Tot School-Tot Trays

Here are the trays Sweet Girl will be playing with this week!!  Enjoy!

Tonging blue and white pom poms

Making a beautiful floral arrangement (this is a styrofoam block and flowers from the Dollar Tree)

Sorting mini fruits into flower cups

Pouring alphabet beads (Sweet Girl has gotten pretty good pouring from same sized cups, so I thought I would mix it up a little and give her two different sizes)

Placing pegs on peg board and then balancing marbles on top of the pegs (from Time for Tots)

Smooth and rough sort (also from Time for Tots)

Color matching with colored heart cards

 I'll post some pics of Sweet Girl in action later!!  I also have many other fun things planned this week!!  Be sure to check back!!

I'm linking up to Tot School!!

(Sweet Girl is 22 months)

Fun Activities and Valentine's Day goodies

I wanted to share several activities I am planning on using with our Tot Trays this week.  All you need is a printer and some of your toddler's toys!!!

Color matching

I printed off these Valentine Counting Cards on cardstock and laminated them to make them durable for little toddler paws.

Then I went on a hunt to find toys that coordinated with the hearts.

And tada...now I have a color matching game.

Or you could always pick up some of the large conversation hearts to use instead of the objects...and these are yummy!!  This bag is from the Dollar Tree (my FAVORITE store).

I also plan on using the heart cards for a mini-memory game with Sweet Girl.  We tried a full game of "Memory" the other day where you had to match pairs, but that was a little too involved for her.  Instead, I plan on showing her three different colored hearts, then turn them over and ask her "Where is the pink heart?".  I think she'll enjoy it!!

And last, but not least.....here is why I LOVE the Dollar Tree!!  I snagged some great goodies and plan on using them for our Valentine's Day activities next month!!

Heart magnets, heart boxes, pink coins and heart picks

Head on out to the Dollar Store, pick up some supplies and join us in the fun!!

Toddler crafts - Week in Review

We do LOTS of crafts in our house!!  Here's what we did this past week, as well as the books we used to go along with our crafts!!  Enjoy!

Paper plate Brown Bear

Sweet Girl loves teddy bears and requested we make a bear, so....we made a brown bear out of a paper plate and read Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See.

Footprint Penguin

This craft is from here!!!  We had so much fun painting Sweet Girl's feet!!!  We read Ten Playful Penguins afterwards!! 

Q-tip snowman

I really enjoyed this one (I even made my own!!!).  Sweet Girl didn't love it as much as I did....she did it as fast as she could and jumped down to go play!! We read Snow Baby to go along with this craft. 

Hand print Stegosaurus

From No Time For Flashcards, which is an awesome site for kids crafts and activities!!!  This is my go-to site when I'm looking for new ideas!  Our book for this craft was Oh My, Oh My, Oh Dinosaurs by Sandra Boynton.

Snow globe snowman

Sweet Girl really loved this one because she got to use sparkles (glitter)!!!  We also read and sang with our musical  Frosty the Snowman book.

Did you do anything crafty this week????

Ready or not...

Sweet Girl had fun playing around with an empty tissue box today, so I decided to make up a couple of games for us to play!!  First, I had her decorate the box with her stickers (peeling stickers is a great fine motor activity).

Then I placed some of her little toys in the box and tried to play a little "tactile discrimation" game where she had to close her eyes, reach in and tell me what she felt, but that was a little too complicated for her.  (Mainly because she just wanted to look in the box!!)

So....instead we played hide and seek with the toys!  I would hide the toys all over our family room and then she would run around, find them and put them back in the box.  She absolutely LOVED this game!! We took turns hiding and finding the objects.  It was so cute because she would hide them in the same spots I had just hidden them and then look at me and say "Where all the toys, mommy?".

And again....Little Man just practiced being cute!!! Look at those cheeks!!

Snowy Day Fun

Don't you just love snowy days when you don't have to leave the house or take off your pjs? Sweet girl (a.k.a. my adorable 22 month old daughter) rarely takes off her Dora pajamas (yep...she has them on this picture!!) that her wonderful Aunt Brooke gave her for Christmas.

Here's a glimpse at what went down at our house today on this very snowy day!!!

Here Sweet Girl is sitting at her new table. Santa got her this for Christmas, but forgot to give us all the parts, so we couldn't put it together until now. Boy was she excited this morning....first thing she said was "Wow, my table", followed by a "THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU"!! She and Dora had lots of tea parties today and even Dada got invited to a party!! Too cute!

Sweet Girl sure does LOVE water!! She will stand in her Learning Tower and play for a hour non-stop!! She loves washing dishes, catching ice cubes and pouring water between two cups. She's actually pretty good at keeping all the water in the sink too, believe it or not.

Here are some of our tot trays for this week. (If you want to know more about Tot Trays visit 1+1+1=1 blog or The Shafer Family blog....both have great ideas, pictures, printables, etc...)Sweet Girl really enjoys our trays and I sure do love to see her working so hard.

Working on pouring beans

Working on those fine motor skills by putting mini animals in a pill box

Practicing counting beads (she'd much rather just play with the beads rather than count!!) Counting card printed from here.

Matching colored objects to the colored circles (thanks Time for Tots for this great activity!)


Dropping poker chips into plastic container (again, another great Time for Tots activity that Sweet Girl does over and over again!!)


Putting magnets on the snowman (snowman picture printed from here).

And what did Little Man do all day???? Well....he just practiced being cute!!

And that was most of our day....oh yeah, I left out the part where our power went out as we were putting Sweet Girl down for bed and we ended up sleeping over at our neighbors house!!

How did you spend your snowy day?

Hello blogosphere!!

I'm joining the blogosphere world! I have no idea what I'm doing, but I've wanted to document our daily activites, my craft projects and our life for a while!! My brother just joined the Navy and I thought this would be a great way for him to see what we do all day!