Twin Tot School #16...

Will and Wesley are 27 months old.

This wasn't technically Tot School, but I had to snap a picture of one of those beautiful moments where they are actually happily playing together! They loveLittle People almost as much as I do!



They are masters of all farm animals now. This is Wesley in the middle of making his pig noise while showing me the finger puppet. I love that Tot School makes old toys new again. I bought this farm set 8 years ago and it never gets played with until I made it part of farm week. It's amazing to me how intentionally playing with your kids can enable them to play with things on their own later, giving you time to blog:)

Will was very proud of his cat!

I have this puzzle out for weeks now. In fact, I leave it on the shelf all day. It's the first puzzle they have ever worked without any help. Mostly they love it because they think the house looks like Grandmother's house and are always showing it to me!

This was another moment where I caught them playing on their own. Wesley was feeding Will a pretend waffle. I love how they are using their imaginations so much together.

As we begin learning about zoo animals, nothing beats riding a zebra. Look at that hair go:

I was surprised to see Wesley take his toy over here to play because that is the time out corner! I have also always helped him match the animal halves up on this game. I was very surprised to see he can now do it on his own- smart boy.

I love anything Leapfrog. While I am not actively tryingto teach the boys the alphabet, they are learning that letters make sounds. This is a great toy to reinforce that as it sings the song and makes the sounds.

I got this file folder game back out because we haven't used it in months. It is matching different colored Baby Moses to same colored grasses. They did a great job except for the two shades of pink which were very tricky.

My dad's favorite snack as a child was peanut butter crackers with sugar sprinkled on top. Leave it to my daughter to glamup the traditional snack by adding pink sprinkles. I decided it would be fun to let the boys add red and blue sprinkles. They "ate" it up- hee hee!
I just got these droppers from Oriental Trading. I put a drop of blue food coloring in water in a divided bowl and showed them how to transfer the water from one side to the other. They did it then decided it would also be fun to squirt it on themselves and up in the air. As you can tell by the picture of Will's mouth this was after the peanut butter snack.
This puzzle was just more exposure to the letters as I made their sound for them as we put the pieces in.

Wesley worked dilligently at hammering for awhile. You give that boy a hammer and he'll do anything- just like his dad.

I was very excited to order these paint trays from Oriental Trading and began imagining the things we could do with them. I started with one-to-one coorespondence hoping they'd put 1 pompom in each circle. Instead, they threw them all over. Maybe next time...

I got out some foam zoo animals and my favorite divided tray. I handed them one animal at a time. They had to say its name and make its sound then sort it with other animals like it. We usually sort by color so sortingby type was new for us. They got it right away. This became this week's favorite activity, and we did it several times. They stuck with it long enough to sort about 40 animals- much more than I expected.

Again, Will loves to show me the animal. The lion was his favorite as he got to roar.
Wesley was a big fan of the kangaroo who we made jump because Mommy has no idea what and if kangaroos make a noise.

I thought it was funny that Wesley kicked back in his chair to work a puzzle so laid the pieces out for him on the arm, and he loved it.

Their favorite activity of the week was definately not one I had planned since they decided to "IEIE" (what they call writing) on my walls!!!! At least they look contrite-not!

In their sweet defense I did later catch them using their mop to try to get it off- how sweet is that?!

Apparently between picture taking and laughing I didn't properly convery the naughtiness (go figure?) because the next day I discovered Will had IE'd on his face with a pink highlighter!

When I asked him what he'd done he wouldn't look at me and tried not to smile:

I finally got him to show me his handiwork with his signature tongue stuck out:

Whew, what a week! What do tots do at the end of such a busy week? Why kick back in their recliners,of course!

I'm pretty sure Will is calling all his peeps to see what they did in Tot School:

If you want to see what all your peeps did this week in Tot School, kick back and head over to Carissa's blog!

Twin Tot School #13...

