St. Patrick's Day Tot School

samil has been in love with his letter blocks this week. he's built towers, roads for his cars to drive on, thrown them at amely, and used this spatula to transfer them from the playmat to their home in an old used wipes box.

just a note: we use wipes boxes for EVERYTHING. all of the kids stuff is stored in old wipes boxes. plastics are expensive here, and this cheap (almost free) alternative makes it easy for me to organize on our budget.



the only day (besides the block photo from monday) that i was able to take pictures was st. patrick's day! (the camera somehow got packed in our neighbor's moving boxes after some water play with their daughter) we did a lot of activities - especially because amely decided to sleep in until almost 10am and samil and i were able to play together for almost two hours!

i've seen this sticker activity all over the place - but i got the shamrock idea at ramblings and adventures of a SAHM. i thought it was cool, samil... well, not so much. he put three of the stars on the lines, and then decided to fill the shamrock up with stickers. we had read a book the night before that had a sticker chart on the front cover page. when i pulled out the stars, he ran and grabbed the book and filled in the spaces that were empty.

i wanted to make a paper-bag puppet with samil from a pattern i had in my teaching box (from when i actually taught in a classroom) but it was missing a ton of pieces. i free handed what was missing and cut it all out. added some cotton to the mix (for his beard, of course).

samil loved this. but didn't want to color in the white pieces.

we mixed blue and yellow food coloring/water to make green.
yes, that's a snot-sucker from the hospital in his hand. i don't know why but we have like 6 of them in the house. i think that when amely was in ICU, i absent-mindedly put hers into my purse each time we were allowed to visit.
samil loves doing this - but we're having some issues with listening and samil keeps trying to drink the water every time we do this activity. our water is not potable and he needs to learn not to drink it. (and it's not just with transferring activities, he does it in the bathtub, too)

he also decided it would be more fun to put on the lid and shake the colors up.

i cut out these yellow circles a few weeks ago, attached some paperclips and sent samil looking for them with his magnet wand. he.loves.it. and he's extended the activity to collecting and THEN taking off the clips and sorting the coins from the clips.

we practiced counting shamrocks. still not a big hit.

patterning his shamrocks and "gold coins" was way more interesting for him.

we also played with some moon sand that my aunt had sent us awhile back. i completely forgot about it - it was hidden in the closet so samil couldn't get to it. i threw it in a tub and let him go - completely forgetting he had a glass of water there. i freaked out. for like 10 minutes. before i realized that it was moon sand and doesn't get wet. oops.

we have two tot-schoolish playdates next week that we're really excited for!
check out carisa's blog to see more totschool fun!