Letter of the Week: G

~ Peeper is 28 months old ~

A Note To My Regular Readers: I know I'm repeating some photos and stories that you've already seen, but I want to put all our learning activities in the one post that's part of to the Tot School link-up.

Tot Schoolers: Welcome! If you enjoy this post, please feel free to stay for a while. I'll give you a fair warning that much of my blog is PG-13, but my Tot School link-up posts will always be G-Rated.

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Again, I put together a discovery bin for Peeper, and guided her through a couple of letter crafts, and pretty much let her take it from there.

On Sunday we made a glitter G (another idea from No Time for Flashcards) and started on a green g which we kind of worked on all week.

Here's her letter G discovery bin: a grouch in a garbage can, a G, a couple of green things, grapes, girls, G book and a book about "goody" (our word for nursing).

These girls are from Happy Meals that our niece ate years ago. The one on the right is Wendy from Peter Pan, so of course, Shrike named the other one Lisa. This is what happens when 40-something lesbians have children.

These dominoes came from one of the Kindermusik classes that we took last year, and depict the mascot animals and some of the instruments used in the class. She doesn't play "by the rules" of course, but she does enjoy finding "matches."  

Right before Christmas, one of our MOMS Club friends gave Peeper a set of Brain Quest cards for 2 - 3 year olds, and she loves them. They feature Max the Monkey, so she asks at least once a day (usually more often) to "Read Max!" and often asks for specific scenes such as "Max eating!" or "Pig buying apples."

That's happening in a picture of Max at the Farmer's Market (Max himself is buying a pineapple from a schnauzer) so today, she gathered up several of her plastic fruits in the tiny Target shopping bag from the Dr. Seuss event last week, and told us she was going to the Farmer's Market.

When summer rolls around, we really must manage to get up before noon some Saturday morning and take her to a real one.

Update:
After I put all the plastic fruit in her bag, I put a bunch of other things in, including several wooden blocks, and called them various fruits and veggies. She and Shrike were just playing in that room, and Shrike came in and said "Hey Mama, Did you tell her those blocks were plums and pickles?" She seemed a bit relieved to hear that I had. I think it was freaking her out to think that Peeper had come up with that on her own! 

Peeper also loves to play the piano. We're pretty laid back about what she does on it, and she's fairly gentle with it. This day, she told me to play her little toy one while she played on the real one. When I started, she told me "No, top!" which I figured out meant that she only wanted me to play the black keys. I had noticed that she seems to prefer them when she's playing.

I found it interesting that she thought of their location as their distinguishing feature, rather than their color. Not that it means anything, but interesting.

While at the piano, she spotted this magnetic "Making Faces" toy that used to belong to our niece and nephew. She has played with it several times, and really enjoys it.

See the half a moustache that's on the girl's neck in the photo above? The other half is missing, so she's not really sure what to make of it. At one point, she picked it up and said "Snowman nose, carrot nose!" and stuck it in the middle of a face. Okay, that works, too.

She also seems to think that the two tufts of clown hair are ears. Or possible ear muffs?

And, of course, there was lots of puffy play, as usual. Which, as usual, involved sorting by color. On this evening, she found all of a color and handed them to me, then had me put them down in a pile so she could go on to the next color. So, technically, I guess I'm the one who lined up the piles, but she took it from there.

While gathering the green puffies, she also got this big green ball, and put it in my hands, on top of the puffies. Then, twice, she found another puffy and brought it over, picked up the ball, put the puffy in my hands, saying "Here go, Mama!" and put the ball back.

After I put the green puffies and the big ball in the row, she started gather green foods from her kitchen. (Well, technically, from the floor, all over the sunroom.)

At one point, she brought some brown beans along with the green beans, and then was unsure exactly what to do with them, because they look just like the green ones, but they aren't green. (I am adding a bit of my own interpretation here, of course.)

So, she moved on to brown foods.

She then picked up an ear of corn (which she wants to call "honey" for some reason, both her plastic ones and in pictures - I think they must remind her of cartoon bee hives?) and a potato chip and I figured she was starting in on yellow foods, but then she saw her Jack in the Box, and got distracted.

She really enjoys Playdough, although she mostly just tells us whoat to make with it, so I tried having her make Playdough Gs on a template. She loved the idea, but needed a whole lot of help. I made the big "worm" and put it on the curvy part and then handed her a small "worm" to put on the crossbar (sort of).

Sorry for the crappy photo, I had to use my phone because my camera card was occupied at the time, uploading photos to the computer.

Last night, I made the beginning of a set of capital / lowercase matching cards, and she took to them right away. She did need a good bit of guidance to actually end up with this whole set up, but she definitely got the idea of putting them together.

She also enjoyed making Playdough "papapiddows" (caterpillars) and counting the balls.

"How many got? Count dem!"