Boxes of Fun!

I've been collecting large boxes and storing them in our garage for months for the girls and I to play in.  I envisioned us dragging them to the front yard and making some kind of giant box castle complete with lots of tape and paint.  I thought we'd leave it up for about a week and then recycle the whole thing.  However, things worked out much simpler than that!


We occasionally pull the boxes out of the garage for a few hours and play and play and play.  Then we drag them back in to save for another day.  We've had a wonderful time, but Elliott is not thrilled about his garage being cluttered with large cardboard boxes!

Snowmen at Night

Snowmen at Night isn't a Christmas book, but I decided to include in with our 24 books advent books since we love it so much, and I had a fun snow activity planned :) 





We made "snow dough"!  We mixed 12 cups of white flour with 1.5 cups of baby oil to make the snow dough, and it was SO much fun!  We kept adding in a little more baby oil, so we probably ended up with close to 1.75 cups of baby oil.




We put a few plastic animals in the dough, which E(2) really enjoyed.  O(5) loved "cooking" with the dough.


 




I had fun making snowballs :)  This was a pretty messy activity, so it's definitely one for the porch or yard!

Matching Objects/Actions to Sentence Strips

This activity is copied from a work at O(5)'s school. I wrote sentences on sentence strips and paired the strips in a basket with objects that match the sentence. O LOVES this work!


She didn't like the sentence "An apple is in a basket." She told me "Mama, you really should have written "the" instead of "an."


After O finished the work, E(2) said "my turn!" I pointed to each word and read it, and then E repeated it after me and did the actions with the objects. She loves to do EVERYTHING her big sister does!

Weaving Pot Holders

O(5) has REALLY enjoyed weaving pot holders lately! She likes to dress in her "old time" clothes and kerchief while she works.


She's very proud of her finished creations!


E(2) also loves to weave! (of course!) I love her abstract weaving creations!

Pop Paper Prints

The girls and I made pop paper prints during "P" week a few weeks ago. They weren't interested in this activity at first (it was at the end of a long day), but once they saw me painting and having fun, they joined in.

First, we painted a piece of pop paper. Then we pressed a piece of white cardstock on the painted pop paper.




Here are the finished prints.

Words from Boxes

A few months ago when I was sorting our recycling, I noticed all words on the various boxes (cereal boxes, etc.). It seemed a shame to recycle all those words when we could be reading them. So, I started cutting out all the words and put them together in a box.

O(5) was VERY excited about the words. We've had fun making silly sentences with them, but we really need more verbs. I plan to keep adding to our word collection, and I think we're going to have lots of fun with this activity for a while!

Our Starry Night Jar

After seeing glitter jars all over Pinterest for the past few weeks, I decided to make one of our own. (Most of the jars are called "time-out jars" or "calm down jars") I knew I didn't want ours to be a time-out jar because I didn't want any punitive connotations, so when O requested blue food coloring and blue glitter, I decided that we'd call it our "Starry Night Jar" (since we love Van Gogh's Starry Night painting).

To make the jar, we filled it with warm water. We added blue glitter and blue glitter glue. The glue creates a swirling effect when you shake the jar, and I added a little extra clear glue (school glue, but it's clear,not white) to make it swirl a little longer. I didn't measure anything...just eyeballed it.

Once when E(2) was extremely tired and fussy, I sat with her on the kitchen floor and grabbed the jar and shook it. We both stared at it and talked about how the glitter (stars) was slowly drifting to the bottom. I was happily amazed when she immediately calmed down and stared at the jar for a minute or so. I'm planning to put together a peace basket, and this will be an important component of it.

Playing with Putty

E(2) went on a treasure hunt for pennies and a marble in our therapy putty during "P" week! She had fun, but the putty is pretty firm, so it wasn't easy. O(5) was SO excited when she saw the putty because this has always been one of her favorite activities!

Color Mixing Water Balloon Bath

The girls had a great time taking a bath with water balloons this week!

First, I put a few drops of yellow food coloring in 2 yellow balloons and filled them with water. I put a few drops of blue food coloring into 2 blue balloons and filled them with water.

The girls had fun playing with the water balloons in the bath!

Then they popped the blue water balloons and loved their blue bath water!

Next, they popped the yellow balloons to make green water!

What a fun color mixing activity! Thanks to Amber B. for this great idea!

Turkey Felt Board

Sorry for the week of no posts! I had several posts saved in draft and set to post each day while we were out of town, but, obviously, that didn't work! We are back from a wonderful week in the Bahamas! It was great, but we are glad to be home!

The girls have had fun playing with the turkey felt board (that I made a couple of years ago). They look at the pictures and copy the designs, and they create their own designs.