Free Art

When I taught kindergarten, the most popular free play area in my room was the art area. Kids would spend their entire free play time constructing impressive projects with simple tools.  I've been wanting to give A the same opportunity, so the other week I set out some art/craft tools to see what would happen.  

This is the before picture of our toy shelf in our main living area (note the lovely wedding photo of Mama and Daddy :)):

This is our after picture!

I placed a magazine holder with coloring books and different types of paper in the first cube.  (Disregard the whole, "my name is P.M." thing.  This is from my afternoon K class and I never peeled the sticker off!) I also added colored pencils and two types of crayons for easy access.

In the second cube, I put a drawer organizer. You can see a tape dispenser and pencil case on top.  The pencil case has a pencil, glue stick and scissors in it (easy for my 4 year-old to get to, but not for my 2 year-old)

The first drawer has popsicle sticks and stampers

The second drawer has stencils and rubbing plates

The third drawer has stickers and a pencil box with markers. I wanted A to have the option to use markers without having them out in the open where little sis could get to them.

This has worked so well, and A has made some really great drawings and popsicle stick creations.  I've since added a bunch of supplies to this shelf and I'll be updating with another post soon.

September Mom and Me Book Club: Chicka Chicka 123!

We are participating in the monthly book club series hosted by The Educators' Spin On It

This month's author is Bill Martin Jr.  I chose the book, Chicka Chicka 123.   It is one of A's current favorites!

I printed off a drawing of an apple tree, added number stickers (0-9) and laminated the pages.  The kids took turns digging for numbers and matching them to their sheet.

I found this cute little bumblebee craft on Pinterest. (original source here) It is made with a tiny pine cone, yarn and a small piece of grocery bag.  Super easy and cute! 

They loved making (but  mostly eating) their Honey-Comb cereal necklaces.

Everyone had a chance to sample a red, yellow and green apple, fill out a sheet (also found on Pinterest..original source here) and cast their vote.

I also had a few other Bill Martin Jr. books out for everyone to look through.  I forgot to take a photo of the take-home activity, but here is a photo of one we did after everyone went home.  Each child got a baggie with a sheet of apple stickers and four trees with numbers on them.  They needed to count and stick the correct number of stickers on each tree.

This was fun!  We are excited for next month's book club!

2013 Summer Book Exchange!

We recently participated in the "Love Books" Summer Book Exchange.  It was so much fun!  Check out our last year's exchange here.  This year we were paired up with Lauren from Tutus & Tea Parties.  We received one of our favorite books, Mouse Paint!

We began by reading the book, then we used the puppets she sent us to retell the story.  There were mice puppets, paint jar puppets, paint puddle puppets and then there were mouse bottom puppets to show what color each mouse turned.  These were the highlight of the package.  My girls still play with these!

Next we had some fun with color mixing in baggies. 

I added a little printable I found on Pinterest. :)

Here A is getting ready to do some paint mixing on a cute little handmade painter's palette.

Finally, the girls went on a color hunt.  They found toys and put them on the correct color paint puddle.

This was so much fun!  Check out all of the other book projects over at The Educators' Spin on it!  Thanks again, Lauren and "Bug!"

Back to Bentos

I have been having the hardest time getting little miss A to eat breakfast.  I wouldn't fret, but she becomes the grouchiest of creatures if she has nothing in her little tummy.  This makes for a "no-fun morning" for all involved.  I've decided to go back to the pre-packed Bento box.  

Mealtimes are already a struggle, and when you add the fact that A is gluten-free and dairy-free, it just becomes an even bigger obstacle when Mama is als0 tired and hungry.  I'm also thinking I may go back to themed breakfasts just to be sure they aren't seeing the same breakfasts day after day.  Here's the plan:

Muffin Monday

Oatmeal Tuesday

Waffle Wednesday

Cereal Thursday

French Toast Friday

Saturday/Sunday I'm going to see if I can get her to start drinking smoothies and maybe eating g/f pancakes again.  Baby steps, right?

*Recipe for the chocolate quinoa muffins here.

