A Little Bit of Learning for Little Bit - March 6

Little Bit is 23 months old

I didn't do a Tot School post last week, since we'd been sick all week and I didn't take any pictures of Little Bit snuggling on my lap watching endless hours of Blues Clues and Sesame Street LOL.

So here are a few of the things Little Bit's been up to . . .

She is LOVING drawing right now! She'd been using the cheap Walmart colored pencils the big girls use, but then I found a set of Lyra triangular pencils that I'd gotten for the girls when they were younger and she is really loving these! They are so much brighter colors, I'm loving them too. And the triangle shape helps her to automatically hold the pencils correctly. Now I need to hunt down the pencil sharpener that goes with these.  We've found that a bed tray makes a great "table" for her, for both drawing and eating snacks. Interestingly, at this point she seems to be ambidextrous (her big sisters are right handed, both her parents are left handed . . . we shall see . . . )

We are currently reviewing Kinderbach, and in order to do that I bought a cheap keyboard for the girls to use. Little Bit LOVES it! She mostly pushes the pre-programmed songs and sings and dances along, but it is TOO CUTE! And she loves to play her "pinano".

She continues to love her "school" otherwise known as the Lauri Toddler Tote. When I tell the big girls it's time for school, she runs to the cabinet and gets her "school" out and plays with them while we do our school stuff. But she does like to have her sisters sit with her too.

While it was still pretty chilly out this week, it was sunny and SOO much nicer than it has been! So we took advantage of that and went outside quite abit. Up until now, she hasn't had much use for the toddler swing, preferring to have her sisters help her use the regular swing up by the walnut tree. But this week that was still too muddy, so she re-discovered the toddler swing, and seems to finally be acclimating to swinging! Last summer she LOVED LOVED LOVED the slides at the playground, fearlessly going down the biggest ones there, but wanted NOTHING to do with swinging. She'd happily push the empty swing, but didn't want to be IN the swing at all. And I think for the most part that's what she's done with the regular swing in our yard too. But she wanted to be IN the toddler swing, so we tried it. At first her sisters had to push her VERY slowly or she'd start to freak out but over time she seemed to get used to it, so now they can push her as high as *I* am comfortable with her swinging in that swing. So we'll have to see what she does with the swings at the playground when it gets abit warmer.

I didn't get any pictures of it. But I also printed off a few of the Tot Books & Packs activities for her. I wanted to keep them portable for keeping in my purse when we go to church, people's houses, etc. So I didn't put them into a "lapbook" type format. I just laminated everything and put it into separate ziplocks. She's been enjoying the matching games, simple puzzles and is starting to figure out one where she puts the tractors in size-order.

She continues to enjoy various counting books and has progressed from counting "one-two, one-two, one two" to count a few more numbers. I've heard her count to 3 and the other night during her bath she was counting the "Little People". There were only 3 of them but it sounded like she counted 1-2-3 as she set htem on the side of the tub and then 4-5 as she knocked them off. But then I couldn't get her to do it again, so who knows.  . . certainly not going to worry about it at age 2 LOL.

Finally, she loves loves loves the Blues Clues Memory Game. We've had it since the big girls were little but her teacher at church plays a memory type game with them and Little Bit seemed to be kind of getting it. So I got our memory game out a couple weeks ago to help her understand the game better. And she is amazingly good at it! I keep it to 5 or 6 pairs, and we don't play against each other, I just let her turn the cards over 2 at a time, then flip them back over, and if left to her own devices she will turn the SAME TWO CARDS over every time, so I remind her "different cards" but when she turns over one that she's seen the match to she almost always remembers and finds the match.  She also likes just playing with the cards on her own, flipping through them and saying what's on the cards, putting them in and out of the little tray in the box, etc. I think she's already played with the game more than the big girls ever did. They enjoyed memory but it was never a favorite, maybe because they were 3 or 4 instead of 2 when they got it LOL.

And that's a Little Bit of what Little Bit has been up to this week! You can see what other Tots have been up to at 1+1+1=1.