I Love Thrift Stores

I LOVE thrift store shopping. I have a serious addiction to children's books, and I have gotten into the habit of stopping by the thrift store by my office every Thursday after work. Today I got 14 books for 49 cents each. I was super excited because I got some really good stuff, and it always makes me happy to get a good deal. Yay!

Matching Art Cards

More matching! O really does love to match, and she loves these beautiful cards. She calls the Matisse "daddy" and the Manet "mama." I downloaded the pics from Jojoebi's site, printed them, and laminated them. I am looking forward to making more soon.

You may have noticed...

that O has only one sock and shoe on in all of the pictures lately. I'm not really sure why, but she keeps taking her right shoe and sock off. Hmmmm, interesting.

Water Play

O loves to play with water. I planned to have her at the kitchen counter, but it was too high, so I set her up with a tub of water at the kitchen table. She's standing in her kitchen helper. She played with this tub of water for more than 45 minutes, and I had time to work on our Christmas scrapbook!

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!)