Painting Her Dream

E(1) woke up last Wednesday morning at 5am talking about a lion. She talked and talked and talked. I told her it was just a dream, and she went back to sleep. Meanwhile, I got up to go to work (at 5:45am), and my mom said E woke up at 8:30 still talking about lions.

They read books about lions, and E found a lion puzzle piece and said "There's lion! It matches my dream!" She also insisted that she wanted to paint a lion on a canvas, so on Friday she painted her lion.

She was very intent and focused while painting. She knew exactly which colors she wanted to use, and she told us what she was painting as she did it. When she was painting with blue paint, she said "that's his eyes." When she was painting with orange paint, she said "that's tiger!" This girl amazes me every day!

This is her finished lion and tiger painting. I love it, and she is so proud!

Rubberbands on a Doorknob

Stretching rubberbands onto a doorknob was one of O(5)'s favorite activities when she was E(1)'s age, and now E loves it, too! I love to watch her work when she is so focused and determined!

I offered her a stool to stand on, but she was not interested in that at all :)

Science on the Beach...Sink/Float

Lately, E(1) has been excitedly saying "It floats!" whenever anything floats in the lake. So, I decided to gather various objects from our house and yard to take to the beach for a sink/float experiment. O(5) excitedly took her mask out with us to the lake, so that she could retrieve the sunken objects. (Her swimming skills have improved dramatically since she has started swimming with a mask!)

Before dropping each object in the water, we predicted whether each one would sink or float. E predicted that everything would float :)


It was interesting for the girls to see that the shells floated if we placed them gently on the water, but they sunk if we threw them in the water. Fun times on the lake!

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.

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!

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!

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!!!

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.

e is for elephant & egg

I recently paired E(1)'s sandpaper "e" with a basket of "e" objects...an elephant and an egg. We say "eh, eh, eh" as we hold the objects and trace the "e." We also point to E, of course, while we are tracing the letter and saying the sound :)

Animals & An Ice Cube Tray

Here is another simple activity to build one-to-one correspondence skills! I gave E(1) an empty ice tray and a bowl of mini animals. There were just enough animals for one animal to go into each space in the tray. E loved putting the animals in the tray. While I was showing her the activity, she kept saying "my turn, my turn!" Then after she had her turn, she said "mommy turn."

She completed this activity several times in a row, and she especially liked the mini cats.

She put 3 cats in one space, and I had to bite my tongue to keep myself from correcting her. She stared at the tray for a couple of seconds, and then corrected herself by putting one cat in each space. It was fun to watch her expression as she thought about it.