Shell & Stickers Memory Game

I made this shell and stickers memory game for O(5) about 2 years ago, and I take it to the beach with us every year.

I tried to teach E(1) the ins and outs of memory, but she's not quite ready for that :) However, she had fun matching the stickers.

To make the game, I gathered (from around my house) a bunch of shells that looked similar (O's grandmother brought them to her from the Bahamas), and I bought 2 packs of beach/sea life stickers. I put stickers on each shell to make about 10 matching pairs. Simple and fun!

Pseudo Pillowcase Dresses

My mom and I (with help from O and E) made matching pseudo pillowcase dresses for the girls a couple of weeks ago.

These dresses are simple to make, and they look so sweet. Here is a link to the directions from the last time we made a dress like this...way back in 2009.

The only difference is that my mom tacked the ribbon this time because it's very annoying when it slides out. Also, we made matching dresses for the girls' dolls. So fun!

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!

Drawing a Rainbow

O(5) had fun taping her markers together and drawing with them! This is an Art Jar activity, and she was so excited when she drew this one out of the jar! However, the most fun part was taping the markers together. For some reason, she lost her enthusiasm when she started drawing.

After she drew with the washable markers, she "painted" over her drawing with water.

Our Summer Poetry Basket

The girls LOVE poetry baskets, but I haven't been as good about putting them together as I had planned. I recently put this one together, and we've really enjoyed reading the poem while acting it out. O(5) recited it after I read it, and then E(1) had a turn. I was amazed by how well E recited the poem while pointing to the words! She loves to do everything her big sister does!

I've got to get better about doing monthly poems with them! It's so simple, and they enjoy it so much!

Laura Ingalls Wilder Monthly Subscription Packet

For O's 5th birthday, I gave her a monthly "subscription" to a "Laura Ingalls Wilder Packet." I've been planning this for months, and I am so excited about it! Luckily, O is excited, too!

In her first packet, she received a letter from Laura (typed in "old time" type and printed on beige paper so it would look older), a picture of Laura and her sisters, My First Little House Laura's 5th Birthday book, the Little House on the Prairie pilot dvd (this was the perfect gift since I gave it to her the day before a 12 hour road trip!), "old time" crayons, and "old time" candy (both from Cracker Barrel).

Each month she will receive a letter from Laura, a Little House book, a craft, and some other type of old time trinket or candy. I'm hoping to find more pics of Laura to print since it would be fun to include a different picture of Laura with each packet. It's going to be so much fun to put these packets together each month! Maybe even more fun than the monthly fun boxes, which are one of the BEST gifts I've ever given the girls.

Spin Art

The girls and I have had lots of fun making spin art over the last couple of weeks using a set that my sister gave O(5) for Christmas (she found it super cheap at World Market on Black Friday).

This is a very simple art kit. It comes with a spinning top and papers to put on the top. You spin the top and squeeze the paint on as it spins. Lots of messy fun! If you sqeeze too hard, the paint goes everywhere, and it does NOT come off of skin easily and probably won't come out of clothes at all.




We made art until we ran out of paint. I think I'll be able to easily refill the bottles with liquid watercolor, which should (hopefully) wash off a little easier. The girls were very proud of their artwork, and O plans to send a spin art painting with each cultural exchange package.


Next, we need to try salad spinner painting again. We haven't done this since we made our Rachael Ray video, which means sweet E(1) has never made salad spinner art...well, we can't have that, can we? :)

I didn't include a link to Amazon with this product since it is terribly overpriced. It also got some bad reviews. I would have given it a bad review if I'd paid 10 dollars for it, since it's basically a cheap plastic spinner, paper, and paint. We've had LOTS of fun with it, and it would be fairly easy to make your own.

O's Perfect Birthday

O(5) had the perfect birthday outing last weekend! My bff, EB, called Saturday morning and told us that the restaurant where she works was having an "Old Time Festival"!!! This was perfect for my history loving girl. Both girls dressed in their "old time" clothes and had a great time riding a horse, feeding goats and donkeys, grinding corn, etc. What a fun day!

Blow Gun Game

My mom (aka Guhguh) and O(5) share a birthday, so we always spend the day with my mom on their birthday. This year O went into the playroom (at my mom's house) with the intention of drawing a picture for my mom for her birthday, but was struck by the inspiration to make a blow gun game for her instead! (we learned about blow guns on a recent camping trip during which we toured an Indian village).

O(5) used straws and q-tips to make the game. She cut one end off of each q-tip, and cut about a quarter off of each straw. The small parts of the straws were the "blow gun holders" (to hold the q-tips when they were not in use, and the long straws were for blowing the q-tips. She told Guhguh that when she got tired of using the blow guns, she could match the straws.

Guhguh was very excited by her gift, and she and O had fun trying to blow the q-tips into a bowl. I was very impressed by O's creativity!

Loading the blow gun.


Firing away!

E's Muffin Tin Lunch

I realized about a month ago that E(1) had never had a "muffin tin" lunch. I fixed this lunch for her, and she was thrilled (I usually serve the girls their lunches on trays).

E had rotisserie chicken, dip (Ranch), lightly steamed baby carrots, avocado chunks, kiwi, and cottage cheese with grape tomatoes. Deeeelicious!!!

Checking the Temperature

After her initial excitement over her summer Montessori work shelf, O(5) quickly lost interest in doing "Montesori school" this summer. However, she does enjoy doing this work.

O's teacher gave me a copy of a thermometer, which I laminated. I have the laminated thermometer, a real thermometer, and a dry erase marker on the shelf. O puts the thermometer outside or inside, and then checks the temperature before filling in the laminated thermometer to match. Simple and fun!

Our Dead Insect Collection

After finding several really beautiful and interesting dead insects, the girls and I decided to start a dead insect collection. They are VERY excited about this, and we've gone on several "dead insect hunts" in our yard. We've found beetles, bees, dragonflys, moths, huge grasshopers, grandaddy longleg spiders, mayflies, etc.

Elliott found these huge and scary insects at work (Thank goodness we didn't find these at our house!)






We keep our dead insects in an old printer's box. We're hoping to fill every space before summer's end.