Tot School: g is for gorilla (29 months)

Jonathan is 29 Months

This week we finally started on letter "g" and looked at gorillas- as well as golf and grapes. Unfortunately, I'm having a hard time with uploading pictures-- so this will be a picture-free post for the time-being. I made a lot of my own printables for this lesson.

Click here to see the books we read. And click here to see and download our gorilla printables!

Bible 


This week we focused on creation. We read the story from different children's Bibles and did crafts each day. Look for an upcoming post to see what we did!

Pretend Play 


We used a gorilla puppet to introduce the word for the week. We also played with our Little People zoo set (which includes a gorilla figurine).

Motor Skills 


To go along with our theme, we tried to walk like gorillas-- but Jonathan wasn't interested in playing along. He had more fun watching mommy try to walk like a gorilla. :)

A huge hit this week was golf. Jonathan has a set of golf clubs that we got from Oriental Trading Company and he just loves being out in the backyard and hitting the balls up in the air.

For fine motor skills, we did a pre-writing page I made. Jonathan did a great job tracing the lines.We also did a gorilla lacing card I made.

Math 


We did a printable in which we counted how many bananas to give a gorilla. Jonathan has gotten into counting lately, so this was interesting to him.

We also did a gorilla puzzle which I made. Jonathan did a good job matching up the top 3 pieces but had a little more trouble with the bottom 3.

Art 

We colored a gorilla and glued grass to the page in order to create a "habitat" for a gorilla.

Then we also did a gorilla coloring page I created and colored each gorilla a different color.

I also made a Kumon-style coloring page where Jonathan colored in a circle on a gorilla. It gives him fine motor skills practice and he has fun coloring.



I also made a Kumon-style pasting page where I cut out a square and Jonathan matched and pasted it to the gorilla.

Snack 


We ate bananas (since gorillas eat bananas). We also enjoyed some grapes this week.

I'm linking up to:

Link & Learn @ No Time for Flashcards

Tot School @ 1+1+1=1

Gorilla Printables

I created my first set of printables to go along with our "g is for gorilla" unit. If you want to download and use them yourself, I'd be honored. They are available as a free download on Scribd. Enjoy!

Read Aloud Thursday: Reads for Baby

Grace often joins in our read alouds, although at 10 months old she obviously doesn't have the attention span of Jonathan. The longer books and activities I save for while she's taking her morning nap.

I do try to pick out some books for Grace that we can snuggle and read together. She's very interested in other babies right now, so several books featuring babies and first words have caught her attention lately. Here are some favorites:

Baby Faces by DK Publishing

A short little book which features photographs of babies of various ethnic backgrounds. Each picture relays different emotions and expressions that babies may feel during a typical day. Grace really liked looking at the pictures and even Jonathan enjoyed telling me whether the children were happy, sad, silly, etc.

Baby's Day  by Michel Blake

This is part of a series of board books that are designed for children to hold and open easily. The book features a baby going through the routines of his day. The photographs are black and white and feature a particular object in color on each page. Grace also enjoyed looking at the photographs in this book and patting the colorful objects. I think we may try more books in this series-- it's an interesting take on "first word" books. 

Hickory Dickory Dock: A Nursery Play-Along Classic by Margaret Barritt

This book is based on the traditional nursery rhyme, but the story has expanded the story to be about a little mouse that doesn't want to go to bed. The top line of each double-spread page features the nursery rhyme, where the bottom of each page has the expanded story. The soft illustrations are charming, but the best feature is that the book includes pictorial directions for parents to play with your child to the nursery rhyme. Grace loves it while I do the actions with her and gets a big grin when we start to play Hickory Dickory Dock. There are a couple other books in this series that I hope to check out as well.

None of these books are destined to be classics, but they are great for helping your baby to love books from an early age!


I'm linking this post to
Read-Aloud Thursdays @ Hope is the Word
Feed Me Books Friday @ Little Sprout Books
What My Child is Reading @ Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns

Kids in the Word: God's Good News

As Christians, it is very important to me and my husband to disciple our children.Our prayer is that our children would follow and serve Christ their Lord. Part of this responsibility involves teaching our children about Jesus and the content of the Bible. Another side of this responsibility involves modeling- living the life of faith before our children.

Personally, I can find this very overwhelming at times. True confession: I've even gone to seminary and taken classes on children's ministry and I still feel lost at trying to disciple and train my children.

This month I've started a year-long Bible curriculum with Jonathan (and Grace is tagging along). I own a set of preschool Bible curriculum I've purchased from my cousin's church called God's Good News. You can also download lessons for free a couple weeks at a time from their website.

Pros
What I like about this curriculum is that it goes through a year's worth of Bible stories. The Old Testament is studied in the Summer/Fall and the New Testament in the Winter/Spring. The Christmas & Easter lessons fall at the appropriate time of the year. There's also very helpful teacher notes.

Cons 
The curriculum is definitely set up for a classroom setting, so it needs some adapting for the home. I like to supplement with lessons from other sites. Here are two of my favorites:



 

What are your favorite resources? How do you try to disciple and train your children?

g is for gorilla- books

Image Source

We started letter g with "G is for gorilla".

