Color Matching

O loves to match colors! I laminated construction paper and then cut it in half to make matching pairs. O has fun learning her colors and matching the cards.

I Spy Bottle

O and I had fun trying out the "I Spy" bottle that I made for Charlie. We found an object on the picture that we wanted to look for and then turned and shook the bottle until we found it. I hope Charlie likes the bottle as much as O does!

Look at that Concentration!

This was one of the morning activities that I set up last night. Look at that concentration! I love watching O when she is so focused on her work.

Nesting Blocks

These nesting blocks are our version of the pink tower. Until today they have been in O's room, which means they are rarely played with since we are usually upstairs in the den. We brought them up this morning, and she has had a great time working with them. I showed her how to stack them, but she was much more interested in putting them in each other. She especially loves the smallest block and likes to carry it around.

Breast Milk Contains Stem Cells

Interesting article! Take a minute to read it.
http://www.sciencealert.com.au/news/20081102-16879.html

Felt Board

Each night after O goes to sleep, I lay out different activities for her to do in the morning. I try to have a different activity for each morning of the week although sometimes we repeat activities during the week. Usually, its just a matter of taking a toy off the shelf and setting it up for play. For some reason, she rarely gets her toys off the shelf, but she likes them if they are set up on the table for her. The one exception is her rainbow stacker, but that's another post. One of tomorrow's morning activities is this felt board. We worked with it yesterday on a mat, and O had fun dressing the girls. I hope she'll be excited to see it in the morning. O was excited to see the felt board Wednesday morning. She loves the felt dolls. She picked one of them up, patted it, and took it with her to play in the rice pit. Funny girl!

Tuesday's Art

O colored with markers for the 1st time today, and it was LOTS of fun!

Tuesday's Activities

Tuesday afternooon was very busy. O played with cotton balls briefly (this idea came from Montessori Mama). I was disappointed that she wasn't more interested in working with the cotton balls, but we'll try it again another time. O had fun doing the shape puzzle, sweeping the porch playroom, blowing bubbles, bouncing on the joggling board, and picking catnip for Gracie.

Feeding the Geese

When I went outside to shake the rug this morning, I saw 4 geese in the lake right by our house. O and I hurried outside with a bag of bread to feed them. We tried to feed the ducks yesterday, but they flew away too fast so we were excited that the geese kept coming closer and eating our bread. O had a great time throwing the bread into the water, and we are hoping we'll see some ducks when she wakes up from her nap.

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).