Sewing Bear

O and I had fun with her sewing bear this week. She has not been very interested in lacing/sewing activities lately, but this kept her attention for a little while :) The bear comes with lots of different outfits, shoes, and accessories. After you choose what she will wear, you then sew the clothes onto her. I found this at a 2nd hand store, and I hope it will continue to spark O's interest in sewing/lacing.

Cutting is Fun!

O LOVES to cut!!! She especially loves to cut magazines, and she is obsessed with babies. This catalog with Halloween costumes for babies was perfect for her! I have a drawer for magazines under her art shelf, so that she always has magazines available for cutting :)

Sifting Sand Activity

O had a great time learning to sift objects out of sand! To make this activity, I put play sand in a wooden box (the box that her Melissa and Doug Unit Blocks came in). We put shells in the sand and covered them. Then I showed O how to dig around with the sifter to find the shells, shake the sifter to remove all of the sand, and put the shells in the glass bowl next to the box. The sifter has 2 points on one end which made scooping the sand a little difficult. I think we may try a slotted spoon next time.


After she finished the activity, she REALLY enjoyed playing in the sand with funnels, scoops, and measuring cups. She was having so much fun that I couldn't convince her to go down to the beach with me to play!


Then, she and Elliott had a great time pretending that the sandbox was a desert habitat while playing with her small desert animals.

Elliott is REALLY good at pretend play with O (better than me!), and she especially loves it when he plays "baby dolls" with her!

Daily Calendar Activity

O and I have started doing a daily calendar activity each morning. I bought the calendar set from Michael's (I had a 50% off coupon, so it only cost 7 dollars). Since I don't have anywhere to hang the calendar, I put everything on foam core board. I keep it behind the shelf when we are not using it. I laminated the small pieces, and put velcro on the backs of everything that we will change each day. I am really excited about adding calendar time to our routine each day!


Since I have a little extra room on one side of the board, I want to add a "Today I feel..." component. Hopefully, I'll get to it eventually :) I'm excited that the calendar also has a weather component. O enjoys going to look out the window to check the weather before she decides which pictures to choose.

Turning Workbooks into Reusable Workbooks

O LOVES her wipe-off workbooks! I saw a laminated maze book months ago on a blog and planned to make one for O. I never got around to doing it, and then I saw the idea to use plastic page protectors to turn workbooks into wipe-off workbooks on Muses of Megret.

What a great idea and SO much faster, easier, and cheaper than printing and laminating each page! I found several fun workbooks, including a book of mazes for around 3 dollars each (at Walmart). I put each page into a page protector and put them into a binder. I added in a zipper pouch with washable wipe-off markers and a small felt eraser, and O was ready to work! This saves so much money and paper since O likes to do the same pages over and over again. Also, Little Kicker will be able to use the same books in a few years!

Shannon at Teaching My Little Bookworm also recently posted about turning workbooks into reusable workbooks!

Fun with Goop!

O and I had fun making goop last weekend! She loves anything messy, and I thought ahead and made the goop down by the lake which made clean-up VERY easy :) To make goop we mixed cornstarch and water. It works better to use equal parts water and cornstarch, but O insisted on adding much too much water. That was ok...it still worked, and we had fun. We also added in food coloring. We started with yellow and blue to make green. Then she added in red and green and ended up with brown. Eventually, she took the goop down to the beach and experimented with adding sand to the mixture. We were both excited when Elliott joined in on our fun with goop!

Transferring Ice Cubes in Water

O REALLY enjoyed this transferring activity! I gave her a slotted spoon to transfer the plastic star ice cubes from the bowl of water to an empty bowl. She transferred the clear stars first, then the blue stars, and then the pink stars. She was very focused and worked carefully. I'm sure we'll do this activity again soon!

The star ice cubes came from the dollar section at Target.

An Easy Handmade Bubble Blower

O and I recently made a bubble blower out of straws and tape. We gathered a bunch of straws together and wrapped a piece of masking tape around them to hold them together. That's it! We dipped it in the bubble solution, blew, and made hundreds of tiny bubbles :) We've had LOTs of fun with this bubble blower! The idea for this activity came from Family Fun magazine.

Water Play

O had a fantastic time playing with this tub full of water this morning. We added in red and blue food coloring that she mixed together to make purple and soap to make bubbles. We did a few sink/float experiments, made a boat for her "waterproof people," practiced using a baster, poured lots of water, used slotted spoons to remove corks and plastic ice cubes, washed baby dolls, etc. This was a great activity for a hot morning!

Fun with Shaving Cream & Food Coloring

O had a FANTASTIC time playing with shaving cream and food coloring yesterday! She loves activities that involve smearing things and making a mess, so this was perfect for her :) To do this activity, I sprayed a bunch of shaving cream into a baking dish and added a little bit of water. O played with the shaving cream for a little while, and then we added in the food coloring. She wanted green, so I put blue on one side and yellow on the other side, and she mixed them to make green. We continued adding colors and the mixture worked it's way up her arms to her face and all over her tummy :)

We did this activity at the kitchen counter, and I was relieved to find out that O is not too big for a bath in the kitchen sink!

