Sunday, February 14, 2010

Tot School Week 1 - Valentines

Tot School
Ollie is 20 months old

This is our very first week doing Tot School and we had a lot if fun! The theme was Valentine's of course! It was so nice to have a theme for activities in the week... it felt like our days had more structure.


He had heart shaped toast one day with his baked beans and scrambled eggs. I don't have a heart cutter so I cut it myself with a knife. I spread the thinest layer of tomato ketchup on it to give it red colour but it just looks sort of orangey. He loved it though.

The books we read this week:
The Owl and The Pussycat by Edward Lear
Guess How Much I love You (Seasons Collection) by Sam McBratney and Anita Jeram


I made the below print-out myself using photoshop. I made 3 of them. On one of them he used his pink and red tadoodles and on the others he used coloured pentcils (though just red and pink). I talked about the colours while he did these and talked to him about hearts also. He gave one to each of his Grannys.



I let him write his Valentine's cards himself.


At Mother and Toddler Group on Wednesday, they had a craft table set up and Ollie headed straight for it. He loved making this heart and sticking all the bits of ribbon to it.


While I was out shopping I saw people giving balloons away for a small donation to charity, I couldn't resist. Ollie loves balloons so I got him 2. He played with it the whole day and because they kept floating to the ceiling, James tied them to Ollie's trains. Ollie thought it was hilarious.


This morning I put red playdoh in an egg carton in just a few of the holes and asked Ollie to put the heart shaped chocolates into the holes with red playdoh in. He was so good at it and got them exactly right! I was so surprised! It didn't take long for him to realise that they were chocolate though!


I made some coloured hearts in photoshop as well and cut them in half like broken hearts. I asked Ollie to match the colours and showed him what to do. He is very good at his jigsaws, but didn't seem to understand what he was supposed to do with these hearts. He liked the colours though.


This morning he opened up a card that was waiting for him!! How cute is it!! It is from his BFF Ivy. He has been hanging onto it all morning!


See you next week!

40 comments:

  1. What a great week! I just love all of the valentines activities that are going around!

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  2. Oh, he is so cute in the last pic! So sweet.

    Happy Valentine's Day!
    Come and view my note to you...
    http://theredheadriter.blogspot.com/2010/02/i-spy-valentines-day.html

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  3. It looks like a great first week!! He sure had lots of fun.

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  4. What a great week!!! It looks like he had so much fun :)

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  5. Ollie is right near my daughters age so I can not wait to see what kind of things you all do. As far as the puzzles like the hearts, Sophie is a whiz at regular wooden puzzles but has trouble with the paper ones as well. I stopped making her puzzle activities for a while and figure I will try it back in a few weeks.

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  6. What a great first week, it looks like you had a lot of fun. Your heart color sheet is great! I love the heart balloon, too.

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  7. What a fun week you guys had! I love the heart toast :-)

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  8. Welcome to Tot School! What a fun week and a cute tot!

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  9. Awesome first week! I love all of your activities..especially the egg carton one! My son is a few days shy of 17 months, so I'll definitely be adding you to my list...I love reading ideas for kids my son's age! Reading your info section too...I'm married to a James (or Jimmy) for almost 2.5 years too. Weird:) I look forward to seeing future posts!

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  10. Ollie is only just a tad older than my little C (18 months) it will be great to have another tot school member closer to us in age.

    Looks like you had a great first week.

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  11. What fun Valentine's activities! I can't wait till my son is old enough to do those :-) Also, I love the name Oliver!

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  12. It looks like he had so much fun! You came up with a ton of great ideas for Valentine's Day!

    Visiting from SITS, hope you had a great day!

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  13. What a great first week! We love the Guess How Much I Love You books too!! Love all your activities!

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  14. Oh my gosh, he is the cutest thing! Oliver is my favorite name for a boy.

    Stopping by from Sits!

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  15. What great activities! He can do so much. Stopping from SITS!

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  16. That is so great to start so early. Way to go!

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  17. Very cute! Stopping by from SITS. Such a cute little boy!

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  18. Hello! You probably don't remember me but I "met" you through HHC and followed your original baby blog. Glad to have found you again - I've resurrected my blog too, so come and say hello?

    Sarah x

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  19. What a great time!
    Such cuties!
    My daughter also had Guess How Much…
    That was our favorite book.
    Stopping by from SITS!
    Please stop by!
    http://extremepersonalmeasures.blogspot.com/

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  20. Aww how cute! Love the egg carton idea. I wish I could get my toddler to sit down for more then a second for anything. lol

    stopping by from SITS
    It's a Hooah life

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  21. What a little sweetheart! You are such a good mommy! I miss the days when I could make up activities for my little ones. They're so much harder to impress these days, being 8 and almost twelve! Where did the time go.
    Keep creating these wonderful experiences for your little one. It is time so well spent. You will never regret a minute of it!
    Have a great weekend!
    Happy Saturday SITS sharefest!

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  22. You have some really great idea!! Your son is too cute :)

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  23. This is such a cool idea. I just don' know if my son would sit still long enough to do any of these projects.

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  24. What great ideas for learning while also having fun. I bet Ollie is loving Tot School!

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  25. Tot School...what a great idea! Looks like you had some great prjects and fun!

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  26. What a fun day he had! I was slack this year, and forgot Valentine's Day, but my fiance and I quickly raced out and did something for each other.

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  27. Wow. Ollie seemed to really like crafts! I think that's fantastic. I've never been able to get my older son interested in crafts (he's 3) and I wish he would be into them more. It would give us something to do on rainy days besides just driving each other batty.

    www.alotofloves.com

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  28. That's nice you have so much fun with Ollie. Cute Monster Valentine card he has there!

    Congrats on your SITS day!

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  29. Awww, what an awesome Valentine's Day he had! Love the heart-shaped orange toast!!! Happy SITS Day again to you.

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  30. Your Ollie is quite the handsome fellow!

    Congrats on your SITS day!

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  31. Great activities! He really looks like he enjoyed them!

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  32. I am always looking for projects to do with my little one. Thanks for hte idea.

    Happy SITS day.

    LisaDay

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  33. What creative activities! Go Mom and Ollie!

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  34. how creative!! Tot school is such a great idea! Happy SITS day!

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  35. It was fun seeing all the Valentine stuff he got to play with. :)

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  36. That little boy is the sweetest! I love him holding onto the card. What a great Momma to have all those fun things for him to learn and create and just have fun. It makes me miss the days my girls were toddlers.

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  37. lovely photos. What great ideas. I'm amazed that Ollie is doing jigsaws at 20 months. What a clever boy!

    Happy SITS day!

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  38. What a great set of activities and pictures!

    Happy SITS Day!

    Cheers :-)
    - CoconutPalmDesigns

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