Picking flowers

The girls and I are on a little mini-vacation at my parents' house.  They are loving it.  The weather has been beautiful, and they've been able to run through a sprinkler (A calls it a water fountain) and splash in a tiny baby pool every afternoon.  At home, we have a small patch of grass for the girls to play on. Here, they have a field to pick flowers (dandelions) in, and they go on adventures in between the pine trees and lilac bushes.  They need few toys if any to keep themselves entertained. Today we make the trip back home.  It will be sad to leave, but we are excited to see Daddy again!

Sister snack

I was recently pinning some ideas for morning and bedtime routines on Pinterest.  I wanted to make a chart for A, to help her get herself ready for both transition times.  I saw a picture of two kids eating cereal as their bedtime routine on this blog and a light bulb flickered on in my head.  We needed a bedtime snack in our routine!

When A was a baby, we'd feed her baby oatmeal and a bottle of milk before bed.  Why weren't we doing something similar now?  (a lot of our bedtime battles revolve around being hungry...for both girls)

We now have a "sister snack" box

I keep this box on the top shelf of A's closet.  (Her room doubles as the girls' playroom)  Every night, unless we've had a late supper, the girls put their jammies on and have a sister snack together before bed. There is a little table with two chairs they can sit on. Sometimes I'll read them a story or two while they munch.

Our snack box is packed with two types of applesauce (I figured they sort of doubled as drinks) and then some dry snacks packed in snack bags (duplicates of everything).  There are bowls to put the snacks in, a spoon for applesauce as well as a refillable pouch to put baby sister's applesauce in.

 

So far this has been a nice transition to get the girls ready for bed.  I'm happy that it also helps fill their little tummies for the evening, too!

Travel Binders

We went on a four hour road trip last weekend.  With the way I prepared, you'd think it was a 16 hour ordeal, but we were only in the car for 4 hours.  I had a few friends ask for details, so here they are.  There is more to come!
 (be sure to scroll over the words, I've provided links to the activities)

Big Sister's Binder

1. Highlights magazine, Laminated Kumon activity pages, pencil case with crayons and paper, Wooly Willy, ISpy book with magnifying glass

2.  lacing animals, envelope with plain paper and stickers

3.  Color Wonder coloring pages, We Choose Virtues coloring pages

4.  Color by word apple page, Melissa and Doug Stamp Marker Activity Pages

5.  Tracing page I had from teaching, Kumon coloring pages

6.  Name writing practice (using letter boxes),  cutting practice sheets  

7. gumball stickers   

8.  Butterfly sticker page, Alphabet match-up with abc stickers

9. Hello Kitty/My Little Pony sticker sort, 1-10sticker sheets 

1.sticker activity page ,happy face/sad face sticker sorting

2.sticker shapes,  Color sorting with stickers

3.  Poking shapes with a golf tee (Montessori Print Shop), Letter search (Living Life Intentionally) 

4. Blank reindeer face (I found this on Pinterest and a Google search)

5.  Blank boy and girl (Pinterest and Google search) girl face here

6.letter tracing    

7.  Tracing from Musings of Me (no longer available),laminated Doc McStuffins Tot Pack

8. (more Doc)

9.Mr. & Mrs. Potato head felt activity   

Baby sister's binder

1. Highlights magazine, laminated Kumon pages (with dry-erase crayons), pencil case with paper and crayons, envelope with paper, coloring pages and stickers

2.  Color Wonder pages

3. Velcro Mitten Match (no longer available)

4.  Velcro Animal silhouette match (can't find the link!)

5. Blank faces

I'll update soon with what was in our TRAVEL BOX!

Work in progress...

Excuse the mess, and missing widgits and whatnot. I am working on cleaning this space up. Be back soon!

Our Advent Calendar

There were SO many great advent calendar ideas on Pinterest, that it was hard to decide on just one!  I ended up printing this cute little Christmas tree from here, and the blank calendar from here .  I just wrote in an activity for each day.  I have plenty of books from teaching, so we actually read one book and do  one activity each day.  It's nice to have the calendar in front of me, because if I don't have all of the supplies ready for one activity, I can look at another day and do that one.  

One of the first activities we did was a "paint with water" velvet picture. I got this one at Wal-Mart for just under a dollar.  (It's a great idea to go right after Christmas and stock up for next year, since these items go on clearance and they sell out quickly!)

