Needing a Toddler Schedule

So, enough of the posts about bad things. I'm moving on & won't be talking about my little one who is teething (1st molars) right now!

I've realized in the last few weeks just how much amazing growth Chase is going through right now. He is learning by leaps & bounds. I had heard that between 18 months & 2 years some amazing things happen & now I'm seeing what that really means, even though he's only at 16 months right now.

My little boy is very independent. There are days when I could just leave him by himself & he'd play & be happy. Because of that, its very easy to let him just do his own thing. But when I started to notice how much he was progressing (without any structure), I let the teacher in me take over!

We now have a schedule. Every day (instead of hit & miss), we'll work on specific animal sounds, body parts, active songs/activities, and skills. We tried it out last week & worked on:
Learning: nose Reviewing: belly button, ears, toes
Learning: what a cow says Reviewing: what a sheep & a chicken say
Learning: Ring Around the Rosies
Activities: gymboree class, coloring
Learning: how to drink from a cup

Well, everything went great . . . except the drinking from a cup. I think we'll try that again in a few months. For now, he just has way too much fun dumping the water all over himself! With everything else, the simple act of repeating every day (instead of every few days) helped him to learn so much faster. And he ended up LOVING Ring Around the Rosies. We play a few times a day & its so much fun to interact like that!

Also, for any other mom's who are looking for things like this . . . I looked everywhere for pictures of animals that we could put up in his room for the sounds we were working on for the week. NO LUCK! I finally did a google search for things like "cow coloring page" and found what I was looking for. Jeff colored the pictures & I laminated them & now they're hanging up on the wall. Because they are laminated, I can get them down & let Chase hold them as we review the sounds.