Letter B

This past week led up to Valentine's Day on Sunday, so we did lots of activities involving hearts, as well as things that begin with the letter B.

Crafts: We made a caterpillar out of hearts, a pom pom heart, and did the sprinkle letter B (he remembered this from the previous week and knew what to do right away. He likes craft time and really enjoys making glue dots!

Activities: I bought 6 plastic tumbler cups at the Dollar Store (6 for $1.00) and four packs of conversation hearts (four for $1.00). T really enjoyed dumping the hearts in and out of the cups and also putting the hearts (and the cups) into muffin tins. I tried to get him to sort the hearts by color in the muffin tin, but he had his own sorting method in mind:) I printed a counting sheet and attempted to play a counting game where we placed the correct number of hearts onto the corresponding number, but T was having none of this either!! We also used the tumbler cups for pouring practice in the bathtub. He is good at pouring and can usually dump one cup of water into an empty cup without spilling too much!! Finally, we played a find the heart game where I dumped little foam hearts all over the carpet and T collected them and put them into a container. He loved this one and kept making sure daddy was watching and clapping for him every time he "found" a heart.

Favorite books of the week:

Good Night Gorilla-he got really into this book this week and especially liked the part where all the animals say goodnight to each other.

My Big Animal Book: He loves this book and just likes to sit and watch as I point to the animals and identify them. For a while he would point out specific animals when I asked, but lately he seems annoyed with this and just wants to hear me say them.

Dog Food: This ended up being his favorite book for a while, but I think he is getting tired of it. I can tell he is memorizing the order of his books though, because he anticipates certain parts of them. At the end of this book, we always say "SHHH" because the dogs are sleeping, and now he starts to say "SHHH" about 2 pages prior to the end.

God Made You Special: This is a Veggietales book that we have had ever since he was an infant, but he has gotten really into it lately. It's actually a long book for a little one, but he happily sits through it every time.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar: This is the first book I ever bought him, I was six months pregnant when I bought it. He loves this book and always gets excited when it gets to the food part.

I am so glad that T loves reading. It makes me so happy that he brings me book after book and sits there totally focused on it as I read to him. I pray he will always love to read!!

The letter A-again!!

I decided to do the letter A again with Tristan. I had much more time to prep, and I used multiple themes for the letter A instead of just one. I found a bulletin board that Tim had and never used, and I am using it to hang Tristan's artwork on. The first thing I hung up was a capital letter A that I drew, and I placed this at the top.

Projects were all made on different days.

For our first project, we made an alligator A. Tristan colored the A, and even helped glue on the triangle teeth. I just put the glue dots down, and he stuck the teeth on top of the dots. This project was really easy and I think it turned out cute!!

We also made a sprinkle letter A. I poured glue in a capital A, and we put sprinkles on top of the A. Tristan didn't always put the sprinkles on the glue, but he did like sprinkling them onto the paper.

We also made a pom pom apple tree. Tristan colored the tree trunk and painted the top of the tree, but he had no interest in gluing the pom poms onto the tree.

Finally, we made apple prints. This was super easy. Just cut an apple in half and dip it into some paint and press it onto your paper. Tristan understood the concept and would dip his apple into paint and then press it onto the paper. Tim informed me that the apple prints looked more like rear end prints, and I would have to agree, but it was fun nonetheless.

Books:
Each week we go to the library to get books, and I am so glad that Tristan likes to read. He loves it, in fact. He very frequently wants to have books read to him, and I am happy to do so every time. This week, we did get books to go with our theme of letter A, but I also got a variety of others.

Hello Baby-This is a book about baby animals, and Tristan LOVED . You can ask Tim, I have probably read this book to Tristan at least 150 times in the past week, no kidding!! He wants to hear it over and over.

Dog Food-this is a cute book where all the dogs are made out of food. This has been his second favorite book this week, although it doesn't come close to Hello Baby.

Baby Animals: this is mostly a picture book with pics of real animals, and he likes to sit and look at this book on his own. Sometimes he'll look at this book while I am getting ready in the morning, and I hear him practicing naming all the animals. He has taken a major interest in eagles. He likes birds in general, but he specifically points out eagles in books we have that contain pictures of eagles along with other birds.

Dinosaur Roar: We own this book, and Tristan never gets tired of this one!!

A is for airplanes

Over the past week, T and I worked on the letter A. I didn't have much time to prep for this week, but I am pleased at how everything turned out. We checked out some books on airplanes and put airplane pictures up in his room, which he liked:) I printed a few large letter A's and let him color some. We also printed a magnet page for the letter A, and I tried to get him to trace the A by putting little pom poms in the circles, but he was completely uninterested in this. He also had no interest whatsoever in flying the paper airplane Daddy made him:)

We recently discovered how much T enjoys exploring his preschool activity bags. A few months ago, a group of about 30 of us each were assigned to make 30 bags of the same activity, and then we all met up and handed our activities out, so we can home with 30 different bags of activities for preschoolers. T had been too young for most of them until recently when we discovered there were several he is really good at! He loves matching games and is very good at them. One activity is a grid which has different foam stickers on it and comes with the same amount of loose stickers to match. During the 1st try, he matched almost all of them up! We have done this activity lots, so now he knows where everything goes but he still enjoys doing it. There is a similar activity of the same concept, except you match up letters, and he matched them right up. I was really surprised at how well he could do this!! He also enjoys his alphabet puzzle we've been working on. It comes with all 26 letters, and I think he has it memorized because he will pick up a letter and just put it exactly where it's supposed to go.

