Last Week in Review

Here are a few highlights from last week...

The girls found the flower button board that I made for O(6) about 4 years ago.  O loved it, but E was only moderately interested.

We had a Valentine's Day themed homemade playdough playdate.  The kids helped make the playdough and then had fun playing with it. 

We cut hearts from flour tortillas to make heart shaped cinnamon and sugar tortillas for a playdate snack.

Goobi magnets are the most chosen work in our school room!  E(3) had fun making different shapes.

The chocolate playdough was a little crumbly!  It made a mess, but clean-up was fairly easy.

O(6) enjoyed her Rightstart Math lessons this week.  She created and solved math problems using the balance, and then recorded the problems in her notebook.

E(3) enjoyed spreading out and looking at the cards from our Impressionism memory game. 

We took a long walk on a beautiful day! 

E is running to me with her arms open for me to pick her up.  Love!

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Candy Cane Playdough

Homemade playdough makes a wonderful gift, and the girls and I had fun making candy cane playdough for their friends and cousins.  E(2) and I mixed up a batch of vanilla scented playdough while O was at school.  When O(5) got home, we made a batch of peppermint playdough.  We all love playing with the fresh, warm dough. 

I put the jars of candy cane playdough in these gingerbread boxes along with a few cookie cutters.  What a fun and simple Christmas gift!  I hope the girls' friends and cousins love this gift as much as we do!




Here's a link to the post with our basic playdough recipe.  Here's a link to our playdough gift sets from 2010. 

The idea for putting the candy cane playdough in jars with alternating colors came from Pinterest.  However, I can't find the page that it orginated from...sorry about that.

The Sweet Smell of Christmas

The Sweet Smell of Christmas was our book of the day for Friday.  I love this book and remember reading it when every Christmas when I was a child.  My mom gave O(5) this copy on her first Christmas, and it's always a favorite. 


After we read the book, the girls and I made candy cane playdough.  Here is the basic recipe:

1 c. flour
1/2 cup salt
1 T. cooking oil
1 T. cream of tartar
1 c. water
Food coloring of your choice
Add-ins of your choice (i.e. spices, extracts, glitter, etc.)

Stir ingredients together well. Just measure them into the saucepan you will be using to cook the dough, but mix them well before heating up the pan. Over medium heat cook the dough, stirring constantly until it forms a ball.

Let the playdough cool and then knead until it's smooth.

The girls loved taking turns pouring in the ingredients, and they especially loved kneading the warm dough.  We ran out of salt, so we only made a half recipe, but we'll make more this week.  Homemade playdough makes great Christmas gifts! 

Ocean Playdough

We are vacationing at the beach this week, so the girls and I made ocean playdough to have during our week at the ocean!

We used the basic homemade playdough recipe and added in blue food coloring, clear glitter, and vanilla extract. It's SO much fun (and it's SO easy) to make homemade playdough that I don't know why we don't make it more often. I think it should be at least an every other month activity!

Here is the recipe and instructions for the playdough...

1 c. flour

1/2 cup salt

1 T. cooking oil

1 T. cream of tartar

1 c. water

Food coloring of your choice

Add-ins of your choice (i.e. spices, extracts, glitter, etc.)

Stir ingredients together well. Just measure them into the saucepan you will be using to cook the dough, but mix them well before heating up the pan. Over medium heat cook the dough, stirring constantly until it forms a ball.
Let the playdough cool and then knead until it's smooth.


The girls loved pouring and mixing the ingredients, and then they waited patiently while I cooked the dough on the stove. O LOVES kneading the warm dough (and I do, too!).

The ocean playdough was perfect for our week at the beach since we've had some very rainy days. I brought some ocean animal cookie cutters, ocean stamps, and small ocean animals to go with the playdough (as well as a few traditional playdough tools...rolling pin, spaghetti maker, etc.).

O(5) LOVED making blue mermaid hair.


E(1) loved creating underwater scenes.




Playing with the playdough was a screened porch activity only since it makes such a mess. That suited the girls and me just fine because why would we want to be inside the house when we have a beautiful view outside!

Homemade Playdough

O and I have had fun making chocolate and sugar cookie playdough this week.  We love making playdough...it's almost as much fun as playing with it!

O loves to mix everything with her hands.  She leaned down to get a good whiff of the cocoa and breathed in a little too much cocoa dust!  This playdough smells divine!




Here is the chocolate playdough recipe.  (I was going to include it in this post, but that seems silly since I'm in a hurry :)

The day after making chocolate playdough, we made sugar cookie playdough.  The recipe is similar, but we left out the cocoa and added vanilla flavoring and white glitter.  We also cooked this playdough on the stove instead of pouring boiling water into the mixture.  Here is the basic playdough recipe. 

O really enjoyed pouring and mixing in the glitter!

Pumpkin Pie Playdough

Making pumpkin pie playdough is one of our Halloween traditions. (see here and here for the recipe) We were excited to include E when we made it this year. 

O loved mixing the ingredients together with her hands.



It was especially fun to mix in the colors (a fun lesson on mixing red and yellow to make orange) and pumpkin pie spice. 



E stood nearby in the Kitchen Helper.  She loves to be in the Kitchen Helper when we are in the kitchen.  I've kept it on the lowest level since she likes to climb in and out of it by herself.  She LOVED smelling (and tasting!) the pumpkin pie spice container while we were making the playdough.



