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!

Matching Tree Bark

E(2) and I have had a great time touching and talking about the bark on all of the different trees in our yard during our "B" weeks! E was very interested in the bark, and I was inspired by Playful Learning (which I was sent to review about a month ago) to put together a bark matching activity.

To prepare this activity, I took pictures of the bark of 4 trees in our front yard. I printed them on photo paper and laminated them. I gave each of the girls one picture at a time and told them to match them to the trees. They took off running to find their matches, and they had SO much fun!

This is a wonderful activity that really got the girls interested in learning more about the trees in our yard. As they matched the trees, we talked about the names of the trees. Last week when we were touching the bark, E picked up a pinecone and said "This pinecone! It goes with pine tree!"

As I'm writing this post, I'm thinking of more tree and bark related activities :) I love spending time outside with the girls and try to have them outside for hours each day, so activities like this one are perfect for us!

Cheerios Bird Feeders

E(2) and I made bird feeders for "B" week! We had fun putting Cheerios onto pipe cleaners and then then hanging them in the trees.

E ate more Cheerios than she put on the pipe cleaners, and when O(5) got home from school, she pretended to be a bird and ate all of the Cheerios off of a feeder! Silly girl.

This is E's first time making these bird feeders, but it's an activity that we do every couple of years.

Excavating Toys from Ice

Excavating small toys from ice is a yearly summer tradition at our house. This is at least the 3rd summer (maybe 4th) that we have done this very fun activity.

To do this activity, I gathered a bunch of small plastic toys and put them in a glass bowl. I filled the bowl with water and put it in the freezer. I forgot about it for about a month until one really hot day.



When I finally remembered the activity awaiting us in the freezer, I gathered the supplies needed...I put the bowl of ice and toys on a tray along with a hammer, salt, cup of water, water dropper, dull knife, etc.



The girls got to work immediately! They loved hitting the ice with the hammer. They poured a whole salt shaker worth of salt on the ice to help it melt, and they had fun dripping water onto the ice with the water dropper.




They enjoyed this activity so much that they immediately wanted to do it again. We put the toys back in the bowl, added water, and put it in the freezer. It was ready the next day, and they had a super time again. We are on vacation now, but I'm sure we'll do this activity several more times before summer's end.

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!

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!

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.

Birthday Donations

O(5) asked her friends to bring donations for a local children's home rather than gifts to her birthday party this year. We are so proud of her for making this decision, and she was very proud, too. After gathering the donations together, we went shopping so that O could choose some things for the children herself. After our shopping trip, we went to the children's home to deliver the donations. This trip made the donation process much more real and relevant to O since she was able to see the children and their home.

I started talking with O about the possiblity of asking for donations before her 4th birthday party last year. She wavered back and forth between deciding to get donations or gifts, and she finally decided that she'd rather have gifts. She had lots of fun opening her gifts at her 4th bday party, and I remember thinking that she would never consider asking for donations since she enjoyed the gifts so much. So, I was surprised a couple of months ago when I asked her if she wanted donations or gifts for her 5th bday party. She immediately said that she'd like to get donations, and she wanted the donations to be for children (last year we talked about donating to the local animal shelter). I asked if she'd like to donate to the children's home, and she loved that idea. I assured her that if she asked for donations, she would still get gifts from us, her grandparents, and my sister (so don't worry...she was not at all deprived of the fun of opening and receiving gifts!).

I love that O asked for donations for her birthday, but I love even more the fact that it was her decision to do this. I'm sure she knew that I preferred for her to get donations, but I did my best to not influence her decision. I asked her several times if she was sure this was the best decision for her. I told her that once I called the children's home and sent out the invitations, she would not be able to change her mind. She was sure (although at 11pm on the night before her party, she was questioning her decision :). She said that next year she's going to get gifts and then she'll get donations the year after that, so she'll just alternate between gifts and donations...works for me!

Our Flag Cake

The girls and their friends had a great time decorating (and eating!) this flag cake on July 4th. My mom baked an angel food cake, and the girls "iced" it with Cool Whip. They then decorated it with blueberries and strawberries to make the stars and stripes. This is a July 4th tradition that we started a couple of years ago and hope to continue for many years.

"Decorate Your Own Cupcake" Activity

O(4) went with me to Special Events' Day (similar to Special Olympics) at my school a few months ago, and she was able to go around with a class to do all of the activities. Her favorite activity was decorating her own cupcake at the snack stand, and she said she really wanted to have a "decorate your own cupcake" activity at her 5th birthday party.

We had O's 5th birthday party (a month early so our friends who are moving to Costa Rica soon could attend), and the "decorate your own cupcake" activity was the highlight of the party! We typically don't have many sugary snacks or snacks with artificial colors in our house, but we broke that rule (big time!) for O's party!

When we went shopping, she chose blue sugar sprinkles, color sprinkles, color marshmallows, jelly beans, chocolate rocks, etc. She used all of these things to decorate her own birthday cake, and then we also used them for the cupcake activity. Fun times!

Counting by 10's

O(4) LOVES to count by 10's! She learned a counting by 10's song in school that she sings all the time. So, when I saw these orange counters in Montessori at Home by John Bowman, I knew that O would enjoy the activity.


I gave her ten 10 golden bead bars and showed her how to place the counters after each one. She immediately understood and got to work. She liked the activity, but she was a little disappointed that it was so easy. She had asked for a really hard math lesson, and this wasn't challenging enough for my math girl! I'm going to show her how to count by 5's with the beads soon, so hopefully that will offer a little more of a challenge for her.

Meet Lydia

My girls love "growing" animals (found at Dollar General for 1 dollar), so they were very excited to see this crab in their May Fun Box. O(4) named her "Lydia."

I thought about turning this into a measurement or science activity, but we ended up just enjoying watching Lydia grow each day. Simple and exciting!