Will and Wesley are 26 months old

We had an exciting week here at our house. We have been raising butterflies or "bugs" as the boys call them, and it was finally time to release them. You can see how excited they both were:
They carried their oranges around offering them to the butterflies but them would get scared if they got too close!

We also went on a field trip to our local nature center. While the big kids were in their class the boys and I had lots of fun. We did some bird and squirrel watching:
We played in the log house that was just their size:
When you have a playground all to yourself you have to run:I think Will's hair is so funny!There was also this really tempting mud hole which believe it or not they stayed out of it. That is until Will was knocked into it right as we were leaving!This was also our first time to have a theme in Tot School. This week was Farm Week.

I got this great idea from another blog (I can't remember which-so sorry!). I was going to turn a jug into a pig, but Jackson decided he wanted to. He did a really good job- see the pipe cleaner piggie tail! Then they fed the pig some yummy beans!
We also worked lots of farm puzzles including this difficult block one, but Will just wanted to play blocks!
This week also included the debut of many new Tot Tools. This came from an activity swap we did. The can lids have stickers on them. They have to clip the clothespins with the matching stickers on them.

This was really their first time to use clothespins, so Wesley was pretty proud of himself!

We also used the hammer to bang in the pieces of our foam puzzle. This was a BIG hit (pardon the pun)!

Another new activity was using the tongs to transfer pompoms into these great pumpkin ice cube trays.

These boys loved this activity!

We finally finished our Parmesan so we could use the container. This time we put beans in the holes since we had them out from feeding our piggies.

Then my favorite tool was color matching pipe cleaners to holes I punched in the top of Pringles cans and surrounded by hole reinforcers colored different colors.

Big Brother helped Wesley a little, but he was still one proud little fellow!

And my favorite photo of the week- a new use for tongs:

We really had a great week, and it was wonderful to watch how proud of themselves the boys were when they accomplished something!

To check out what others did this week head over to Carissa's blog!

Twin Tot School #12...

Wesley and Will are now 25 months old.

I am still loving our Tot School shelf. Mostly because instead of fighting over the same toy, they can choose which they want to play and I just pray it isn't the same one! They are becoming very independent with this. They still need my prompting to clean up, but once I start it they are happy to help.

One of the big hits this week was the Tot Tool I made them.

Who can resist Mickey Mouse (even if he is on a paint sample!)?

We were very blessed to participate in a preschool activity bag swap with our homeschool group. So, we ended up with 20 activities ready to go. Some they aren't yet ready for, but they loved putting the beads on pipe cleaners. What a great fine motor activity!
This day (because I was in a hurry) I set out this entire box of puzzles and shapes instead of picking out a few. Will did a good job of figuring out all by himself which shapes and how many of each he needed.

My favorite toy came out as usual. What makes this so great is that they play with it a different way each time. Today it was all about seeing how high they could stack it!

This was also the first day I put out all 4 colors of bears for color sorting. Wesley did great even with 4. Will can do it but is more interested in scooping them in. I have got to get him a pouring activity going!

Then the bears were forgotten as he tried to see how tall he could stack these!

Wesley is always ready to snuggle up and read with anyone who has a book. On this day he listened to an entire book about elephants.

Then there is the super important football class! Down, set hut are some of Wesley and Will's favorite words.

Mommy went shopping and found some great 3-4 piece puzzles. They are just the right number of pieces for them right now.

This turned into family puzzle time- love it!

At the end of the week we attempted a torn paper fall tree. Silly mommy tried this when it was nap time, lesson learned. Both of them loved taking on and off the glue top- there has got to be an idea for a tot tool there, hmmm......

I always save my scrap paper for them to draw on. Will was very excited about this today.

Wednesday was my birthday so we headed off to celebrate. We went to the children's museum. Since they are so into space right now this was a huge hit!

Next, we headed to the airport to let Will see his beloved "bees". It was neat to do things based on their interests!

My favorite photo of the week:
I hope you enjoyed seeing what we are up to at our Twin Tot School! Head over to Carissa's blog to see other great Tot School.