Little Coqui

B-School 1

2009-11-23T19:31:00.007-05:00

~Diego is 28 months old~

We started B week with an "experiment", I wanted to see if Diego would be able to use his popcorn kernel sensory tub without me having to pick up a huge mess. Well, it worked! Not only that but he played with it for about an hour. Initially I hid "B" stuff in it (a burro, a letter B, a boca, and a batería.) Then he decided to add more stuff to it. Amazingly I only picked about 10 kernels off the floor!

Finding a B, and a burro in his sensory tub!

Is he happy or what!

Then we did a B with botones! He loved it... Although I had to take it from him quickly after he finished because he was starting to take them off the paper!

The finished B's

Now, on November 19 we celebrated the Discovery of Puerto Rico. Christopher Columbus landed on the coasts of Borikén more than 500 years ago on Nov. 19, 1493. The whole week schools across the island celebrate what is called "La Semana de La Puertorriqueñidad" or Puerto Rican Identity week. Of course we weren't going to miss the opportunity to learn about our Taíno ancestors, and Colón! So I decided to paint Diego as a Taino Indian, and talk about the Discovery of Puerto Rico.

A Taíno Coquí. This is how Taínos painted the little frog!

My little Taíno indian! I would have painted him better if he stopped moving!

Here he is painting a coquí from a "coloring book" I made him.

Painting our flag! He did a pretty good job! The only thing he wanted to paint was the "estrella"!

Doing another Taíno craft: a guanín, it was used by Taíno Chiefs and it was made of gold.

The final touches on the guanín.

And here is Cacique Diego proudly wearing his gold guanín!

This is his finished flag with some original touches, I say change the flag officially to this design, with smiley stickers and all!!

Finally we made cookies. Here Diego is tasting the flour thinking it is sugar, he didn't believed me!

Watching the mixer go!

Tasting the dough, despite me telling him not to, he kept saying...mmm rico, dulce!

Finally eating a cookie, I did the B with a knife, I need to buy a B cutter!

We also heard our National Anthem, and many other videos we particularly loved this one!

B week continues this week so stay tuned!

For more tot-school ideas go here.

Tot-School Letter A (part 2)

2009-11-16T11:02:00.003-05:00

~Diego is 27 months~

I'm sorry I only have 2 pictures to show this week...I forgot to charge the camera!

Well, we continued with our Alphabet tot-school, our last week with letter A!

We watched some videos on YouTube about how abejas(bees) make honey, we also watched some on aviones (planes).

We also talked about Australia. We watched more videos on YouTube: Diego loved this one! He was doing the same noises as the kookaburra, we also heard Australia's National Anthem, again, on YouTube ( I love YT!) Diego now recognizes Australia's map, and says Australia!

Diego did some aboriginal dot painting. I got the idea from here.

He also painted an Australian flag. This is as far as he got painting it.

We were thinking of baking some galletas de azúcar (sugar cookies), with A word shapes, but it never got done.

This week we start Letter B! For more tot-school ideas go here.

Tot-School Letter A (part 1)

2009-11-09T22:05:00.011-05:00

~Diego is 27 months~

Ah, I'm back at Tot-School!

Well, I decided to go with Mozi Esme's alphabet based Tot-School, only with some adjustments, we speak Spanish, so same approach and 2 week plan, only in Spanish...I didn't know how difficult finding educational stuff in Spanish is, mostly I use Primera Escuela, but I'm having a hard time finding more places. Other "obstacle" I've encountered is the lack of libraries here in Puerto Rico, there's one where I live but the last time we went, there was no book loan system, so I have to buy the books I want to read for the week! It's tough but I will make it!

Now, a couple of weeks ago on October 23 @ 12:30 am or so, I was at the computer and a felt a huge rumble, at first I thought it was thunder but then the whole house trembled, I ran up the stairs as fast as I could...when we look out the window we saw an orange glow and a lot of smoke. The next day we went to the mall and saw this! A Gulf gas storage facility exploded, it was a pretty scary sight! Diego kept saying"humo"(smoke) whenever he saw the smoke column. It lasted about 3 days until the firefighters could extinguish it.

