A is for Alligator!

I have so many crafts I want to do with Brennan pinned on Pinterest or floating around in my head, but just haven't been sure when he'd be ready to do them. Kyle was gone this morning, so I decided we'd go ahead and try a simple one. I had all the materials I needed (other than googly eyes), so we went for it.

My inspiration for this craft came from here. No Time for Flashcards has TONS of great craft ideas for toddlers!

I gathered my supplies: green, blue, and white paper; markers; glue stick, and scissors. I used Peel and Stick Post-It Note paper to cover Brennan's table so he wouldn't get marker everywhere. I then drew an A on the green paper (including little triangles for the eyes) and let him start coloring.

Brennan has never been super into coloring. He always wants to color at the library, but it will only hold his attention for a few moments and he'll just put a few scribbles on the page. Letting him use markers today changed all that. He LOVED it. This was by far the most scribbling he's ever done. Before he'd put the marker onto the paper, he had to touch his finger to it. He was pretty mesmerized.

He continued coloring while I cut out some white triangles to use as teeth. I also flipped the A upside-down so he'd get more marker over the entire letter. He used the purple marker the most!

He had fun watching me cut out the letter A (I forgot about those little triangles I had made for eyes and cut them right off...guess it didn't matter since I didn't have googly eyes anyways). He also found his marker-covered hands very interesting. That is until I went to clean them off and the marker wouldn't come off completely. He was super mad that his hands still looked dirty. Oh well!

Once the A was cut out, I had B help me with the glue stick, and then we glued into onto blue paper. When he came time to glue the teeth on, he was starting to lose interest and got up from his chair. He liked it when I chased him around with the alligator though.

Here's our finished project! I won't include so many pictures next time, but this was the first one, so I wanted to capture it!

Tot School - 19 . 5 Months - Alphabet Box Letter G

I seem to go through good and bad periods of Tot School. Right now is a bad one. However, it is very apparent that B is learning a bazilion new things everyday whether we do "formal" Tot School or not. I did still want to share our alphabet box from this past week with you. It was for the letter 'G'.

• Leapfrog 'G' magnet
• Baby Einstein "Gg' book
• A Day on Safari (it has a pop up giraffe, so that's why I included it)
• Goodnight Moon
• Grover Learns to Read
• Grover Goes to School
• guitar
• giraffe stuffed animal
• giraffe puzzle piece
• giraffe trash can

I'm still really happy doing an alphabet box each week. We don't always do much with it, but it certainly seems to have Brennan interested (mildly obsessed) with letters. He points out letters and numbers all the time and wants to know what they say. He can identify many letters and some numbers, even ones we haven't officially learned yet. He just soaks up so much!

Here are some pictures of the first day he used his 'G' box.

You can see some real "Tot School" ideas by heading over to Carisa's blog!

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!

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

Thanks for stopping by to check out our week. Last week I hardly had anything to share, but this week I have tons of pictures! 

I continued using the alphabet box. This week's letter was 'D'. Brennan really liked the box this week!

• Leapfrog 'D' magnet
• Baby Einstein 'Dd' book
• 'D' coloring page
• dogs
• drum
• dice
• duck
• dinosaur puzzle
• Duck Stories
• A Dozen Dizzy Dogs
• Danny and the Dinosaur
• How do Dinosaurs Clean Their Rooms?

Brennan dove right into the box this week. I think he was especially excited to see his dice in there. I had put them away for about a week and he LOVES those things! The large stuffed dog is from Build-a-Bear and sings "Who Let the Dogs Out", so he really liked that too. Oh and he hadn't seen the little duck in a long time either, so he was all about that.

The dinosaur puzzle pieces are fun to stack!

The drum is always fun to play with!

We watched a few 'D' videos this week. I also remembered Starfall. I can't believe I had forgotten about it. Brennan liked watching the alphabet videos on there!




Since this is our fourth alphabet box, I decided it was time to do a review. I didn't expect Brennan to be able to recognize all four letters, but check out this video. I swear this was the first time we tried! I was amazed. I've done it several times since and sometimes he will mix up C and D, but I think he really is starting to recognize them. In the video I think it sounds like he is trying to say some of the sounds. Such a smart boy!


This week I made my first batch of homemade play dough! I LOVE it! I followed the recipe I found on here on Pinterest. I cut the large batch recipe in half and just made the whole batch blue. It's nice that it is technically edible, but go figure, Brennan hasn't once tried to put it in his mouth. Better safe than sorry though. He wasn't too sure what to think of it the first day, but seems to like it now. I included pictures of him playing with it throughout the week.

Just like the play dough, Brennan wasn't too fond of "painting" with shaving cream in the bathtub when we did it for the first time a few weeks ago, but now he loves that too and wants to do it almost every night.

I had seen Carisa do a stacking activity with Do-a-Dot marker lids before and had been wanting to try it. B was great at it.

We also got some hand-me-down cards; a Sesame Street set and a Go Fish set with numbers. I just let B explore them this week.

Of course we got in plenty of reading this week! After he drinks his milk in the morning, the first thing he wants to do is read books!

We have this really cool little outdoor shopping area one exit up from our house and there's a little pond with tons of ducks! Makes for a quick little field trip when we need to get out of the house.

Not really part of Tot School, but B learned a new trick this week!


We always have fun when Daddy gets to play with us too!


So, we had a pretty good week around here, but I'll leave you with a few outtakes.

Hey, we can't be happy all the time!

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