Katie's October Tot Trays

I'm finding "tot trays" to be less and less of a good description of what Katie does all month, but I haven't come up with an alternative.  Suggestions?

Hannah has gone back to school, so I found myself needing to entertain Katie a bit more.  I'm very blessed that my girls play so well together most of the time.  Puzzles in the school room are a good, quiet way Katie can hang out with us while we're doing school.

I pulled out the Color Wonder coloring book and markers from our road trip this summer.  I can see why these appeal to moms, with the NO MESS factor, but honestly, I think regular coloring pages and markers are better for kids like Katie who aren't deliberately destructive.

I shared before about all the fun we had with the Montessori By Mom box, pouring and mixing colors.  We're still using the tools from our box for other forms of play and learning.

Notice the bandage on Katie's hand in the photo above and no bandage in the photo below?  She's doing GREAT post surgery.

More puzzles.  She's pretty good at them.

The day we made "redneck shrinky dinks" Katie saw me draw a pumpkin, so she wanted to draw a pumpkin, too.

And here's her finished pumpkin, after shrinking!

Dripping color on coffee filters was super fun!  I've saved the pile of dried filters, and I think we'll hack them up for snowflakes in a month or so.

In honor of fire safety month, the kids colored these cute pages from Kidorable.

Did I mention we're still having fun with our Montessori By Mom box tools?

This was a super cool unexpected treat.  The turtle lacing card came as a bonus with something I ordered as a special project for the girls.

There's a new company called Cuts By Laser doing lots of interesting wood products.  Stay tuned for pictures of the special project I'm working on.

A little seasonal coloring.  Katie told me this morning, "I like my pumpkin in my room!"  She got a little pumpkin at the pumpkin patch, and it's up on her dresser.

These are the coolest blocks.  They're Uncle Goose Chinese Character Blocks.  One side makes a picture of a dragon and a map of China, the other sides show characters and how to write them correctly.

Combining our colored rice with our MBM tools was fun, too.

Well, fun until Hannah spilled it in the carpet, anyway.  ;)

The water beads are fun to pour, too.  Unfortunately, some of our colored rice ended up in the water bead tray, which then started to get icky, so we had to toss them.  But we got to play with them for a couple weeks.

Katie and Hannah playing with the animal toob bucket.  I'm going to put a toob in each of the girls' stockings, since they enjoy these so much.

You can see that October was the month of weather change for us, since Katie goes from short sleeves and tank tops to long sleeves and pants.  I'm guessing next month will bring more holiday related projects as we careen toward Christmas.


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