Diego watching the smoke with daddy.

---------------------------------- Now Tot-School--------------------------------------------

We did an "A" Lapbook. The cover is the letter A covered with thumb print abejas(bees). On the inside, left side is a wheel with some A word pictures, a Bible verse, and an A mini book in Spanish from here. On the right side, there are 2 "games" I made: the top one is two flower pockets and alphabet bees, both uppercase and lowercase, so he can fly them over to the correct type of flower. And the one on the bottom is so he can count to ten with airplanes.

On the back is an A art book from here and an arcoiris(rainbow) he colored.

He played with this ABC puzzle, he did not want to put it back though.

Reading "A is for Airplane/A es para Avión" by Theresa Howell.

Diego already knows and recognizes all the letters, both uppercase and lowercase and the numbers 1-10, we only have a problem with #3.

Coloring "El arca de Noé" (Noah's Ark) mini book.

Watching some Hi-5 videos on YouTube, this one is about "A" animals,

araña y abeja (spider and bee).

He went back to color Noah.

And the Ark.

And he played with some animals. We don't have an ark, so this was his ark!

Books we read this week:

A is for airplane/A es para Avión (Theresa Howell)

Cómo plantar un arcoiris (Lois Ehlert)

¿De qué está hecho el arcoiris? (Betty Ann Schwartz)

El avión de Angela (Robert Munsch)

Katy no tiene bolsa (Emmy Payne)

We did more stuff but sadly no pictures. This week "A Tot-School" continues.

For more tot-school ideas go here.

Some stuff we've done for the past 2 months!

2009-10-26T01:55:00.009-04:00

~Diego is 27 months old~

I apologize for not posting for 2 months. But Diego has had major temper tantrums so no Tot-School was held. I'm planning to start again in November and pray for happy times with this Terrible 2's!

But we've managed to do some fun stuff, learning included!

We went to the zoo and compared his size to that of an eagle...thank God in Puerto Rico there are no eagles, apart form the ones at the zoo. :)

At least he's bigger than a penguin!

We went kite flying!

And played in cannon balls @ El Morro.

And touched some 500 + year old cannons.

We also went to an eco-park where most things are made of recycled material...he loved it, we loved it too.... definitely going back!

Music with PVC pipes and a flip flop sole!

Hitting the gong!

Please pray for us, so we can have an easy new attempt at Tot School!

For more Tot School ideas go here.

Birthday, Rainforest, River and more!!!

2009-08-02T13:39:00.011-04:00

~Diego is 24 months~

Happy 2nd Birthday Diego!

This pic was on his actual birthday, just us 3 and some cupcakes!

Now his B-Day party!!

He doesn't like the bouncy castle :(

---Tot-School----

"writing" on his chalkboard

playing with the stackable blocks

I'm trying to help him identify properly the animals...so far he knows only 5 (cow, lion, cat, monkey, and dog, although he doesn't say "perro" he says Toffee which is our dog's name :P )

Then he went for the first time to our National Rainforest El Yunque..we decided to hike to the highest part...a 2+ hour hike...he decided he wasn't walking so 2+ hours carrying him, it wasn't easy!! But he got to see various plants and waterfalls and flowers, he enjoyed it!

We saw many butterflies, Diego was thrilled! My sister-in-law told me this particular one is a Puerto Rican Ringlet (Calisto nubila), I had never seen one!

We also saw many different flowers.

Explored the fallen trees on our path.

We finally reached the peak!! It was very cold and very foggy, all you could see was white!

Diego taking a break as we went down.

We then went to a river... he liked it eventhough the water was freezing cold, he didn't even cry!

The thing he enjoyed the most was throwing rocks into the water. I guess boys will be boys!

For more Tot-School ideas click here.

Tot-school at last...well, a little bit of it!

2009-07-19T22:08:00.005-04:00

~Diego Alejandro is 23 months old~

The past couple of weeks have been quite crazy over here, so very little Tot-School occured. This is the compilation of what we did on those couple of weeks.

