Hanging with Cowboy-Letter Aa

Well like I said earlier, it was just the boys and I today. Lou had a big day going to the State Capital, Governors Mansion, State Museum and Old State Capital with her Girl Scout troop. Butter went down for his morning nap and Cowboy and I headed out to the "Tin Can" for some alone time and some learning time :) So I thought I would introduce him to his tot trays today since Lou wasn't around to distract him from soaking up the meaning of them. I got the idea for Tot Trays from a blog I read and Love it has been a HUGE blessing to me. I wish that I could HUG this woman for real. She rocks, and deserves a Medal of Motherly SAHM HONOR! Her blog is 1+1+1=1 I love it, for homeschool ideas, crafts, toys, printables, Christian motherly advice, etc. It's just great and I recommend it to any mom really. There is something in there for all mommas! So anyway, I let Cowboy go do some of his lessons on the computer while I got the trays together and ready. We decided to try out ABC Mouse a few weeks ago and.. it is a huge hit! And so much fun and he learns new things every time he pushes a button. I Recommend that as well, obviously :)

So I got them all ready, this is what he gets to do today. I get to pick what goes on the tray, well cause I'm the momma and I can :)

1st day of Tot Trays!!

So the first tray is Dot Paint with the letter A and I threw a bible lesson in there because I am sneaky and I love him and want him to grow up a Godly Man :) The second is cutting practice, and the third is gluing. Its supposed to be a lady bug but um, yeah... when you make the decision to teach your child with the "Following the Lead of a Child Method" sometimes things don't always come out the way they should, and that's ok!! So I brought him over to the trays and let him pick which one he wanted to do first.. DUH! PAINT So we started with the letter A.  

                                                      Then we did the Aa Is for Apple.

Then a maze where you follow the Aa's to get to the basket of apples.

He did soooooo Good ! I was so impressed by his dotting skills and that he recognized the Big A and little a and actually could tell me what letter it was. Each time he would do it he would say,"Dot-Dot-Dot-Dot" It was so funny. Really proud momma right here! Next he wanted to glue! Oh poor lady bug, you are so deformed and stuck together by massive amounts of glue but whatever, you made my Cowboy happy :)

Beautiful Jacked up Ladybug :)

I forgot to mention that I laid out the rules for each tray and they were if you want to move on to another tray that's fine, but before you do you have to clean up and put everything back on the tray, trash, whatever and put the tray back on the shelf. He did really well with that, once again, totally shocked. So after we finished gluing, we moved onto cutting. I'm going to go ahead and tell you that I figured this would be the least fun, and he would want to stop as soon as he started because he isn't great at cutting and he tends to act a fool when he doesn't like something. I for one wasn't looking forward to him getting all crazy with sharp cutting objects so I was kinda praying it went well. And let me just say... this is the tray he spent the most time on. He started off with "Safety" Scissors. PAHAHA what a JOKE ! Safety my behind. They are safe, don't get me wrong but if ya want your kid to hate cutting and learning, give them the safe stuff because, it just doesn't work. They kept getting stuck and going sideways basically eating the paper instead of cutting it. So I got brave... I pulled out some of Lou's old scissors that were still SAFE but not like the others. He got all excited then, and im sure his thoughts were "I get to use Sissy's scissors", heck yes!  But before we even started cutting at all I had him trace the lines before cutting. Once again, me being sneaky and trying to throw an extra skill in there.

working on pencil hold

Concentration Method

His cutting skills in action and I love his tongue is sticking out because he did this the entire time he was cutting it was hilarious. I tried to get a really good shot of him doing this but these are still cute.

He started saying, "this is so hard mommy", and I figured this was going to be the end of a good thing. Well after he said that he told me, "but I not gonna give up." I said, "you got this huh?" He said, "yupppp I gots this" haha! (in our house no one can say just yep anymore. Thanks to storage wars we have all developed an auctioneers accent and yeps are now Yuuuppps) Below is his "this be hard yo" face and my favorite picture of the day!

So I keep asking him, "ok you want to stop?" and he says, "no way I wanna cut the shapes." I am now thinking to myself and not real sure why the heck I printed out shapes and put them on the tray. Knowing there is no way he is ready to cut out actual objects. He can barely cut a line lol ! Well- boy did he prove me wrong. I held the paper for him but my Cowboy cut him out some shapes!! I couldn't believe it. He wasn't giving up and that totally blessed me because that is his daddy in him for sure. Here are his shapes.

I am so impressed!!!!

After tot trays he watched a little bit of Max and Ruby, and then decided to go back to the computer and do his lessons on AbcMouse.com and wait for Butter to wake up.

The Boys and I had lunch and then I got brave and took them to Hobby Lobby. We got a few things for school and then came back home for nap time. After nap Lou and Daddy came home and I got busy making dinner. Which was amazing :) We had Baked-Spaghetti you can find the recipe here . I got it off of pinterest. Big thumbs up. I really enjoyed my day with Cowboy. He was so sweet. Today was a good day.