Felt Food and O's Play Kitchen

We gave O a kitchen for her birthday last night, and she LOVES it. Elliott and I bought the kitchen in February, and its been in a box in our garage ever since. We were very tempted to give it to her when we bought it, but luckily we resisted the temptation :) My mom and I have been making felt food off and on for the past few months to go with the kitchen set.
bell pepper slices, sweet potato chips, and carrot slices
a tomato slice, red sauce (under the tomato), and lettuce

fried eggs (I think this is my favorite piece!)
O cooked fried eggs for me this morning, and I asked her to make me a sandwich. This is what she brought me- an egg and goldfish sandwich :)
whole wheat bow tie pasta
whole wheat ravioli
pea pods- I made the stuffing into tight little balls so it feels like peas inside the pea pods

sugar cookies and chocolate chip cookies baking in the oven. Every time O opens the oven she says "stay back, mama! hot!"
This is another favorite of mine. Tiny goldfish to go with a tiny goldfish cracker box. I'm also working on different colored goldfish to go with a goldfish colors box.

I made a tiny cupcake with a #2 on the top, but its disappeared. I'll post a picture of it when I find it. Also, check out this fabulous felt food!

Another Masterpiece

O made her Grandaddy Harry a handprint painting as a thank you gift. He and Elliott have been building a deck playhouse for her, and we are so thankful and excited about it. They worked all day on the roof, while I painted the house, and O played. Hopefully, it will be finished by her birthday party on Saturday :)

Painting the Glass Doors

O and I made paint for the sliding glass door a few days ago, and we finally found time to use it today! The idea and recipe for this activity came from this blog. To make the paint you need dishwashing soap, cornstarch, and food coloring. I poured about a tablespoon (maybe 2, I didn't measure it) of soap into each dish. Then O put a tablespoon of cornstarch in each bowl and mixed it around. She then added a few drops of food coloring to each bowl.

Mixing was fun!
Time to paint!

Here's our masterpiece! I painted the shapes at the top, and O made some abstract art on the bottom :) Then we had fun washing it off with a water hose. I think her finger paint would have worked just as well, but part of the fun was making the paint :)

Painting a #1

My mom started a tradition of painting a wooden number of the girls' age with my niece last year. We realized that she had to paint a #1 with O very soon, or she'd run out of time! They painted the #1 after supper tonight. O and Guh-guh had lots of fun. O chose pink and blue and mixed them to make purple. Mixing the colors was her favorite part, of course!


She's 1!

An Easy Beach Collage

I took my roll of contact paper with us to the beach, so we could make an easy beach collage. I cut 2 equal pieces of contact paper and laid one sheet sticky side up on the table. My niece decorated it with flat shells, leaves, and flowers from the dunes. She LOVED making her collage and was totally focused on this activity. O was not interested at all. She was a bit fussy and only wanted to blow bubbles :) After my niece finished decorating her sheet of contact paper, I covered it with a 2nd layer of contact paper to seal it. She was very proud of her beautiful creation!

Painting with Water

I took O's paint with water book with us to the beach, and it was quite a hit! The older girls (ages 3 and 4) enjoyed it much more than O (she was done after 1 picture). They each painted at least 3 pictures. It was a great way to paint without a mess and with lots of fun!

No Sew Tutus

Since O loves to play dress up, and she loves to dance my mom and I decided that we should make her a tutu. The original plan was to make it for her birthday, but then my mom decided that making tutus would be a great craft project to do at the beach for all 3 of our beach girls. To make the tutus you need 2 yards of tulle for each tutu and a stretchy headband. Cut the tulle into 3 inch wide strips that are about 20 inches long. Then just tie them (using a slip knot) onto the stretchy headband (my mom found the headbands at the dollar store in packs of 6). Mom and Aunt Linda did all of the cutting (thank goodness!), and I helped make O's tutu while they made the tutus for the other 2 girls. They also made flower and ribbon headbands using floral wire and tape, fake flowers, and ribbon. They made flower wands using floral wire, silver pipe cleaners, fake flowers, and ribbons. Total cost for 3 tutus, 3 flower wands, and 3 flower and ribbon head bands was about 20 dollars and a few hours of fun! The girls had a fantastic time dancing on the beach, and I know that O is going to love her tutu for a LONG time!

Sponge Ball

We're back from the beach! We had a great time, and we weren't ready to leave :( We didn't do any Montessori work while we were on vacation, but we did several craft projects. I saw this sponge ball on this blog, and I've been wanting to make it ever since. My mom had the same idea, so she bought the materials to take to the beach for an easy craft project. To make the sponge ball cut a sponge long ways into 3 pieces. Then take as many pieces as you like (I used 6), and tie them together at the center using a zip tie. O helped me arrange the sponge pieces, and then she had fun playing with the sponge ball in the pool.

Unplug Your Kids: Paint

We haven't participated in an unplugged project for a while, so when I saw that this week's theme was paint I thought we'd jump back in! O is painting birdhouses to give as Father's Day gifts. She LOVED mixing the different colors of paint together, and she preferred to paint with her hands instead of the paint brushes.