I bought this Melissa & Doug puzzle, he liked stacking them or putting them on a straigth line.

We read a couple of books, like Pez Arcoiris (Rainbow Fish), and this one ¡David huele!

(David Smells!) he likes them!

Playing with another Melissa & Doug puzzle, he finally put the dinosaurs where they belong!

Painting on the Aqua Doodle...likes it but only for a couple of minutes...he prefers sucking the water off the pen!!

Diego's great-grandma made this letter and number set for him. She painted a cardboard white and cut some tiles and wrote the numbers and letters on them, he enjoys them a lot!

We are trying to start potty training him...so far he has peed 4 times on it but no #2 yet :(

We went to the park on a very, very hot day, and he went on the slide by himself for the very first time!! He couldn't get enough!

Then off to my cousin's pool he had a blast! This kiddo LOVES the water!!

That's it for our Tot-School, I hope we can do more activities this week!

For more Tot-School ideas go here.

Video Tot-School

2009-06-14T13:11:00.009-04:00

~Diego is 22 months old~

Well for the past week I've been super busy with our church's VBS, so I didn't do a "formal" Tot-School or took pictures but I did manage to make a video of Diego saying the letters he knows already and some other words. Obviously we speak Spanish so the video is in Spanish, but it's fairly easy to understand. Hope you guys enjoy it!!

For more Tot School ideas go here!

Terrible Two's

2009-05-22T18:54:00.003-04:00

I knew this would happen at some point, just not that soon!!!! He isn't even 2 years old and already is going through that phase. The last few days have been pretty rough around here, he's just misbehaving so much, I hope this won't last for long. Any tips on how to make this easier for the two of us?

Tot-School at last!

2009-05-20T19:13:00.005-04:00

~Diego is 21 months old~

Hi!!!!!!! It's been quite some time since my last post, things have been super busy here.

Well we did manage to do some tot-school activities and here they are. I've gathered some ideas from around the internet(can't remember exactly from where) , so I decided to teach him the letters and colors. I did a huge mistake at first because I decided to do tot-school in his room, which is filled with toys, not much learning happened that day! Then I decided to move to the living room and I got more stuff covered there, so I'll be sticking to the living room for now.

Here's my cute setup :) Letter A, color: Amarillo (Yellow)

Here he is coloring his letter A amarillo... he also colored a bee (abeja) and a little chick.

He did this puzzle, it has the colors in English and Spanish.

On another day he colored the letter A azul (blue) and he decided to paint himself blue too!

I'm so proud that he already knows how to say "azul" correctly!!!

Here he is painting a rainbow (arcoiris). I put some drops of different finger paint colors for him to paint, but he decided to mix the colors with a crayon instead!! He also added "arcoiris" to his growing vocabulary, although it sound more like "coiis" but he knows what it is!!!!

Working with an "A" foam puzzle piece, I found the alphabet puzzle at Walmart for $1.00, it won't last that long!!!!

Painting the letter A anaranjado (orange).

Painting an ice cream scoop anaranjado.

And another one amarillo.

And finally i put some rice in this container and let him play in it for a while.

* If you have a cat cover the rice bin... It never ocurred to me to do so, so my cat used it as a litter box :( Remind me to buy a closed bin!

That was it for tot school. If you would like to see what others are doing for tot-school go here.

It's been a while!

2009-04-23T12:39:00.007-04:00

I was quite busy for the past few weeks so I was no able to post anything here, sorry for that!
But we manage to do some fun stuff, so here is what Diego is been up to so far.

Doing artwork on the walls!

And eating the paint...it's non-toxic, thank God!

We went to the park, he played with leaves and sticks mostly.

Then he did some exercise.

He played with his cousin.

And helped daddy with the cameras :)

We played at the hotel.

And played some more.

(on a side note: that day we were filming the opening for the pageant we are woking on, and while daddy did that I took Diego to the playground that was so near to the pool, as you can see in the pics, well there was this kid playing with a ball in the pool, and Diego loves balls so he decided to walk into the pool to get the ball, luckily he only got his feet wet!)

