Tot School - 18 . 5 Months - Alphabet Box Letter E

I was definitely kind of a slacker with our alphabet box this time. We were supposed to concentrate on the letter 'E' the week before last, but Hurricane Irene left us without power for five days. We were so blessed to be able to stay at a friend's house, but that meant no 'E' box. So, we kept the same box around this past week. I still didn't focus on it too terribly much and I'm pretty sure Brennan doesn't recognize a print 'E' yet, but we'll keep working on it. Here's what was in our box (sorry I didn't take a picture of it):

• Leapfrog 'E' magnet
• Baby Einstein 'Ee' book
• 'E' coloring page
• Elmo's Clap Your Hands book
• Elmo's Music
• Ernie and Bert Can...Can You?
• elephant stuffed animal
• elephant puzzle piece
• Elmo musical toy

I love how excited he gets as he's digging through the box!

I tried to get back into Tot School mode after being away from the house. We managed to do a few things this week. 

I bought Brennan a new Melissa and Doug puzzle. He loves the ABCs and is constantly pointing to letters, so I thought the alphabet puzzle would be a big hit. It's really difficult for him, so I am excited to see him get better at it.

This idea came from Amber at Amber's Articles. I put mine together in about 2 minutes as B was waking up from nap one day. I think I could've made a much better one if I had taken more time. I put various objects in a muffin tin, covered each hole with a piece of paper sealed with one piece of tape, and let B explore. I didn't take a picture with everything in the tin before I covered it up, but here are the items I used:

• Goldfish crackers
• Lucky Charms cereal
• coins
• flip top from a drink
• key
• ball with bell inside (cat toy)
• crayons
• playdough
• broken piece of sidewalk chalk
• velcro
• pom poms
• uncooked pasta

Very happy to see a Lucky Charm marshmallow in there!

Sharing a Goldfish with Momma; such a sweet boy!

He did well with the activity. It made me laugh because as he started emptying the tin, he would transfer things around; he still loves transferring!

His favorite thing from the muffin tin was definitely the cat toy. He played with that little ball the rest of the day and even took it in the bath that night. The next day we were gone in the morning, but after nap, he started asking for the ball again. He came up with this next activity completely on his own. 

We were in our master bedroom and he actually had two of the cat toy balls. He was standing at the foot of our bed and dropped the balls over the top of the footboard and they fell down between it and the mattress. It  sort of reminded me of Plinko from "The Price is Right". He would then use his finger to bring the ball all the way to the bottom. I'd have to help him get them back out, but he did this over and over and over again. And since they are cat toys, the cats were close by hoping to play too! Please ignore the scratches on our bed from those same cats!

Say, "Cheese!"

This coming week we are going to be working on the letter 'F'. It's very appropriate for 'F' to be this week. You'll have to come back next week to see why!

Make sure you head over to Carisa's blog to see lots of great Tot School ideas!