New Tools for Smalls!

I woke up to the sound of noisy dinn this morning. That never bodes well for me and put me instantly into an "I can't deal with this today!" kind of mood, so to avoid monstrous levels of confrontation I hid as much as I could all day! Of course I was physically present, but I think the kids knew all too well that in mind I was 'not in'! Despite that they seemed to have a relatively OK day. I had planned their boxes back on Saturday, so despite not having filled them last night (in favour of watching a film with Paul) they were able to quickly stock them up from my list and carry on with school.

Later in the day some more of my order of new resources for my under 5's came - bearing in mind that I will not likely be sending NJ to playgroup unless I learn to drive, I thought I'd better get sorted with him. I must confess some of the inspiration for this bean-baggy order came from Carisa over 1+1+1=1. So here are some photos from today and yesterday & my 'tot-tray' shelf which I just got organised. Some of NJ's were completely self-instigated (the dominos), some were him mucking in with CT (finger painting), some were 'tweeked' by him - beads go from threading to pouring! and others he played along with my plan for - well almost!! I've discovered this week he can thread round beads on pipe-cleaners and flat beads on laces, he can colour match red, blue and yellow and he can picture match, with some pretty nice attempts at finding labels for the pictures (I used one lotto board & tiles for this - he loved it).

TRAY-SHELVING

THREADING BEADS ON PIPE-CLEANERS

EXPLORING THE ROLL OF DIFFERENT SHAPED BEADS

COLOUR SORTING (NO PROBLEM MUM!!) - AND NAMING!

BEAD POURING - NOW THAT'S MORE FUN!!

FINGER PAINTING - TIME TO GET MESSY!!

REALLY - MESSY!!

LINE-UP, LINE-UP!!

THREADING BUTTON BEADS ON STRING - EASY!!

(BUT IT DOES TAKE A LITTLE CONCENTRATION ;) )

TIME TO LINE-UP AGAIN - AND THEN STACK BACK UP.

NOW LETS SEE HOW ELSE THEY LINE UP...

NOW FOR THE NEW STUFF - HOW MUDDLED CAN I MAKE THIS!!

NOT SURE WHAT TO DO WITH THESE YET, BUT THEY LOOK LIKE FUN :D

DO YOU LIKE MY SMILE? ;D

Aside from Tot-school, CT has been very keen to 'do school' and his big question atm is "What's that letter?" So I think my alphabet buy will be a big hit with him too. Perhaps even better for him that NJ, but hey-ho - whatever. It seems he already knows 'curly c', 'kicking k', 'o' and 'ex' - so that's a good start considering I've taught him nothing so far! He was also making an attempt to write his name free hand today which is great :D (see pictures). He has also pretty much mastered lacing cards this week. He kept going back to it until he completed his way around one whole picture and despite the frustration of entanglement, he still persisted to the end - major progress :D

Ellie also suprised me today with the way she was able to play with the pattern shapes. She made some lovely pictures with them :D

PATTERN SHAPES AND LACING - YUP SUSSED THAT THEN!

LOOK - I WROTE MY NAME ALL BY MYSELF!!

I have decided to have a quick fly through Jolly Grammar with Phoebe as when going into Year 3 she tell me "I don't know how to write a sentance!" I feel a little paniced!! I'm not really sure this is true, but she obviously is not confident with her writing skills, so we are going to cover some 'ground rules' and then hopefully she will feel better equiped, and after all - I never actually did do JG with her because her reading was so far behind, so I guess there probably might be some gappy holes that need patching :D.

There has been a stack of cartoon drawing going on too - with the purchase of 6 whiteboards. The ones I've posted are JAH's and one is a bit gruesome, but is pretty brilliant all the same. I'll try to get some the others do over the next few days too - they really are pretty cool - even if they do rapidly consume my whiteboard markers!! :D

GRUESOME BUT AWESOME - by JAH

TOO COOL! by JAH

MUMMY'S FAVOURITE SHOT OF THE DAY!! :D