tot school : easter + purple week

I am starting to do pseudo-tot school with Will this spring and summer.  I say "pseudo," because I am not stressing too much over it...

My goal is to make our lives more fun, rich, meaningful, adventurous and celebratory.  Because, well, when you have two kids under two, and a hubby who's in seminary and working full-time, moments pass quickly, and it's so easy to just "survive."

When we miraculously have some free time as a family, we have a bucket list of simple (but fun!) things to do with the kids.  When Will gets whiny, I have a small arsenal of no-brainer (but educational!) activities to occupy him.  When life gets mundane, we have things to create and celebrate and discover!

If this whole tot school thing ever gets to be stressful instead of exciting, weighty instead of fun, obligatory instead of celebratory, I'm done.  The goal is to enrich our family's life, so we'll see how this goes!

About our Easter + Purple week...

WHAT I LOVED
This week I was excited about having a reason to rotate our toys and books.  I've gotten into a habit of storing at least 3/4ths of Will & Charlie's toys (if I kept all of them out, our house would be a disaster and our kids would not even play with half of them).  Every few weeks, I rotate toys and books, and (it never fails) Will thinks it's Christmas morning every time a new batch arrives.  He thinks everything is brand new and exciting again!  Anyway, this week was a fun excuse to pull out everything purple and spring/Easter related.  We had a lot of extra fun with little things that would have otherwise been collecting dust in the nooks and crannies and closets of our house.

WHAT WE FOCUSED ON

Learning about Easter - Will learned to recognize the shape of a cross and whose cross it was...  "Jesah coss!" he says. :)  We worked on the phrases/verses, "He's alive!"  "He is risen!" And we sang little songs like "Hosanna!" and "Alive, Alive, Alive Forevermore!" - this was all usually in between bites of crackers during snack time and super casual.  

The color purple! - I pulled out everything purple I had in the house and used it in a sensory bin, our little family bulletin board, or in Will's toy baskets.

STUFF WE DID

Click on the bold phrases for links!

We read and talked about the Easter story in our Jesus Storybook Bible.

Will colored a few resurrection/cross-themed coloring pages that were free on the web.

I put painter's tape on some posterboard in the shape of a cross, then let him paint all crazy-like over top.  In the end, we pulled up the tape to discover a cross!

I had a purple zipper pouch to throw Popsicle sticks in.  He practiced zipping and unzipping, but got bored with it and wanted to play with his cow instead.  Fine.  Whatever, dude.

Tried to use little tongs to transfer plastic easter eggs into a holder.  We need to work on this more, I think.

We went to the bakery to eat cross-shaped cookies!  "Jesah coss, mmm!" Will said...

We had purple cows for dessert at supper.

I checked out Easter books from the library to read and look through.  This was more for myself than for Will.  I love me a library run.

Will played outside a lot and ran laps in our hallway most days, but that is not thematic.  That is just life with the Will-Bug.

Purple play dough and a cross cookie cutter!

Will played with a thrown-together purple sensory bin, made up of random things we had on hand.

We had a purple-themed Easter brunch and hosted some friends whose families were far away. 

We decorated Easter eggs with tissue paper (a little more toddler-friendly than dye and boiling water, yeah?).  We also spent some time at Grandma Bev's for an Easter egg hunt, but Will was much more concerned with throwing the soccer ball around.  Again, typical Will.  

Easter week felt so much more Easter-y, in being so much more purposeful about celebrating.  Mission accomplished, I'd say.