Polishing Pennies

Polishing pennies was another perfect "P" activity for "P" week! We haven't polished pennies since O(5) was E's age (2), so it was time! O and I enjoyed looking at the pictures of her polishing the pennies before we began this activity.

First, E poured a half cup of white vinegar into a bowl. Then, she poured in 1 tablespoon of salt. She and O took turns stirring the mixture, and then they dropped in the pennies.

We made the mistake of leaving the pennies and other coins in the vinegar and salt solution for too long, and they turned green! Oops!

Mirror Polishing Work

Since O(5) LOVES the polishing works at school, I decided to set a few of them up at home for her and E(2) to do. E LOVES this work! She polished the mirror at least 15 times in a row when I first introduced the work to her!
First, spray the mirror with water.

Then, dry it with a little cloth. (we used tiny flannel wipes leftover from the girls' diaper days)

She also really loves to spray herself in the face with the water!

A Review of Icosoku Jr.

I am excited to review our first item for the Timberdoodle Blogger Review Team! I LOVE browsing the Timberdoodle catalog and website, so I'm thrilled to be a part of their review team.

Our first item that we are reviewing is the Icosoku Jr. I've been reading about the Icosoku for more than a year, but I didn't think O(5) was ready for it. So, I was very excited to see the Icosoku Jr come AND even more excited that Timberdoodle sent us one to review!

I put the Icosoku Jr. in a basket with the triangle pieces off, so that it is ready at all times :) To play the Icosoku Jr. you randomly place the number buttons on the ball, and then match the dotted tiles to the buttons. This is harder than it looks, but it's lots of fun!

O calls herself a "mathematician," so she was initially thrilled with the Icosoku. I explained what to do, but then I left her alone to finish the puzzle. She was easily frustrated with me not right there to help her. Since then we've played with the Icosoku Jr. together many, many times, and now she says she "LOVES it!"

Now that she has gained confidence in herself, she enjoys it more and plays it more independently.

This is a great travel puzzle (game, toy,...whatever you want to call it), and I'm looking forward to taking it with us on our upcoming vacation.

While E(2) is much too young to understand the number concepts on the Icosoku Jr., she really enjoys snapping the number buttons and tiles into place. I watch her VERY closely because it wouldn't surprise me if she decided to put a number button in her mouth.


This is a great fine motor excercise for both girls, and they are fine tuning their concentration skills and their ability to pay attention to details as well. O also is working on her addition and logic skills. So many things are going on when completing this puzzle... You can watch a video demonstrating the Icosoku here.

Timberdoodle sent the Icosoku Jr. to review at no cost to me. I was not paid for this review, and the opinions expressed are my own.

Exploding Bags...Maybe Not

After our fun experimenting with vinegar and baking soda, I decided to let the girls try another vinegar and baking soda experiment (also found via Pinterest at this blog).

First, the girls each put 1 tablespoon of baking soda on a small piece of paper towel and folded it up.

Then we put a half cup of white vinegar and a fourth cup of warm water in the bag (the water wasn't that warm by the time it finally made it to the bag). We sealed the bag, backed up, and waited.

The bags got really big, but they never actually popped...until E(2) stepped on them! The baking soda was old and the water wasn't very warm, which probably made the reaction less strong than it should have been. That was ok though, we still had fun!

Science Thursday...Fun with Baking Soda and Vinegar

Both girls LOVE doing science experiments, so I'm trying to make sure we do AT LEAST one science experiment per week. We started out with something simple and FUN! (this idea came from Pinterest...surprise, surprise!)

I filled a baking pan with baking soda and gave the girls 3 glasses with colored vinegar. I also gave them a spray bottle with colored vinegar, a couple of glasses, and a couple of pippettes. Then the fun began!



They pretended to make make baking soda and vinegar milkshakes...yum!







They loved this activity so much, and they would have played with it for hours if we hadn't run out of baking soda. This is definitely one of those "why didn't I think of that???" activities (since making baking soda and vinegar volcanoes is one of our regular activities!).

Reading Power Tower

My mom and I made a Reading Power Tower when we made the math one. O(5) LOVES this one, too, and she's getting lots of fun practice reading sight words!


We took turns reading all of the words to make a huge tower!


She loved knocking it down!

Coloring Mandalas

O(5) and I have really enjoyed coloring mandalas during our "Mama and O Craft Time" lately. It is calming to color a repeating geometric pattern, and it's fun! We use fine tip markers and have great conversations while we color.

Pop Paper Dance Party

Since it's "P" week, we had a Pop Paper Dance Party before supper this week! I spread out the pop paper (saved from various packages) and taped it to the floor. I turned the music up loud, and we started dancing. The girls LOVED this! SO much fun!

Simple Addition Power Tower

Here's another idea from Pinterest! O(5) LOVES math, so I was thrilled to see these Power Towers for simple addition on Pinterest.

The Power Towers were so easy and inexpensive to put together, and O LOVES them! I printed the Power Tower label on photo paper and glued it to a Pringles container using scrapbook glue. While I was doing that, my mom was writing simple addition problems on the bottoms of Dixie cups. She wrote the answers inside the cup, so that O can check her work.

We took turns solving the addition problems and stacking the dixie cups. The best part (according to O!) was knocking the tower down.

I love the smile on her face in this one! This girl loves to learn!

Tonight during supper, I reminded the girls that tomorrow is Saturday, and I asked "Do you know what that means?" (I was trying to get them excited about sleeping late!) O says with a smile "No school for me, and no homeschool for E(2)...but I'll probably do some schoolwork anyway!"

Sight Words Puzzles

O(5) is experiencing a surge of interest in reading (after more than a year of being mostly uninterested), and we are having lots of fun with it!

In order to give O a fun way to practice sight words, I printed off a list of the dolch sight words and gathered all of our tray type puzzles. We (my mom and I) wrote a word on the back of each puzzle piece and then wrote the same word on the corresponding place on the tray. O chooses a puzzle piece, reads the word, and then finds the matching word on the tray. She LOVES this activity, and she is really getting good at reading sight words!

I love how simple and quick this was to put together. The idea for these sight word puzzles came from this blog via Pinterest (love Pinterest!).

I'm planning to make an ABC version and a numbers version for E(2). What fun!