B-School 1

~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)

~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)

~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!

~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!!!

~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.