While I was stirring the playdough on the stove, O mixed the colors from our water xylophone.  This was another fun lesson on mixing primary colors to form secondary colors. 



It's so much fun to knead the warm dough.



Then the playdough cookie making began!

Glittery Snow Playdough

O and I made homemade snow playdough about a month ago, and I just realized that I'd never written about it. We followed this recipe and added white glitter and peppermint extract. It smells delicious! We had fun making and playing with the playdough, but O lost interest in it rather quickly (very surprising since she used to be obsessed with playdough). Luckily, this playdough lasts and lasts (if you store it in an airtight container), so I'm sure she'll be ready to play with it again eventually :)

Playdough Storage Update

We've recently discovered that storing playdough in the metal IKEA containers is NOT a good idea, and I thought I should let everyone know... The playdough dried out on the edges, and the homemade chocolate playdough had some kind of strange chemical reaction with the container. It turned black in a couple of spots and seemed to burn a hole in the bottom of the container somehow. Very strange. I guess it's better to store playdough in plastic containers after all :(

Halloween Playdough

O and I made Halloween playdough last week using this recipe. I'd forgotten how quick and easy it is to make playdough. We definitely need to do this more often!

Our Favorite Toys

A reader recently asked me to write a post about our favorite toys, so here it is! I love to research and find really wonderful toys for O (and Ema!). I admit that I'm a toy snob, and I prefer for O's toys to be well-made, open ended toys that inspire creative play. I try to buy toys that she'll play with for years instead of growing out of in less than a year. I try to avoid plastic toys and toys with characters...however, I DO make exceptions :) Here are the toys that are most often (daily or almost daily) played with at our house:

Playsilks!!! Playsilks are definitely the most played with "toy" in our house. O uses them in almost every aspect of her play...they make great capes, skirts, hats, scarves, baby doll blankets, baby doll diapers, picnic blankets, bags, shirts, etc. The possibilities are endless! We bought our silks from Dharma Trading Company and dyed them using Kool-Aid. However, they are on sale for another day or 2 at Let's Explore, so you might want to check them out :)

Unit Blocks- O has this set and this set of Unit Blocks. These blocks are very well made and will last forever. O plays with them all the time, and I'm sure she'll play with them for years to come.

Baby dolls- O is a little mama, and she loves her babies. Baby Emma is one of her favorite baby dolls.

Dress-up Clothes- O LOVES to dress-up! She has fairy costumes, princess dresses, ballerina dresses, dr. scrubs, construction worker outfit, etc. The scrubs and construction worker outfit are her newest costumes and therefore the most used right now, but she wears all of her costumes fairly frequently. For Christmas last year we gave her a suitcase full of costumes and accessories :)

Play kitchen and play food- O loves to cook in her play kitchen. She spends a lot of time mixing up crazy concoctions with her wooden and felt food.

Art supplies- O creates various forms of artwork everyday at her art shelf. She has markers, crayons, paint, scissors, tape, glue, and lots of various collage materials availabe to her at any time at her art shelf. She creates some interesting artwork!

Spinny Speller- We all love the spinny speller! We take turns making real and nonsense words to sound out and read. (I'm planning on writing a review of the spinny speller soon).

Playdough & Silly Putty- We love homemade playdough and therapy putty. O LOVES the homemade silly putty, but I prefer the therapy putty because it's not quite as sticky as the homemade putty.



O also has several great toys, games, and puzzles that she plays with occasionally (weekly or monthly). Here are our favorites...

Beleduc Your Body Girl Puzzle. O loves this puzzle, and she has learned so much from it.

Bilibo- The bilibo is so much fun and is so versitle. O was calling it her "turtle shell" a few days ago :) It also makes a fun cradle, a nice chair, an oversized hat, etc.

Latches Board- This Melissa and Doug latches board is lots of fun, and it's great for developing fine motor skills.

Buddha Board- O enjoys painting with water on her Buddha Board. This is also a fun way to practice writing skills. A mini Buddha Board would be great to have in the car...this may be going on O's Christmas wish list :)

Twig blocks- O loves to create different designs and structures with these amazing blocks!

Zingo- We love to play Zingo! Zingo is a great game for Family Game Night.

Rainbow Tunnel Stacker- O received the rainbow tunnel stacker when she was 15 months old, and she played with it almost every day for probably a year. She still plays with it frequently. It's a wonderful toy that can be played with in so many ways...a tunnel for mini cars, bracelets, anklets, rockers for baby dolls, sculptures, etc.

O's Playdough Shelf

O had started to lose interest in playdough recently, so I revamped her playdough shelf (it's right next to her art shelf). All of the playdough tools and accessories are in the glass jar. The playdough is stored in magnetic glass containers (from IKEA) that hang on a magnetic strip (also from IKEA). She plays with playdough almost everyday, and she plays with putty multiple times per day.

Edit to add:  Homemade playdough does not store well in these containers.  There is some type of chemical reaction that occurs eating a hole in the metal of the container. 

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 :)

Floam Fun

It's been a while since O has played with floam, and she really enjoyed herself! She asked to play with playdough, but when she saw the blue floam, she quickly changed her mind. Floam is a nice texture variation to playdough, but I still prefer homemade playdough :)