Paper Clip/Craft Foam Color Match

We've done several paper clip color match activities, and this is the most recent one. The idea for this activity came from another blog, and as usual I can't find it on my starred items on google reader (that is what happens when you have over 800 starred items!). To make the color match activity, I cut strips of craft foam and hooked them together using a brad. I showed O how to match the paper clips to the craft foam by sliding them onto the foam strips.


This activity was very difficult for O because the craft foam is very bendy. I will probably remake this activity for her using cardstock.

Seashell Sailboats

O and I recently had fun making seashell sailboats to float in the lake. She put a ball of playdough in each shell (we used our homemade chocolate playdough) while I cut the sails out of craft foam. I stuck a toothpick through each sail, and she stuck the toothpick in the playdough. We also made a few boats using bottle tops. Most of the boats did not float...we used too much playdough :) Also, it would have worked better with clay. The playdough dried out and fell out of the shells. The idea for this activity came from Family Fun magazine. The boats we made last summer out of sponges and straws worked MUCH better :)

How to Make an Air Blower...

O and I made an air blower on Tuesday for our weekly science project. To make an air blower, you need a ziploc bag, 3 or 4 sponges, a straw, and masking or duct tape. O put the sponges in the bag and put the straw between the sponges. We zipped the bag closed, and I taped it closed around the straw. Then we took turns hitting it with our hands and stepping on it to make it blow various objects. It works better with a shorter, straight straw.

We collected several objects from around the house and predicted whether or not they would move when blown. This was a fun and easy experiment :)

It's all about Location!

O is always more interested in her toys and activities if they are off her shelf and on a work surface. I rotate various items off of the shelf every few days or so, and put them on this work surface. She hadn't completed this puzzle in a LONG time, but as soon as she saw it on the work surface, she was ready to do it. She was so proud that she made all of the "humans" by herself :)

Excavating Treasures in Ice

O and her cousin, M, had a GREAT time excavating treasures from ice yesterday morning! This activity started about 2 weeks ago when I gave each of the girls a plastic container and sent them off on a treasure hunt around my mom's house for them to find small objects suitable for freezing. We filled the containers with water and put them in the freezer...and forgot about them for 2 weeks :) Guh-guh and Grandpa had the girls all day while my sister and I went shopping (I love IKEA!), and this was a fun activity for them to do. They used warm water, cold water, hammers, forks, etc. to excavate their treasures. After they finished excavating the treasures, they immediately filled the containers with objects and water again, so they can do this activity again soon!

I just searched this blog to see when we did this activity last summer, and we did it almost exactly a year ago (July 8 this year and July 7 last year). What a coincidence!

Tangram Activity Bag

I'm still here, and here's my 1st post bloggy drama post :)



Thanks to Amy at Let's Explore for this great tangram activity and links! To make this activity I printed the small tangram pattern and used it to cut tangrams out of craft foam. I put magnets on the backs of the pieces, so they would stay in place and be less frustrating for my girl. I printed the animal tangram pics, laminated them, cut them, and hooked them together using a book ring. Everything fit nicely in a zipper pouch. O is a little young (almost 3) to do tangrams on her own, but we've had fun doing it together. I'm planning on taking this activity on our upcoming beach trip.



Also, check out Let's Explore for free shipping on orders more than 25 dollars! I love a good deal on shipping :)

A Sand Volcano

This week's book is Let's Go Rock Collecting. O LOVES this book, and there are so many fun rock activities to do that I'm sure we won't get to all of them.

Our first story stretcher was making a volcano on our beach. To make the volcano, we filled a plastic bottle with lukewarm water, 2 tablespoons of baking soda, and food coloring. We took the bottle down to the beach, and built the volcano around it. Elliott poured vinegar into the bottle, and we watched the volcano erupt!
We made the volcano erupt several times, and O stirred the mixture around with a stick to make it erupt again after we took a boat ride.
O and I were both excited to have Elliott involved in some of our story stretcher activities!

Magical Mixtures- Library Activity Kit

This week's activity kit is called Magical Mixtures, and it's our favorite one so far!

We started by filling small plastic cups with water and dropping a fizzy color tablet into each one. Then we put a scoop of jelly crystals into the water and let it sit for an hour.




When we checked on the crystals after an hour, they had grown and absorbed most of the water. We examined them with a magnifying glass and compared their size to the size of the dry crystals.




Guh-guh and O mixed the crystals together to see if the colors would mix. They didn't :)


 

For our 2nd activity, we filled a ziploc bag halfway with water, and put 2 scoops of jelly crystals in the bag. After an hour, we checked on the crystals. They had grown trememendously, and O enjoyed exploring their texture.



The space sand in the kit is really cool! We poured a little bit into a bowl of water. We talked about the silvery layer between the sand and water. O enjoyed exploring the texture and seeing how the sand stays dry even while it's in the water :)