that the bead stays on the string. (Hopefully that made sense!).




She also helped me sweep up the mess all the kids made after snack. She needs more practice with this, but she loves being Mommy's helper!



The rest I don't really have pictures of. We went for walks a lot this week since it was so nice outside. One day when we went I didn't take the stroller, so we held hands, and we ran together, and then she would say stop, wait. So we would wait until she would say ready, set, go! Another day we went I took the stroller, but once we got to the bike path I let her out and she walked and ran for a long ways-I am thinking at least a 1/4 of a mile, if not longer. She had a lot of fun doing that. I am hoping this summer to get her one of those bikes that don't have the pedals, so she can rid that when we go. We will see. (I can't remember the name of it).

We also went to the store. That was a treat all in itself, because when we go a lot of times someone else comes with us, either A, or Daddy. If A comes, I don't let them walk because between the two of them I don't get any shopping done. And if Daddy comes, he usually wants to get in, and get out. :) So we went to Waliworld early on Thursday morning, and I let her walk, help me push the cart, help me put things into the cart. I also let her help me pick out a few things. And of course we went to the produce isle, so we talked about all the different fruit we were getting. I don't usually buy a lot of produce there, so I didn't end up getting any veggies. I haven't seen her have that much fun for a long time. She loved being my helper in the store, and being a "big" girl, and getting to pick out what kind of fruit to buy. :)

We also went to a home school co-op. I have no idea if later when Marlee is bigger if I will home school her or if I will put her into public school, but for now it is fun to have a group to belong to! :) This was our first time ever going, so we went to a church where they hold it, and the kids got to run around and play for a while, then we had a project (we made fossils) and then we all ate lunch. Afterwords they all ran around some more to play and then we came home. It was awesome. Marlee talked about it for two days afterwords, because we got to play with lot's of balls. :) She actually slept for 2 hours that day, which was SO nice! The fossils turned out super cute. I think I may do some of her hands and feet for mother's day gifts/grandparents gifts. :) We used a plaster.

Today (Saturday) we also helped Daddy rake the yard. We needed to pick up some of the dog remains, so Marlee helped him. :) 

Oh and  a fun fact that I learned during our lesson/project was that amber (ya know the stuff that they use in jewelry) is actually fossilized tree sap. Cool huh! :) Anyhow...have a great week!

I have some fun things planned for next week! :)

Tot School wk 3 (Feb 7-11)

Tot school: 24 months



We had a lot of fun last week for Tot School! We made Valentine's cards.

Marlee wore Daddy's boots!

She played with all of her food, and made me lunch, dinner and snacks! :)

She played Mommy.



And of course we counted things, played outside, did puzzles, colored, played stickers, and some other fun things. But mainly we just played a lot together this week. We also had a fun dance party in our living room, and jumped around for a long time. :)

I'm throwing this one in here just because it's so darn cute! :)

Tot school #2 (Jan 31-Feb4)

I still can't show ya'll any pictures but I wanted to tell you what we have been up to around here anyways.

I think I forgot to tell you all (new readers) that Marlee is 24 months.



So last week we worked on:

• scooping more rice (she loves this)
• numbers (mainly counting-she can count to 12 but skips 4 every time)
• puzzles (we did a lot of our new fish colors puzzle) she knows almost all 10 colors on there. 
• We are working on shapes
• We played with play dough
• We COLORED a lot. She has really been into coloring lately
• We tried out her new stamps set she got for her birthday. She loved them! 
• We also did a lot of stickers. She hasn't figured out how to get the stickers off the first paper by herself, but it's a fun activity for us to do together. 
• And of course we read a lot of books

Thus far, we haven't really had a theme. Although I would like to work on that. We also made a name snowman- I cut out circles for each letter of her name, plus one more for her head, and Marlee glued them onto a piece of paper, and I wrote a letter of her name on each body part of the snowman. She then  "drew" the arms on and she asked me to help her with the face. It's super cute, and as soon as I get a picture of ours I will show you. :) So I guess last week was kinda snowmen theme.

I have pictures of all of this stuff, but haven't figured out how to get them back on here (which is SUPER frustrating!).

Go on over to Tot School to check out some more!

Next week I am hoping to be able to share pictures with you!

Tot School week 1 (Jan 24-28)

I have decided since my goal this year is to spend more one on one time, and learning time with Marlee, that I would start participating in Tot School each week. Doing this has made me really plan more time doing learning things with Marlee. It was also her birthday week, so most of these pictures were taken Monday, some on Wednesday and the rest of the week was still did stuff, but I forgot to take pictures of it.

We worked on the alphabet puzzle, learning the words, and saying the alphabet.

Of course, talking on the phone!

practicing multi-tasking, she was getting her horse where she needed it to be to ride it while talking on the phone! :)

We pretended to drive the "car" with her baby inside.

practicing scooping rice from one bowl to the next. She LOVED this! We were up here for a good 20 minutes, if not longer.

Lot's of coloring, and book reading were done this week.

We also go to play outside at our house, we went to the park, and we went for a few walks. It was so nice!

And we played with Cooties. That game was a HUGE hit too. She couldn't get them in very easy, but she loved trying! 

Among those things, we also worked on putting some of our clothes on by ourselves. Specifically our pants. Before we really start potty training I want her to be able to at least some what be able to get her pants on and off by herself. I realize I will still have to help her, since she can't get on and off the toilet by herself, but I think it's a good thing to start with.

We also worked on hand washing by herself. I moved the stool that we got into the bathroom so she can get up there, I still have to turn on the water, and after she's soaped up I have to pick her up since she's not quite tall enough to get all the way under the water.

We of course read a ton of books. She also played with her kitchen. She made us food and hot chocolate.

I am linking up to Tot School over at 1+1+1=1