tonyandkirsten.org

~Erik is 31 Months Old~

We had two big highlights for Tot School this week.  The first highlight was having a couple days to do Tot School with just Erik and I (well, and Kai playing near us).  Madeline spent a couple days at Grandma’s house, so Erik and I had some great quality time while she was gone.  Usually we do Tot School and Kindergarten simultaneously, with me getting Erik started on something, then helping Madeline.  He really liked having me more available to actually play a game or activity with him during Tot School time time.

Our other big highlight was doing the Monsters Tot Pack:

After trying out just the Shape Monsters a couple weeks ago and discovering that Erik really enjoyed this type of activity, I decided it would be worth the effort to make the other pieces of the Monster Tot Pack.  We had a “Ladies Night In” at church a little over a week ago, and I spent a lot of my time while I chatted with the ladies doing my laminating and cutting!

It felt a little bit like Christmas morning when Erik opened his Monsters folder on Monday morning.  He was so excited to see more Monsters inside! He enjoyed working with the pieces of it throughout the week and was proud to show it to Daddy and tell him that this was his “Tot school work.”    He didn’t even discover them on the first day, but I think Erik’s favorite piece of the Tot Pack were the pattern matching monsters:

The Monster Tot Pack is a free download (to which I added some other free printable monster coloring sheets I found)! Carissa at 1plus1plus1equals1.com has made a lot of other sweet Tot Packs/Books that are available for download free on her site as well.

Besides the Monster Tot Pack, I think Erik’s other favorite activity this week was painting:

Between the two kids, watercolor painting has been so popular at our house that I had to restock my supply of watercolors, even though I just bought some at the beginning of the school year! Luckily, they are a good deal even at regular price (I paid a buck for a tray with 8 colors, and upgraded Madeline to a tray of 16 for two bucks).

We drove Madeline to St. Cloud for her stay with Grandma, and we all went to see a replica of “Sue the T-Rex” at the Stearns History Museum.  Erik enjoyed both the “big raaaaarrr” and the “small raaarrrs”:

After visiting the museum, we had lunch at the Space Aliens Grill.  The kids got to play some games, and Erik took a Rocket Ship ride (too bad he left his “Rocket Ship Helmet” at home…see last week’s post for a picture of that!):

You can visit this week’s Tot School post at 1+1+1=1 to see what other families are doing for Tot School, too!