 Little Gorilla by Ruth Bornstein

We've owned this book for a while now and it's such a sweet story that I was happy to pull it out for our gorilla day. It's the story about a little gorilla who well loved by everyone in the jungle. But little gorilla grows up and gets big-- and everyone still loves him! It's a very reassuring tale for toddlers who are quickly becoming big boys and girls. Jonathan likes this story and it stuck with him so much that he even narrated it back to me. We definitely recommend this one!

Go Go Gorillas by Julia Durango

This is a fun tale in which the king of the gorillas, King Big Daddy, sends a mouse messenger to gather his gorilla relatives for an important surprise. The rhyming text tells how the messenger approaches each gorilla and the method of transportation each gorilla uses to get there: "First to get the message was Big Daddy's nephew Ike 'I'll pack a pickle sandwich then I'll ride there on my bike." The refrain is repeated after every other gorilla "Go-go gorillas! Gotta go, gorillas, go!" The gorillas ride scooters, pogo sticks and hot air balloons as they travel to the Gorilla Villa to hear King Big Daddy's news. It's a fun story and Jonathan got into saying "Go-go gorillas!" It's also a great book to teach ordinal numbers. Jonathan doesn't grasp that concept yet, but I'll have to remember this book when we get there.



One Gorilla: A Counting Book by Atsuko Morozumi

In this award-winning book, the narrator lists things that he loves, starting with one gorilla and progressing to ten cats. The beautiful ethereal illustrations show the various animals in different habitat-- and always include one gorilla. The animals are not always obvious, so you can have fun searching through the pictures to find the animals. The last page ends up with a gorilla fast asleep. Jonathan had fun with this book, although he couldn't always find the different animals.

Note: We also checked out Anthony Browne's Gorilla. This beautifully illustrated book, however, had too sad of a tone for a child Jonathan's age. 

Stay tuned for our activities and some printables!

G is for Gorilla @ Totally Tots

A You're Adorable

A You're Adorable is a song that was written in 1948 by Sid Lippman, Buddy Kaye, and Fred Wise. It's been recorded several times- the most popular was done by Perry Como. When Jonathan was born, his Papa remembered his own mother singing him this song. So Papa looked up the lyrics and sang it to Jonathan. It's kind of "their song".

I found this book listed in a wonderful resource for finding children's literature: Under the Chinaberry Tree. Since this book is based on the song, I knew it was one we wanted to own. It features the music and lyrics for the song with accompanying illustrations by Martha Alexander. Alexander's watercolor illustrations feature children of different ethnic backgrounds and various animals scampering about and through the alphabet.

It's a very sweet picture book and lends itself well to snuggling up with your little one.


If you're not familiar with the song, here's the Sesame Street version:



I'm linking this post up to Book Sharing Monday @ Smiling Like Sunshine

"Foolproof" Fettucine Alfredo

This week has started off to be quite busy for us-- we've started doing our Bible lessons, but haven't moved on to letter G yet. I've been busy gearing up for a major consignment sale this weekend and am getting ready to host a freezer cooking session to bless a friend whose little boy is due any day. Busy, busy, busy!

So instead of a regular post, I thought I'd share a recipe I made this week. I love Fettuccine Alfredo but it always seemed intimidating to make. Then I saw this recipe a few years back in a Cooks Illustrated magazine and it didn't seem that hard at all. It's one that we've been making for years now and we haven't found one that tops it. Enjoy!


           Foolproof Fettuccine Alfredo


  1 1/2  cups          heavy cream
   2      Tbs           unsalted butter
     1/2  tsp           salt
     1/8  tsp           ground pepper
   9      oz            fresh fettuccine
   1 1/2  oz            Parmesan cheese, grated (about 3/4 cup)
     1/8  tsp           freshly grated nutmeg
   2                      chicken breasts, cooked & sliced

1. Bring 4 1/2 quarts water to a rolling boil, covered, in large stockpot or Dutch oven. Using ladle or heatproof measuring cup, fill each individual serving bowl with about 1/2 cup boiling water; set bowls aside to warm. 

2. While water comes to boil, bring 1 cup heavy cream and butter to simmer in 3- to 4- quart saucepan over medium heat; reduce heat to low and simmer gently until mixture reduces to 2/3 cup, 12 to 15 minutes. Off heat, stir in remaining 1/2 cup cream, 1/2 tsp salt, and pepper.

3. Add 1 tbsp salt and pasta to boiling water; cook pasta until just shy of al dente. Reserve 1/4 cup pasta cooking water, then drain pasta. Meanwhile, return cream mixture to simmer over medium-high heat; reduce heat to low and add pasta, Parmesan, and nutmeg to cream mixture. Cook over low heat, tossing pasta with tongs to combine, until sauce coats pasta and pasta is just al dente and cheese is melted, 1 to 2 minutes. Stir in reserved pasta cooking water; sauce may look rather thin but will gradually thicken as pasta is served and eaten. Working quickly, empty serving bowls of water, divide pasta among bowls, tossing pasta to coat well with sauce. Serve immediately with chicken. 

Recipe Source: adapted from Cooks Illustrated Sep/Oct 2005