Finishing our Valentine's

O and I had fun finishing our Valentine's this morning. She needed a little help spreading the glue on the backs of the hearts because she really wanted to just dig her fingers into the glue and spread it on the table. She did a good job patting the hearts into place, and I did hand over hand with her to sign her name. She was VERY proud of the finished product!

Making Valentines- Step 1

O and I started working on our Valentine's tonight. I cut out lots of hearts out of computer paper and taped them to the bathtub wall. O painted them with red, pink, and white paint. She actually had much more fun painting herself and the tub, and she needed lots of prompting to actually paint the hearts. Tomorrow we'll glue the hearts to construction paper to make cards. This was LOTS of fun, and we'll definitely be painting in the bathtub for a while (maybe years because this girl is MESSY!)

Another Busy Monday

We've had a busy morning, and we still have so much to do. I can't wait until O wakes up from her nap because it is a beautiful day and we need to go play outside. I'm also looking forward to showing her the felt board that I got out of the closet last night. (I have lots of toys and activities stored away in the closet). Yesterday I found this knob puzzle that I bought about a year ago. O had fun with it, and she was very excited that Gracie (our cat) was interested in playing with her. She tried to hand Gracie a puzzle piece, but Gracie wasn't interested. O did a good job picking the pieces up by the small knob, but she had a difficult time fitting them into their places. This is another new activity that O really liked. She picked up the toothpicks one at a time and dropped them into the container. This took lots of concentration at 1st, but she got faster as she worked.

O's Art

After reading JoJoEbi's blog post about her son's magnetic drawings, I decided to get O's drawing board out of the closet (I put it away before Christmas. I keep only a few toys out at a time), and put away a couple of puzzles that she was losing interest in. O was super excited to see the drawing board this morning, and she's been scribbling all day. Here is O's 1st collage. We looked at magazines together and she chose the pictures which I then cut out. She was very definite about which pictures she wanted. I showed her how to use the glue stick, and we glued the pics to the construction paper. Can you tell we were looking at a Pottery Barn Kids catalog :) ?

New Words

O is saying new words everyday, and it is so exciting. Yesterday while playing with her dollhouse she kept saying "ouse, ouse." She's also started calling dogs "dog" instead of "arf, arf." Over the weekend at my mom's house she kept saying "dog, dog, bye" because my sister's dog spent the weekend at my mom's house, and O did NOT like the dog being inside. (He's a HUGE german shepard). She must have told that dog bye a thousand times in the hope that he would just leave. It was pretty funny. O is copying a lot of things we say. Yesterday she said her version of boards while we had carpenters here making our deck toddler safe. She says "ants" when she sees ants on her "ise" (slide). Then she makes a sweeping motion with her hand and says "shoo, mama" because she wants me to sweep them off her slide. A couple of days ago, I dropped something and said "oh, crap," and O immediately said "cap." Oops. She says "ap" for apple and "buff" means so many things - puff snacks, Puff the Magic Dragon, toilet paper, etc. She says "dark" when we walk into a dark room, and yesterday she said "ight" when she wanted me to turn on the light. "Eh-oh" is a favorite whenever anything is not right. Whenever she sees litter on the side of the road, she says "eh-oh, eh-oh." I've GOT to start taking my trash bag and picking up litter, but I never remember until we're way down the road. She also loves to say "theyitis" whenever she finds what she is looking for. This is all just so much fun!

Storytime at the Library

O and I went to storytime at our local library today. We went a few months ago, and I have been meaning to go back ever since, but there is always some reason we can't go until today. There was only one other child there, but that was fine. O was a litte shy at first, but she enjoyed herself and warmed up to the librarian and other child after a little while. She enjoyed listening to the books, but her favorite part was the music. The librarian played music and did fingerplays, and every time a song ended O said "more, more." She loved it! I was so afraid that O would try to push the books that the librarian was reading away because she loves to read, but she likes to read what SHE wants to read. I told her several times before we left our house that the librarian got to choose the book, and she had to listen nicely. Thank goodness she behaved! I've started taking turns with her and letting mommy choose a book occasionally so that she'll realize that she doesn't always get her way. I have to do this with new books because otherwise she would never give them a chance, and they often turn out to be her favorites. After storytime we went to a nearby playground. O loved playing on the "ise" (slide).

More Tuesday Fun

It was such a beautiful day today, and we took advantage of it by spending hours outside playing and walking and playing on the screened porch. O loves her rice pit, and it is one of the few places that she will play independently without a fuss.
This is another idea from Montessori Mama. O loved playing in the laundry basket and working on the concepts of in and out. We incorporated her red and blue playsilks into the activity, so we worked on naming those colors and the concept of under. After I took this picture, O insisted that it was my turn to get in the basket. I was a little unsure, but I fit with no problem (Phew!) and O thought it was hilarious for mommy to be in the laundry basket. She also wanted Gracie, our cat, to get in the basket, but Gracie was not a willing participant.

