Fall Tot School Fun

I love those days when you feel like you've been a good Mommy. I know I am good Mommy, but I certainly have good days and not so good days. Today was a good day.

I have said it time and time again that when I have specific activities planned to do with Brennan, our day goes much better than when we just "wing it" and go with the flow. I had a productive day this morning while he was at school. I stopped by the commissary and bought a few groceries, after unloading those I found some great fall Tot School ideas (mainly from 1+1+1=1) and printed off some of those, and then I even cleaned both bathrooms before having to head back to pick up B.

He was all smiles when I picked him up from school. So happy he's still loving it! Brennan and I played a little bit in the basement after school and then had lunch. It was nap time after that and unfortunately he didn't sleep as long as usual. However, it wasn't all bad because I knew I had some go to activities we could do together.

First off I introduced him to a new iPad app called LetterSchool (thanks, Confessions of a Homeschooler!). It is so good and Brennan loves it. It's a tracing app and has capital letters, lower case letters, and numbers 1-10. It has you trace each thing three times and Brennan did all of them (capitals, lower case, and #s) today. That's a lot of tracing! To say this app was a hit is an understatement.

I convinced him it was time to take a break from the iPad and he immediately discovered the baggie with googly eyes in it. I found the Monster Math idea here. I cut some "monsters" from card stock and wrote addition problems at the bottom. B was easily able to put the correct number of googly eyes on each half of the monster and then count them all up to get the sum. I also put problems on the back, so there are 8 addition problems in all. I knew he'd be able to do it because he loves the addition game in the Preschool and Kindergarten Learning Games iPad app.

Then we got to the some of the fall Tot School stuff. First he wanted to do the dice activity. He completely understood what to do. We used Apple Jacks cereal to graph our results and then he got to eat them while I started fixing dinner. Once he finished his cereal, he found the Do-a-Dot page I had printed and brought it into the kitchen saying, "Oh wow, oh wow! A acorn, P pumpkin!" Once dinner was in the oven, we sat down and did the dot page together. Then he wanted to do the scarecrow puzzle. The puzzle is cut apart into 10 strips and I left the strips numbered, so he could work on ordering numbers. He was able to do it easily.

I want to say here that I didn't make him do any of these activities. In fact, I didn't even show him any of them. He saw them sitting on his table and showed interest right away. I would never force him to do these things, but I'm glad he likes them and it really made for a fun and delightful afternoon.

By this time, dinner was almost ready. It was delish by the way. I made baked bruschetta chicken. I marinated a chicken breast in Sun Dried Tomato dressing all day. Then chopped up a tomato and mixed it with mozzarella cheese, dried basil, and a little more dressing and threw all that on top of the chicken. It baked for 25 minutes and was done. Super easy and yummy!

After dinner, Brennan and I played in his room. His new favorite game is for him to sit on his bed while I sit on the floor and we throw this little light up ball back and forth. Tonight he even wanted to switch places, so I sat in his bed and he threw the ball up to me.

Again, so thankful for days like today! And to top it off, since B didn't nap very long he was in bed before 7:30. :)