Intentional Toddler Time {23.5 months}

{Samuel is currently 23.5 months old}

What a truly awe-inspiring time this is with Samuel. If you have a two year old around, you know what I’m talking about! Less and less baby and more and more little person with an ever expanding mind every day! I am daily amazed by how much he learns, retains, and imitates! Most days, the imitating part humbles me to the core. He is always paying attention, and more than ever he is a mirror of what I put on display. I am reminded of what Jesus said in John 14:11 (emphasis mine):

Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else believe on account of the works themselves.

Jesus, the man whose words always matched up perfectly with His actions, knew people paid more attention to the works He did than the words He spoke. How much more true must this be of me whose words often don’t match my actions. I’ve become more aware of this discrepancy the closer to two Samuel has gotten. Convicting, to say the least, which makes Intentional Toddler Time all the more important!

We are in the process of moving again; we’re hoping for good this time because we’re buying a house. It’s our first time to buy a house, so it’s exciting. However, right now we’re doing the “closing dance.” This means we are living in a sea of boxes with no end in sight except for the end that says, “We have to be out of our rental by tomorrow!” Yeesh! Right now, I’ve no idea where our learning toys are, but Samuel did receive a late Christmas gift from his aunt and uncle. Count ‘n Play Cash Register is a super cool learning toy. He loves it and plays with it all the time. It teaches counting, shapes, size sorting, colors, and basic association with what Mommy does at the grocery store. Today Sam snuck out of his room at nap time to go play with it, if that tells you anything at all!

We have managed to do some Table Time, and it’s been truly amazing. Samuel is totally into coloring and drawing! I placed his table in the center of his playroom and on it is a blank drawing notebook and crayons. He has access to them at any time, and this is oftentimes how he spends 80% of his day!

Another favorite right now is his chalkboard easel, which isn’t necessarily at the table, but it is just as important to his fine motor/writing development. We got this for about $10 at Ikea! If you live near an Ikea, buy your easel there!

While reading, The Well-Trained Mind(I loved it so much I bought it!), one of the things they mention for preschoolers is to work on drawing lots and lots of circles to get them ready for writing later down the road; make sure your child is drawing circles in counterclockwise motion. I didn’t realize this, but apparently it’s more natural to draw them in clockwise fashion. However, by teaching your toddler/preschooler to draw them counterclockwise, you are developing the fine motor skills (those little hand muscles) to be able to write more effectively, especially when it comes time for cursive! Samuel loves drawing circles and in effect has mastered his recognition of circles everywhere else!

Continuing to feed the writing phase he is in, I printed off the 26 alphabet sheets from 1+1+1=1 and put each one within a page protector inside a 3-ring binder. He can ask for this anytime he wants, and often does, which totally surprised me! He loves for me to sit down with him and tell him what the letters are and help him trace them. He also loves coloring the objects I call out. We even tried to draw circles around the objects instead of just coloring!

When we work together, I always make sure to encourage proper holding of the writing utensil. At this point, I really want to make sure we’re developing the muscles properly and that he gets used to putting the crayon or marker in the correct hand and using it with control. He’s doing exceptionally well with it!

This is an area he has really taken an interest in so it’s made it really fun to watch him grasp little concepts such as drawing circles, and then seeing him use these skills in other parts of his day!

We took a family excursion on snowshoes around our neighborhood trails this past week. Mark put Sam in the backpack, and we went tromping through the snow in 7 degree weather. All of us had so much fun (contrary to the look on Sam’s face, ha!)! Sam even fell asleep before the hike was finished. It was beautiful!

We also found Lightning McQueen on clearance, so we had lots of fun racing cars around the house.

Right now Samuel is working very, very, very hard to learn to jump. He’s pretty close, but he seems to have taken a momentary break. Fine by me, of course. However, this is something I can often find him doing if I’m not paying attention.

It’s no secret, I love capturing moments. I’ve started a 365 project over at my photography site if you want to follow along, but this is probably one of my favorite moments from this past week.

Samuel came down one morning in a cuddly, book reading mood. He crawled into his Daddy’s lap, pulled the cuddle blanket over them, and asked Daddy to read to him. Not long after this picture, we were all three curled up on the couch reading together. It was truly awesome!

And that about wraps up our week!

What have you been doing with your toddler lately?

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