More Clothes Pin Fun

For this activity I clipped clothes pins around the edge of the bowl, and O pulled them off and put them in the bowl. She did NOT want to put them in the bowl the 1st time she did this which was no big deal, but a little strange. She took all the clothes pins off and took the bowl to the kitchen. She doesn't like things to be out of place, and she knew that bowl belonged in the kitchen. I tried this activity again today, and she really enjoyed it.

We Love Eric Carle

O had a great time matching pictures from Brown Bear, Brown Bear What do you See? to the pictures in the book. The idea for this activity came from Montessori Mama who is full of creative and fun ideas. Instead of drawing the pictures, I took the easy way out and took pictures of the pages in the book. I printed them in wallet size and laminated them. O loved this activity because she loves her Eric Carle books. She chose a card from the basket and flipped through the book until she found a match. When she found the matching page she excitedly said "Theyitis!" (There it is!) What fun!

Monday Morning

We've had a busy Monday morning. Here are few of the highlights: O loves her wooden food that she can cut. She needs a little help holding the knife, but she does a pretty good job. This is especially fun since the set includes some of her favorite foods-watermelon and tomatoes! This was our first activity of the day, and O chose it by herself. As soon as I said the word "activity" she ran and got the mat. I was surprised and pleased!
I introduced O to painting with watercolors today. She thought it was fun to wear her daddy's old shirt. She also really liked dipping her paintbrush into the water. She wasn't too impressed with the paint because it was hard to get the paint onto the brush. She had more fun just painting the paper with water.
O got pretty upset when I picked up the rooster mat to put it away. I knew immediately that she wanted to play with playdoh since the rooster is also our playdoh mat (Thanks Cousin Anne! Did you know this cutting mat would be so versatile?) O was thrilled to play with the playdoh, and I was excited that she played with it so well independently since independent play is something we've been working on.

"What's inside?"

One of our new activities last week consisted of putting an object in a small oatmeal cylinder and rolling it across the floor. As it rolled I asked "What's inside?" O's favorite part of the activity was pulling the lid off to discover what was inside. She also liked squeezing her eyes shut while I put the objects in the container. What fun!

GALLOP! A Scanimation Picture Book By Rufus Butler Seder

Have you seen this book??? If you haven't, you need to! It is so very cool. Marg checked it out from the library and shared it with us this weekend. We are assuming that that Aunt Bobby ordered it for the library since she knows which books are the best! When you turn the pages the animals in the book move. O loves it and she tried to move like the animals when she was reading it. This one is definitely going on her Amazon wish list!

Another Matching Activity

Thanks Montessori Mama for this great idea! O had so much fun matching her small plastic animals to pictures in a book. Unfortunately, I only had 3 animals that matched the pictures, but it was still fun.

Making Finger Paint

I've been planning on making finger paint with O for weeks, and we finally did it today. O really enjoyed it, and she learned about colors and mixing colors. She loved to squeeze the food coloring into the mixture, but the most fun was stirring the paint. We used the easiest recipe I could find - 2 cups of flour and 2 cups of cold water and food coloring. It was a little thicker thank I would have liked, and it didn't spread very well. We put O in the bathtub with paper taped to the walls for her to paint on. She wasn't too impressed. She had more fun putting the lids on and off the containers than she did painting. She was a little distressed when she accidentally got a handful of paint, but she enjoyed painting her tummy after we talked her into it. I think we'll try watercolor paint tomorrow.

Phonics Bags

These phonics bags have been in the works for a while now. I bought the bags from Michael's a few months ago, but I was in no hurry to make them since O is still so young. Since she's showing an interest in learning letters and enjoys reading to herself (scanning a book while saying "ra, ruh, ra, ra, ra, etc." --VERY cute!), I thought it would be a good time to make them an introduce them to her. I printed the letters onto iron-on transfer paper, and my mom cut them out while I put O down for a nap (thanks, mom!). Then I started ironing. It took a while, and I didn't have the directions, so the 1st 10 bags don't look so good, but I eventually got the hang of it. I'm somewhat pleased with the result. Now I just have to fill the bags! I have a mini book with pictures of things with that particular letter in each bag (a few books have more than one letter, so each bag does not have a book) that came from a set of books that my mom gave O. Other things included in the bags are small plastic animals - dog, penguin, seal, turtle, frog, dinosaur, etc; finger puppets- giraffe, pig, etc; pink pipe cleaner, wooden acorn, and blocks. I have lots of bags to fill, so if anyone has any great ideas of things to put in the bags, let me know!