Train crazy toddlers…

I started to take photos of the things I do with my kids again. It had been ages since I pulled out the DSLR when I did something with them and to be honest it had been awhile since we had done many activities I had put together or craft and art things because sometimes it was so much harder with both of them but Noah is a great help now and he will remind Shion to sit down or to wait and Shion is getting more and more patient for a 1 year old at least.

Part of my recent work for Jo`s course was to start some themed work again and it made sense to start with transport especially with two train and car obsessed toddlers on the loose.

Last week we worked on the letter T and things on rails, namely trains. This week was more road based transport but I will follow up with that later. Some of the things we did last week and this week have nothing to do with transport but I have included them below. We were indoors most of last week because Noah was sick which was good in that we had a lot of time but bad in that getting Noah interested in much of anything was tough

Art & Craft

We used water colours to paint trains

We made crowns. Maybe I should of gotten them to make conductors hats

Name train craft {idea from the net, not sure where I saw it first}- boys were excited to use glue! ha!

Also we had some colouring sheets- they did some with dot markers as well as crayons and markers. We did a few! I am not the hugest fan of colouring sheets in general but often it gets the boys creating and then they turn the sheets over and do their own thing anyway so I kind of like that! Also some T colouring sheets!

Practical Life

I have to say that practical life for that week was continuing toilet learning for Noah. He is now toilet “trained” pretty much.  He will often wake overnight to ask to go to the toilet as well.

Practical life for Shion is working on taking turns and waiting in general.

Both boys love to brush each others hair and can undress themselves. Noah can pretty much dress himself and he likes to help Shion get dressed too which is cute.

Noah`s favourite job right now is to put any dirty clothes in the dirty washing- so if we use a towel and it needs to be washed and I put it on the stairs to take upstairs later then Noah will ask to go do it now!

 

Math, Science & Sensory

We made a ramp to run trains and cars down. Simple but always fun!

Trains through playdoh

We did this twice but I only took photos on one day. It was requested the following day though as well!

Noah is still numbers and counting crazy. I am still working out ways to target activities towards this sensitive period for him. I can ask him “How many trees are there?” and he looks at a page and says 5 without even pointing to them to count them which always surprises me. He can count to 23 or so and recognizes all numbers to 12 but we will start introducing higher numbers to him soon.

Dot stickers and number sheets- this was not the first time Noah had done this but a first for Shion {and our extra that day!}. The sheet came from here.

Sorting numbered carriages {although photo below is of Noah stealing the Thomas number cards I gave Shion to look at and play with while Noah worked on his trains. Toddlers!

Noah sorted big and little foam shapes. I presented this to him once and he got it straight away so I was proud and so was he.

Shion & Noah both had fun with the Melissa & Doug pattern boards although they are really too easy for Noah now. Shion repeated these over and over again!

Reading, Dexterity & Language

T is for turtle {We used printables from here & here}

Here is Noah putting magnets onto a sheet {using a cooking tray as the magnetic base} – Both boys loved these magnets although Shion preferred to make towers!!

A T basket with T items, some Tt`s and things for the boys to explore.

T worksheet with dot stickers. I swear these dot stickers are always the best 100yen ever spent as they both adore them.

Noah also did this worksheet and some others to help with his pen grip and dexterity. I laminated a couple other ones with a conductor to a train as well which he did several times and then rubbed out and did again. His grip is getting better!

Sorting coloured turtles. I really thought Noah wouldn`t want to do this but he actually asked to do it again a couple of times- hence this shot of him in his PJs as it was a before bed request.

Other fun

Train play is a daily happening around here. They got these train tracks and trains from my brother for Christmas but Shion has finally gotten to the point where he doesn`t intentionally try to break up the track so they can play together quite nicely.

 

Train magnets. Actually shinkansen magnets! A couple days before we started these activities we went to a birthday party along a train line that also has a lot of shinkansens go past. Noah was ecstatic so I am glad I had kept this magnet book away from them for a rainy day {or a sick at home week!}

 

I had prepared some other activities but we ran out of time so they are now in our rainy day box!

I don`t mind the train obsession! Will post some of our “on the road” themed stuff next week but some photos are already up on flickr if you want to see.

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Linked up with Tot School, Montessori Monday, TGIF Linky party & Tuesday Tots.

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