Unplug Your Kids: Sticky

The unplugged theme this week is sticky, so I decided that we would finally make a tissue and contact paper collage (I've been planning to do this for a while!). My sister thought I was strange when I gathered all of the tissue paper from her daughter's bday presents and brought it home with me, but I had a plan :)
O tried to cut the tissue paper first, but she quickly decided that it was easier and more fun to tear the paper.
I taped a piece of contact paper (sticky side up) to a placemat, and she placed the tissue paper on the contact paper.
After she finished, I put a 2nd piece of contact paper on top of her work.
We hung the finished project on the sliding glass door. O was VERY proud!

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.

Unplug Your Kids: Green

The unplugged theme this week is green, and we decided to share a few of our weekly "green activities.
O loves to drink from her green Kleen Kanteen just like mommy!

Helping sort the recycling.
Helping mommy put the plastics in the correct container
Helping mommy and daddy crush cardboard boxes
Helping daddy put the boxes in the correct container

We cheated a little since we didn't really do anything that we don't normally do. However, O doesn't usually go to drop off the recycling. We had to go to town on Thursday and in order to minimize wasteful spending of gas, we packed everything into one trip... dropped off the recycling and trash, dropped off the tiller at Kenny's house, went out to eat, and went grocery shopping. It was a long night, but we wanted to get our money's worth since it cost $7 to go to town and back (yes, I'm a dork, and I like calculating things like that).

Unplug Your Kids: Birds

The unplugged project this week is birds. We do lots of bird watching around here, so this was the perfect theme for us.
O is counting with her bird wall cards.

On Friday we took the pedal boat over to check on Mother Goose and her eggs. We were hoping that she would stand up, so that we could see her eggs, but she didn't. You can see the goose in the top left hand corner of the picture. O is pointing at her.

It was a breezy, cool morning, but it was sunny and beautiful. Elliott found several bird calls (and deer calls) in the garage, so we sat on a blanket and tried to call birds to us. They didn't fall for it! We could see geese in the distance, and a mother duck and her 6 ducklings swam by, but they wouldn't come close. Although the mother duck did pause when I blew on one of the calls. I don't know which call is which, so she probably thought I was a deer :)

O crushed stale bread to spread around for the songbirds.
O kept calling "geese, geese, bread, bread," while throwing bread to them, but they weren't interested.

Unplug Your Kids: Scissors

This week's unplugged theme is scissors. At first I thought O might be a little too young for scissors (21 months), but then I decided to give it a try. Elliott bought a pair of child safe scissors last night on his way home from work (Thanks, Elliott!), and O was very excited when she saw them this morning. I rolled out a playdoh snake and showed her how to cut it. She was excited and said "O, O,O" which is what she says when she's ready for her turn. We rolled a snake for her, and I handed her the scissors. She had a great time pressing them into the playdoh and trying to maneuver them. We have a LONG way to go before she is proficient with scissors, and I'm glad that we started now. We had a great time!

Unplug Your Kids: Food

I'm a little late posting this I think, but the unplugged theme this week is food. We weren't very creative, but we had fun! We made peanut butter cookies while we were at my mom's house this weekend. O had fun learning how to make criss crosses on the cookies with a fork, and the cookies were delicious. It was a special treat for O since her mommy and daddy typically do not let her eat sweets.

Unplug Your Kids: Books

We've decided to start doing some of the Unplug your Kids Challenges, and this week was a great one to start with since the topic is books! We spend the vast majority of our time reading, and it is one of O's all time favorite activities. We typically read 20 to 30 books a day, but she somehow convinced my mom to read her over 100 books one day when she was babysitting. My poor mom could barely talk by the end of the day. We have books spread throughout our house on shelves and in bins. Our favorite place to read is the reading chair in the den. We love to snuggle up with a big stack of books.

I'm actually trying to stop my book buying addiction. I check out 8-10 books every week or so from the library, so I'm trying to cut down on the actual buying of books. Although I do still go to the thrift store weekly to check out the children's book selection. I've made a few homemade books for O, and I plan to make more like this one. O loves to look at scrapbooks and photo albums nightly, and she is learning the names of family and friends that we rarely see.

We go to storytime at the library tomorrow, and I can't wait to read some new books with O!