It was definitely a busy week for Tot School. Surprisingly, as I reflect on the week, we kept with the 'B' theme pretty nicely (and unintentionally). I'm a little late in getting this week's activities posted and published due to some extra happenings that took place: big boy bed, boo-boos, bandaids, and birthdays. See? I told you we kept with the theme ;-)



Last weekend, Little Man was promoted to Big Boy Bed status (as you'll see below in some of the pictures). He handled the switch very well. He apparently did not have the same emotional attachment to his crib that I did. Gradually, more and more of his stuffed animals have been making their way into the bed as his sleeping buddies.

We managed to get to the end of the week and then Little Man busted his brow after taking a tumble down some stairs. Where we live, tile is everywhere....everywhere. Sometimes inside tile is used outside (which makes for a 'slippery when wet' situation). People will often cover up all traces of grass in front of their house by putting down tile. Carpet is scarce, including on stairs (and I'm very glad we don't have stairs in our house). So when Little Man took a blow to his eyebrow, I was frantic. All is well though, it just made for an eventful bookend of Tot School this week. He's been sporting his Toy Story bandaids for the weekend.

On the flip side, an enjoyable event took place and that was the celebration of a dear friend's 40th birthday (though, I'm still having a hard time believing she's not in her early 30's). I was put in charge of doing the photo booth for that and had a lot of fun prepping some photo props and bringing out the goofy side over everyone. I do plan on sharing my photo prop printables so stay on the look-out for that upcoming post :-)

But you're probably here because you want to get some ideas for the letter 'B' and how you can play and learn with your toddler with fun activities. No need to keep you waiting any longer, on to our week in Tot School! If you're just now joining the fun, be sure to check out Letter A from the first week!



Some of our snacks throughout the week included berries, bananas, and blueberry Poptarts ;-) Poptarts are not commonly found in this country, so when I saw that they had some blueberry flavored, I couldn't pass up the opportunity for our 'B' theme! It's funny, when I was checking out, the girls at the counter were looking at the box of Poptarts very perplexed. They had no idea what to make of the foreign food item.

Toothpicks might not be for every kid but Little Man loves eating with them (and using them to build stuff with his food)

A few mornings, we started off the school day with a balloon hunt. I hid some balloons throughout the house and Little Man and I would go through the house saying "Where are the balloons?" until we gathered them all up. Such a simple activity but Little Man loved it. I often found him putting the balloons back in their hiding spots so that he could find them again :-)

Another fun activity we did multiple times throughout the week was blowing bubbles. We're still working on strengthening Little Man's mouth muscles so he can blow his own bubbles. We haven't yet found that happy medium between blowing too hard and not hard enough. I occasionally brought out the battery-powered bubble blower so that he could increase his bubble production.

For the sensory bin this week, I used some dried beans and just threw in some of his animals. Naturally, I made sure to include some bears to reinforce that theme a little more. Later in the week I gave him some containers into which he scooped and divided the beans.

Also pictured: THE blueberry Pop-Tarts :-)

Speaking of bears, one of the books we read this week was the classic "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?" by Eric Carle. The activity I decided to use with the book was a set of head and tail matching cards that I found over at 1+1+1=1. She has many other resources available to use but I thought these cards were so cute. Plus, it's an easy matching game for your toddler. I usually placed the head card down and then a few tail options and had Little Man match the cards that way.



Just like last week, we headed over to the YouTube channel, , and listened to the B song. We also listened to the song because that was another "learning goal" I had for Little Man this week. Plus, body parts coincides with the 'B' theme, right? This song is just a song without any animations, but it does encourage a lot of body movement.

Another activity we did to encourage body movement was the fun animal movement activity that's in the ebook, The Preschool Journey. Click here to visit Teaching Mama. Each card has a different movement to do that's related to the animal. Little Man kept wanting to crawl like a lion. And then I think I became the only lion and he wanted to hitch a ride ;-)


One more fun thing we did to reinforce the parts of our body was playing with Mr. Potato Head. We already had an original set of Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head pieces but I wanted a few more options. That's why love our new . It added 15 more pieces to our collection so that Little Man and I could have some more fun arranging different Potato Heads. An idea I found on Pinterest that I really like is taking pictures of Mr./Mrs. Potato Head arranged in a variety of different outfits, facial expressions, etc. and then having your child try and match their potato head to the picture. This might require a little more assistance with a toddler but I've found that narrowing down their options always helps them to find the pieces on their own. For example, put three different body parts in front of them and ask, "Can you give me the eyes?" Or if they're trying to match the photo, put out 3 different sets of shoes and say, "Mr. Potato Head needs his blue shoes."


Oh, in keeping with the theme, I'm also training him to be my little barista ;-)