This was a new experience for A, but she got the hang of it quickly.

Yes,  it's been a very long time.  I had decided to start up with some posts again, and I found out I'd reached my limit for photos on blogger...so I got that figured out and I'm back (at least for now)

Little Christmas treats!

I worked with A and we made cards for her teachers.  She's in gymnastics, dance, and has Wednesday night church classes.  I cut some pieces of watercolor paper and let her dip mini cookie cutters into tempera paint and just stamp them all over the paper.  I later folded them into mini cards and wrote a note inside.

After making the cards, she put together little treat bags.  Each bag had mini candy canes, white chocolate peppermint kisses and regular chocolate kisses.  A candy cane was added at the end.  We used these awesome candy cane tags from here  and A wrote her name on the back. 

She really had so much fun assembling these and handing them out.  Such an easy little gift for a little one to give!

Cleaning Caddy

A has been asking me all week for a cleaning caddy.  I had asked her if she wanted to make one so she could help Mama clean and she was immediately VERY excited.  While I was cleaning up the kitchen tonight, I realized I hadn't thrown one together yet and that I should round up a few items so they would be ready for this week.  

The fact that everything is blue is totally unintentional...it was what I had on hand.  If I was going to make a caddy specifically for A, everything most definitely would be pink...her favorite color. 

Here's what's in the caddy:

-mini dustpan

-a burp rag, to use for dusting

-a scrubber for scrubbing tile or anything else

-sponge and spray bottle filled with a very small amount of water and a drop of soap for spot cleaning

I have an apron all cut out of fabric to sew for her that I may put in here as well.  I hope she likes it as much as she thought she would!

What day is it?

A used to wake up every morning and ask me, "what day is today?" and then, "what are we going to do today?"  We've done routine charts in the past but they turned out to be too much.  Everything was on a routine card (from breakfast to bedtime), and if we missed something, A would remind me or it would throw her off.  I finally came up with this idea.

The day is at the top.  I choose three items that we will do, in any order for that day.  We do more than this, but these three things help A know the flow of the day and what she can expect to happen next.  There is a Mama or Daddy card at the bottom to tell her who is tucking her in for that night.

The chart is on the back of our kitchen door.  She sees it every morning when she comes down the stairs and she checks it many times throughout the day.  It also helps remind me to do at least three intentional activities with her daily.  I got the routine cards on Etsy (the seller's page is no longer up), and I also used Google images for the activities that weren't included in the packet.  It's working for us!

Olympics group tot school

Another group tot school has come and gone. This time our theme was: OLYMPICS! I was pretty excited, and it was hard choosing between all of the fun activities. Here is what we ended up with: 

Olympic Rings Printing:We used upside down Play-Doh containers to create the Olympic rings.  The original idea uses toilet paper tubes, found here.

Do-a-dot Olympic rings: Printable from Making Learning Fun.

Create a sailboat and see if it floats: We used recycled baby food tubs, play dough, straws, tape and foam stickers to decorate.  This was located next to a full kitchen sink so the kids could see if their boats floated.

A few extra indoor activities were:

Two sorting trays

Two "What Comes Next?" trays

(both from part one of the 3 Dinosaurs Summer Olympics Pack)

 

and an Olympic matching game

(found here. Click on her TPT link on the left...it's free!)

OUTSIDE: everyone got a score sheet and there were markers at each station to fill in each section

Basketball: best out of ten

Throwing mini-beach balls through a hula hoop into a basket (shot put?)

(keep track of how many you got into the basket)

Hurdles

I saw this idea in a Family Fun magazine.  You take pool noodles (mine were from the Dollar Tree) and hook them onto chopsticks that are stuck in the ground.  So fun!

(write how many times you jumped over a hurdle.  A chose to do this again and again and again!)

Soccer: best out of ten

Balance Beam

checklist of skills(walk with one foot in front of the other, turn around, bend your knees, walk to the end and hop off, etc.)

Snack: ice cream cone and popcorn torches

(our friends provided strawberries, blueberries and juice boxes!)

I'm already working on next month's activities!