Finally we went to the beach after almost a year. Yeah, I know we live on a tropical island and we are surrounded by beautiful beaches, but we just didn't have a chance to actually go and swim until this past monday. Let's just say Diego wasn't that thrilled with the beach.

See! He didn't liked touching the sand with his hands, or getting anywhere near the water, he was way more interested in getting a ball that some guys were playing volleyball with.

Then we decided to put this on him to go to the water, he looked so funny :) In the water I was not allowed to carry him, only daddy, if I dared to hold him, he would scream and cry, but with daddy he enjoyed the water for a bit.

running towards the water just to go back when the water was near his feet!

I guess we need to go more often to the beach!

Bye for now!

Something old, something new!

2009-03-30T03:23:00.011-04:00

Diego is 20 months old

Well this week we didn't do much Tot School, Diego is sick and very cranky and whiny, but we did manage to do some activities. As the title of this post says we did some old stuff and I decided to do something completely new to him : pouring!!! Wanna see how that went?!?!

But first...

My husband and I are working on a beauty pageant for plus sized women, and we got a HUGE opportunity to do a fashion show at the biggest mall in Puerto Rico! Diego decided he was going to walk on the catwalk first just to see if it was ok for the girls! :)

"I shake my little tush on the catwalk" :P

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OK now Tot School

First I wanted to teach him to transfer water from one glass to another with a dropper, it didn't work out, so I decided to show him how to pour water from one glass to another.

OOPS!!

"Hey mom, stacking them is even more fun!!!"

OoooooPSSSS!

"Do I have to??"

Then we tried painting, that went well.

He did some body painting....

And THIS!!!!
Tongue painting! Thank God for non-toxic paints!

He stacked with his blocks...

and snuggled with the cat.

Then to keep him busy while he was with his nebulizer thingy we did this:

Isn't that mask cool?!?

Now some funny pics of Diego......

For more Tot School ideas go here!

Learning with Diego

2009-03-19T19:20:00.018-04:00

I have a 19 month old boy that's very wild and has a very strong will. He does not like to play with his toys, or at least not that long, so trying to find things to keep him occupied is quite hard. I've been reading this blog that has inspired me to try new things to do with him, and although it takes time for him to get used to this new things they provide fun and he can learn at the same time! He can count from 1 to 10 and when I say this to people they don't believe me, I just one day decided to count the animals in his book just to distract him, and continued to do it every day or so. One day he finally started "counting". Now he counts more clearly and will count everything although not the way you're supposed to do it (he just points to the same spot and counts :P ).

We've done a couple of activities around here like painting, with crayons or the tot paint filled-brushes, because he doesn't like the feel of the finger paint and will refuse to paint with it :)

Can you see how happy he is?

Now this is better mom!

We also played with rice! Probably not a very good idea to use with him at this point! It was fine for like the first 10 minutes, but then he started eating it. No more rice for him for now!

Can you see how concentrated he was transferring the rice to the little container?

Caught in the act, aha!

Then I decided to make homemade play dough, he didn't like the feel of it either.

So I decided to give him some toothpicks so he could poke the dough, he loved it, yay mom!

Well that's all for now!

Check out the Tot School page for lots of great ideas!

Cupcakes!

2009-03-19T18:55:00.005-04:00

A couple of weeks ago I decided to make cupcakes for the Saturday Bible classes at our church, we only take kids from 1 to 6 years so I made about 24 cupcakes, and since I've never baked anything from scratch I made them from a box. Well, everyone loved them, so my dear husband arranged an order for me to bake for a little girl's birthday (it was the 1st birthday of one of my son's little friends at church) without me knowing!!! He said to me: "I have some good and some bad news, which one you want to hear first?" I said : "The bad one", he says: "You have to make 40 cupcakes for a birthday." The good one was something like we were going to eat at a friends' house or something! So I made them, this time from scratch and they were a HIT!! Now I've decided to make cupcakes from scratch as an additional income to our house. Let's see how that goes!

Aren't they pretty! I think I did great for my first time baking!

First Post

2009-03-19T15:09:00.002-04:00

Hi and welcome to my Blog!