O briefly tried out her new tabletop easel, but she was "done!" with painting by the time I thought of bringing it out.

O's "I Spy" Quilt

Its COMPLETELY finished! My mom and I made this quilt for O for Christmas, but we've only just finished tying it. I really shouldn't say we. I tied 2 knots, and my mom tied 192. She's been working on it every Wednesday and Thursday night for the last month or so. O was excited when we put the quilt on her bed. She's looking for a monkey to match the monkey on her dress.

I'm Featured on the Crafty Crow!

The magnetic photos that I made for O before a road trip were featured on this very cool blog! Check it out if you get a chance.

O's 1st Painting on Canvas

O painted on a canvas for the 1st time today. Yay! I was much more excited than she was :) She started by making continuous circles while saying "o, o, o." Then she made some dots and put her hand in the paint and attempted to paint around it.

Matching Art Cards

I ordered Child-size Master Pieces by Aline D. Wolf for myself for my birthday, and I finally finished cutting and laminating the cards last night. O matched the Step 1 cards today. She was very excited when I was laying the cards out, and she kept saying "match, match." We then talked about the different pictures- colors, objects, etc.

Coloring with Markers

O had a great time coloring with markers in her new, thrift store coloring book (it cost me 49 cents!). I love it because the pages are wipe-off, so we can use it for years!
After coloring for a bit (mainly making dots!), she decided it would be more fun to color her toes:)

O Loves to Paint!

I've been feeling guilty lately that it has been so long since O has painted, so today we had lots of painting fun! We tried a variation on painting with marbles using a golf ball. It worked well, and O embellished her painting with a few brush strokes, too. Then she tried printing circles and dots using a bottle top. After that she had a great time painting on her chalkboard easel with water. What a great afternoon!

Making a Rain Maker

Our favorite exhibit at the Arts Alive Festival on Saturday was put on by the local Montessori School. It was a station set up for children to build their own rain makers (not that the rain need any encouragement!) using plastic cups, popcorn kernels, tape, and stickers and markers to decorate. O loved sitting on the mat to decorate her rain maker.

O Shirts for Our O

My mom and I have been planning on sewing O shirts for O since she was a newborn. 20 months later, we finally got around to it! My mom did the vast majority of the work, since I was feeling lazy this morning. Thanks, mom! O is VERY proud of her O shirts, and she had to wear both of them at once. I can't wait to make more (and maybe I'll help a little more next time!). Oh, notice Guh-guh's pretty barrette in the top picture. O loves to share her barrettes!

I Love Embroidery

She's done! I've been working on this stitchette from Wee Wonderfuls for several days, and I was thrilled to finish her today. I'm making a Christmas stocking for O, and this was the first step. I know its not really the season for Christmas crafts, but I knew that if I waited it was unlikely I would finish it in time. Now the hard part...finding the perfect fabrics to finish the stocking! O really enjoyed watching me embroider. She said "uh-oh" each time I stuck the need through the fabric. This is the 1st time I've embroidered anything in almost 4 years, so I had my Klutz instruction book right beside me. O enjoyed looking at it while she sat beside me on the couch. It was a wonderful way to spend a quiet afternoon with my girl. I promised her that I will teach her to embroider in a few years, and she seemed pleased :) When I was trying to take this picture, O kept turning the fabric over. She was much more interested in the mess of fabric on the back than on the front. She also kept calling the girl "Marg," which was really sweet (Marg is her cousin and best friend).

Displaying O's Artwork

I am so happy that we FINALLY have some of O's artwork hung up in our den. I've had one painting framed for more than a month, but I couldn't find matching frames. We finally found them, and we now have 6 of O's paintings framed in our den. They look great and O is so proud! She even helped hammer in the nails and hang the paintings. She kept complaining of the hammering being too "oud," so I held her ears for her while she and dada hammered.

O's Cardboard Chair

I got the idea for making a chair out of cardboard boxes from Family Fun magazine. I couldn't find the magazine when I finally had the boxes I needed, so I didn't follow the directions exactly, but I'm really happy with how it turned out. I hot glued the boxes together (after filling them with leftover packing styrofoam to strengthen them) and decopaged wrapping paper onto them. It was a litte tedious to place all of the strips of wrapping paper on the box. Luckily, my mom helped because I was getting a little bored with it. After it dried, I put a layer of mod podge over the entire chair, let it dry, then did a 2nd layer of mod podge. I thought about involving O in the process, but she showed no interest in it, and I'm pretty sure that she would have just wanted to tear the paper :) For some reason, O thought she should go night-night in the chair. She kept saying night-night while trying to sit sideways. She pushed at the sides and said "move." I think she wanted it to be a couch :)

*After reading this post, my mom said she is pretty sure that O was trying to make the chair recline since it resembles the recliners at her house. Also, O has seen Guh-guh sit sideways on the recliner. O's grandpa had a great idea...I should make an ottoman for O's chair. I'm putting it on my list!