Letter of the Week: H

~ Peeper is 28.5 months old ~

A Note To My Regular Readers: I may be repeating some photos or stories that I've already published, 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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Here are the contents of our Letter H discovery bin: hammer, horse, hamburger, heart, hat, hotdog, (bear) head, H, hand, hanger and hair.

Since she enjoyed making Playdoh Gs with my help last week, I figured that Hs would be easy enough for her to do on her own.

I was kind of wrong about that, but she still enjoyed it.

And I made her a snowman, too.

And she did a little painting.

On Tuesday, we made some green cookies for St. Patrick's Day. I think there were still a couple left by the time the 17th rolled around!

She loves playing with her "sticks and puffies" (pipe cleaners and pompoms). She often has me make "itsy 'piders" out of the pipecleaners, but on this day, she asked me to make a caterpillar. I was kind of proud of what I came up with.

And, of course, I had to turn him into a beautiful butterfly.

This week, I brought out these alphabet flashcards that I picked up on the Target Dollar Aisle at back-to-school time. She is really enjoying playing with them.

She noticed a couple of different kinds of birds and put them together, so then we looked for all the birds, and she lined them up.

Then she stuck a goat on the end. I asked why, and she said, "Like goats."

Uh, ok. I had no idea she was such a fan of goats.

She also likes to use the knife from her kitchen to "cut" the apple and the egg.

We did a lot of Playdoh-ing this week, too. On this evening, she had asked me to make a watermelon, and after that I kind of got carried away.

Here's the watermelon, grapes, lime, lemon, orange and a cookie with green sprinkles. (Much like the ones we'd made earlier in the week.)

She's had me do this a few time, and I've also made brocolli and greenbeans and a plum . . .

. . . and a carrot, which of course, became a nose. When I put it on her nose, she said, "Peeper need eyes!" so I made her some of those, too.

My favorite part of the whole Playdoh fruit and veggie thing was when she went down the row, pointing to each one, saying "Peeper likes watermelon. Peeper likes grapes. Peeper likes lemons," and so forth.

Only a few of those statements were actually true, but she thinks she likes just about any food. There are many things that she's tasted several times, spit out and said, "I don' like it," but keeps trying them over and over.

Grapes, for example. She always wants a grape if I'm eating them. She's never actually gotten past the first taste, but she tries and tries again.

As little as she actually eats, volume-wise, I am so glad that she's at least willing to try different foods, even if she decides they're not for her.

Another day, she dug around in her dress-up basket to find hats for herself, me and the stuffed bear that she was calling "Curly Bear."

Sidebar:
Curly Bear is Baby Bear's baby sister on Sesame Street. She loves the video about her being born. When she was carrying this little bear all over that evening, I think she told me that she's Curly Bear's big sister.

Shrike and I are in agreement that if this IVF-for-number-two thing (starting in a few weeks!) doesn't work out for us, we're going to have to get rid of that bear and ban that video, because we just can't take it.

Anyway, she lined up all the hats, and I asked, "Now what?" She said "Yook at dem!"

She told me the same thing about a line of ducks on a different day.

On Friday, the weather was beautiful, so we spent some time out in the yard. While we were there, we met this guy!

Peeper thought he was great, and picked him up and let him crawl around on her hand. She said it tickled. I took her word for it.

He wasn't moving much at all when we put him back under the bush, and I have very little confidence that he's still alive. I'm trying to tell myself that he was probably of a destructive species, so I don't have to feel guilty about that.

Later, we were talking about it, and I suggested that we crawl like caterpillars. For a while, she was a baby caterpillar and I was a mama caterpillar, until I realized that there's no such thing as a mama caterpillar!

So, I put on her butterfly wings, and I was Mama Butterfly!

I helped my little Baby Caterpillar to find a "nice green leaf" to eat.

And then, I helped her to build a cocoon . . . .

. . . and to break out of it . . .

. . . and become a beautiful butterfly . . .

. . . and fly away!

You might not think that eating toast with jelly is very educational, but it was inspired by some of the pictures in her Brain Quest books. She likes to look at the pictures of "Max (the monkey) eating!" and she was talking a lot about the "two jellies!" on his breakfast table, when I realized that, while we own jelly, we rarely eat it, and she's probably never had it without peanut butter.

So, we made toast and jelly. She likes toast but this time, she mostly just licked the jelly off the top!

And, finally, our letter crafts. We actually made our H on Sunday, but I didn't get any photos of the process.

Here she is working on "h is for hearts" - she actually ended up doing the majority of the glueing and sticking-on herself, with just a little help at the end, when I put glue on the hearts and she told me where to stick them.

And what about the other craft? Well, PerfectPup is blowing her coat right now, so I couldn't resist H is for Hair!