I am looking forward to our next theme of bugs. There are tons of neat ideas out there for preschoolers to learn about bugs, and we found 4 bug crafts that we are going to try!

Christmas

We had a wonderful Christmas this year and hope you did too!



To kick off the season, we went to a Chris Tomlin/Louie Giglio concert on Dec. 4. Chris is our favorite Christian musician, and we had been looking forward to this event for months. T gets excited when we listen to him and even has a few favorite songs by Chris (Let God Arise, Glory in the Highest, and How Can I Keep From Singing). This was a Christmas concert, so Chris performed favorites such as O Holy Night, Hark The Herald Angels Sing, Angels We Have Heard On High, and many more, plus regular hits from his CD's. Louie is a wonderful evangelist and shared the story of Jesus' birth in a powerful way. T loved the concert and made it through the whole 2 and a half hours. When other members of Chris's band would sing, T would start to get restless, but as soon as Chris came back on T would just sit there mesmerized by his voice.

One of T's favorite movies is The Star of Christmas Veggietales movie. It teaches children about the real meaning of Christmas, and he watched this DVD several times throughout December. On several nights, we rode around looking at lights, which I still love to do! We also had fun decorating our house, although we did not put up outside lights this year. We took T on an overnight trip to Disney World during the Christmas season, and we all had lots of fun!

On Christmas Eve we went to Daddy's brother's house for dinner. It was very nice, and T enjoyed playing with his cousins. When we got home, I continued a tradition that my parents did with us-so T got to open one present, a pair of pajamas. On Christmas morning, we opened presents and baked a cake for Jesus. That afternoon we had a delicious dinner at Daddy's mom's house. That evening, Daddy and I told T the story of Jesus' birth. T and I had both caught a cold on Christmas, so we went to bed early.

I've been searching the internet for different traditions, and have found several that I would like to start next year. I have found wonderful activities to do with young children to teach them more about Christmas and Jesus. There are lots of neat crafts out there for preschoolers! One family writes small notes to each other and then they put the notes in the appropriate stockings. I would love to do that next year!


At first, we were terribly disappointed to not be spending Christmas in our new house. This year we had decided early on that we wouldn't be able to go to PA for Christmas because we were certain we would be in our new house. So it was a double disappointment that we ended up neither going to PA nor in our new home. It is hard to be so far away from my family, and I pray we will see each other more in the coming year.

The closer it came to Christmas, the happier I became. I really focused on what the day means, and I'm still so awestruck at the whole story. It's just so amazing!! The only begotten Son of our Father God left his dwelling place in heaven, where he had resided for all eternity past, and came down to live on earth with us and became one of us. God Almighty, the Creator of the entire world, came humbly into the world as a baby!! It's incredible!!!

I always wonder what Jesus was like at T's age....Did He cry? Did He ever throw a temper tantrum? What were His first words? I can't wait to someday find out the answers to these questions! For now, I'm happy remaining in wonderment and enjoying my relationship with Him while on earth. And I'll never cease to frequently praise Him for everything He has done for me/given to me.

Happy Birthday Jesus!!!!!!!

Hi there! I am completely new to blogging, but figured I would give it a try! I thought it would be a neat way for friends and family to stay in the loop and see what we are up to. T is getting ready to turn two next month, and I plan on starting a curriculum with him anytime between now and then. Up until now I haven't really done much structured learning with him. I talk to him alot and describe things for him. I read books to him and play lots of games with him. I've tried some different craft activities with him, but he's not real interested in them yet. T is very mechanical-He loves building puzzles, putting things together, etc. He is very high energy and right now has a pretty short attention span:)

I am looking into different curriculums for him and praying over which one will be the best fit for us. At this point, I am highly considering starting him on the Letter of the Week prep, and incorporating Bible concepts into each week.

I am happy to report that T just learned his first color-orange! Much thanks to our Christmas tree!! We have multicolored lights on it, and one night he was pointing at the different colors and I was naming them. After a few moments, I realized he would specifically point to the orange ones and say "oran." He doesn't name any of the other colors yet, but if you ask him "where's orange" he will consistently look for and point to an orange one and say "oran."

T is saying more and more every day, but alot of it I can't understand yet. It took me a while to learn that the words he says don't always sound like they are supposed to, but he knows what he is talking about. Many of his words are still unclear to me, but sometimes he'll shock me and say something perfectly. The other day he said the word "vegetable" as clear as can be! Today at a Chinese restaurant he pointed right at the waterfall and said "wafall". I didn't even know he knew what a waterfall was.

I am trying hard not to compare him to other children his age, but I sometimes still fall into that trap. I just try to remind myself that God made T special (like every child) and that he will do things when he is ready.

I am looking forward to the upcoming Christmas week! I'll be searching the internet for ideas on how to explain the birth of Jesus to a toddler. There are so many neat coloring pages, crafts, activities, etc., so this should be fun! We are going to bake a birthday cake for Jesus on Christmas Eve, which will be interesting. I wish I knew how much he already comprehends about Jesus. Every time I say to him, Remember, God made you special and he loves you very much, T gets a huge grin on his face.

I guess that's all for now. I'll try to update this blog once a week. Thanks for reading!